The garden fell into a silence so deep that even the rustling leaves seemed to hold their breath.
Dime stared at the photograph in his hands. The boy no older than five had dark curls and hauntingly familiar eyes. His eyes. Elias Thorne's eyes.
His throat tightened.
"This is a lie," he muttered, shaking his head.
"It's not," Valerie said. Her voice trembled with something between regret and defiance. "I kept him hidden… for his safety. From them. From you."
"You don't get to say that," he snapped, voice breaking. "You used me. Framed me. Left me. And now now you drop a child into my lap?"
"I didn't plan this," she said. "But I saw the way the world was closing in on you again. The scandals. The whispers. Magritte. Crick. I knew you needed to know the truth before someone else found him first."
Dime's hands clenched the photograph. The world tilted on its axis again, but this time not with fury or revenge. This was different. Personal. Raw.
"Where is he now?"
"In Zurich. With my aunt. I wanted to bring him here... but it's not safe. Not yet."
Dime stared at the moonlight reflecting on the garden pond. "Does he know who I am?"
Valerie looked down. "He knows you're important. That you're powerful. That you're his father? No. Not yet."
He turned, walked away, and didn't look back.
The next morning, Dime called Jude, Saira, and Lewis into the glass conference room on the 47th floor.
"We're reshuffling the board," he announced without preamble.
Saira blinked. "Reshuffling?"
"Yes. Crick, Madison, Edeh they're out. Effective immediately."
Lewis raised an eyebrow. "You planning a bloodless coup?"
"No," Dime said, pouring a glass of water. "I'm planning a clean one."
Saira crossed her arms. "That only works if you have the shareholders."
"I do," he said. "Or I will. We're buying out Echelon Group."
Silence fell.
"That's suicide," Jude finally said. "They control 22% of Draxon's voting shares."
"Not anymore," Dime replied. "I made an offer to their chairman this morning. He agreed."
"How?" Saira demanded.
Dime tapped a file on the table.
"Turns out he didn't know Crick funneled company funds into a shell company tied to illegal arms manufacturing. Once he saw the evidence, he handed me the shares to avoid scandal."
Saira gave a slow smile. "You are terrifying."
Dime looked up, voice calm and steel-forged. "Good."
But while the corporate war began to tilt in Dime's favor, the shadows outside the boardroom were gathering.
Magritte moved like smoke through the political underground. No one knew her origins, only that she was elegant, lethal, and never left fingerprints. And now, she wanted a meeting.
At midnight, Saira intercepted a courier. It carried a single envelope with no return address.
Inside, a card embossed with silver ink.
"Elias, you've stirred the waters too quickly. The deep doesn't forget. Let's talk Neutral ground. The Chateau Mirielle. Three days."Magritte.
Dime didn't hesitate.
Three days later, the Chateau Mirielle loomed before him like something out of a forgotten age—black stone, winding towers, and security so discreet you could mistake it for silence.
Inside, the ballroom was empty save for one woman seated at a long table dressed in obsidian silk.
"Elias," she said, smiling. "You wear vengeance better than most wear suits."
"You're Magritte."
"I am. And you're not the dead boy they buried two decades ago."
He took a seat. "Why am I here?"
"Because power is shifting, and the old order is crumbling," she said. "But if you climb too fast, they'll notice. And they'll cut you down."
"They've already tried," Dime replied.
"And they will again. With prettier faces. And sharper knives."
He leaned forward. "Then tell me what you want."
Magritte's smile turned colder.
"I want the game to change. And I want to help you win it."
He narrowed his eyes. "Why me?"
"Because you're not one of them," she whispered. "And yet you've learned to move like you are. That makes you dangerous. And valuable."
Dime considered her words, then nodded once.
"For now, we're allies," he said.
"Then we begin."
Back in the city, another problem was brewing.
The news had broken, "ELIAS THORNE RETURNS FROM THE DEAD" complete with photos, DNA proof, and a twenty-page exposé on Draxon's internal corruption.
It was war now.
Crick was indicted the next day. Valerie was hounded by paparazzi. Lewis was trailed by unknown cars. Jude's systems were hacked.
And at the heart of it all, Dime stood tall unflinching, unbroken.
Until a call came.
From Zurich.
"He's missing," the voice on the line said. "Your son. He vanished last night."
Dime dropped the phone. His vision tunneled.
And somewhere in the deep recesses of his mind, a memory flashed one that wasn't his. A boat. A boy's scream. Fire. Water swallowing everything.
Elias Thorne's memories.
They were coming back.
It was raining when the jet touched down in Zurich.
Dime stepped out first, barely registering the cold slap of wind across his face. His mind was elsewhere haunted by the final words of the call.
"Your son is gone."
Jude followed silently behind, phone pressed to his ear as he coordinated with private security already deployed across Switzerland. Saira, seated inside the car waiting for them, tossed him a fresh dossier.
"I had eyes on the compound up until three a.m.," she said. "The boy disappeared after an unauthorized vehicle was logged leaving through the east trail. No cameras. No witnesses. Whoever did this knew what they were doing."
Dime skimmed the documents. "Valerie?"
"She's still in Paris. She has no clue unless she's playing dumb."
He slammed the door shut behind him. "She wouldn't endanger him."
"You said the same about Magritte once," Jude muttered.
Zurich was a city of secrets beneath sleek glass facades. Dime had always hated it. Too clean. Too perfect. The kind of place where monsters wore cologne and suits stitched with blood money.
The private estate where his son had been kept safe or so he'd thought was surrounded by forest and silence. The guards stationed at the gates were his own men. They lowered their heads as he passed.
Inside, the child's room was untouched.
A half-eaten bag of gummy bears on the nightstand. A green hoodie on the chair. A drawing pinned to the wall of a man in a crown and the words *"My Dad is Stronger Than the World."*
The paper trembled in his hand.
He turned to Saira. "Pull everything. Bank records, air traffic, blacklisted agents. Whoever touched this child I want them found."
Jude tapped into a satellite console from the estate's command center.
"Got something," he said. "An encrypted signal. Bounced off a military-grade comms line. Origin: Geneva. That's where they're hiding."
Meanwhile, in Geneva...
The boy sat on a red velvet couch, legs swinging nervously. A woman with hair like fire and skin like frost knelt before him.
"You don't remember me, do you?" she asked gently.
He shook his head.
"That's okay," she said. "But I remember you. You're important. Your father... he made enemies. A lot of them. I'm here to protect you from them."
The boy blinked. "But I want my dad."
She smiled soft, rehearsed, sharp underneath.
"And you will see him soon. I promise."
The woman's name was,Themis Ravelle and no one, not even Magritte, knew who she worked for.
Dime stormed into Geneva like a god of war.
The house was a fortress. But he didn't come alone.
Lewis, dressed in black ops gear, flanked him with two former Marines. Saira held the hacking system that disabled the estate's surveillance in sixty seconds flat. Jude looped the security feed with precision only a prodigy could manage.
They struck at midnight.
It was quick. Brutal.
By the time Dime kicked down the heavy door of the estate's main room, the woman was gone but the boy was there. Alone. Frightened.
"Dad?" he whispered.
Dime froze.
For a second, the world around him collapsed. The screams, the thunder, the blood all vanished.
Then he dropped to one knee and pulled the boy into his arms.
"I've got you," he whispered. "I've got you now."
But the world didn't wait.
Back in New York, Crick's trial began behind closed doors. And that's when the leaks started.
Private footage. Emails. Voice recordings. Someone had launched a full-blown digital assault on Dime's legacy. His face was back on every screen but not as a savior. As a suspect.
"You've been compromised," Jude said, tossing a tablet onto the desk.
Dime stared at the headline.
"Thorne's Tower of Lies,Was the Billionaire Always Elias?"
He exhaled sharply. "They're not trying to destroy me. They're trying to undo me."
Saira looked up from her laptop. "It's surgical. Targeted. Someone's not just trying to expose you they're trying to rewrite the whole story."
That night, Dime sat in his penthouse library, the lights off, his son asleep upstairs. He poured himself a drink. One memory echoed louder than the rest now.
Not from his life as Mr. Dime.
But as Elias Thorne.
A whisper in the dark.
A betrayal.
The sound of gunfire. A flash of water. Someone dragging him out someone he never saw.
The door creaked open behind him.
Magritte stood in the shadows.
"You should've called me," she said softly.
"I should've killed you," he replied.
She walked closer, not flinching. "I had nothing to do with the boy."
"But you knew someone would come for him."
She didn't answer.
Dime looked her dead in the eye. "Then tell me who Themis Ravelle is."
Magritte blinked. "Where did you hear that name?"
"She took my son."
Now she looked scared. Genuinely scared.
"She's not one of mine," she said. "She's something else."
Dime stood slowly, setting his glass down.
"Then it's time to meet the people who made me."