Man, I loved that book but sometimes the names blur together after a while, don't they? The core protagonist is this incredibly ambitious guy, Elias Vance. He starts off as a normal finance bro but gets entangled in a high-stakes auction for some mysterious ancient artifact. The whole plot orbits around him.
Then you've got his sort-of mentor, Aris Thorne, who is much older and has this weird, tragic past tied to the artifact. Their dynamic was the best part for me—it's not a clean hero-sidekick thing at all, more like two people using each other. Oh, and Celia Renard, the rival collector who keeps showing up to outbid Elias. She’s ruthless and way more competent than he is for most of the book, honestly.
Kaito, the bodyguard with his own agenda, felt a bit underdeveloped until the sequel, I thought. Honestly, I mostly read it for the tense auction scenes and the weird friendship between Elias and Aris.