Caspian was back in the sterile silence of the safe house. He paced the floor, waiting. He imagined Lyra at home with Zara, weathering the storm of public hatred he had helped create. The thought was a shard of glass in his gut.
An encrypted message notification chimed on the laptop. It was from Thorne. The preliminary dossier.
He opened the file. It was a skeleton, but a telling one. Isolde’s official financials were clean, but behind shell corporations and offshore accounts, Thorne’s team had found a pattern.
A series of significant insurance claims over the past decade. A collection of antique jewelry reported stolen from a hotel safe in Monaco. A priceless vase “accidentally” shattered during a move. A piece of modern art damaged by a supposed water leak. Each incident coincided perfectly with a period of financial instability, followed by a sudden influx of cash.
It wasn’t proof of a crime. Not yet. But it was a clear history of profiting from manufactured crises. It was who she was.
Then he saw it. The second part of the report. The connection that made the air freeze in his lungs.
Daniel Corbin, the associate who had “saved” Isolde. Thorne’s team had already run a background check. He was the younger brother of Dr. Alistair Finch.
The disgraced doctor who oversaw Isolde’s fraudulent treatment. The medical fraud and the physical conspiracy were not separate plots. They were one and the same, a family affair.
A single thread, now connecting everything. Caspian stared at the screen, a path forward finally cutting through the fog of his guilt.
***
Across town, Lyra sat on the sofa, a blanket wrapped around her shoulders, ignoring the television. Zara sat beside her, scrolling silently through her phone, her expression grim.
“It’s not all hate,” Zara said softly.
Lyra didn’t answer.
“I’m serious. Look.” Zara turned the phone toward her.
Amidst the endless tide of vitriol and condemnation, a single hashtag was trending in a small but fierce corner of the internet: #ListenToLyra.
It was her fans. Fans of the #StarlightGhost from `Starlight Serenade`. They were dissecting the news reports, pointing out inconsistencies in the story, questioning the convenient timing of the attack. They were defending her.
It was a tiny flicker of light in an overwhelming darkness. But for the first time in days, Lyra felt something other than despair. It was not hope, not yet.
It was a reason to keep fighting.
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