"Tell me everything," I said, my voice steadier now.
Kaelen didn't hesitate. "Jax. Real name, Jackson Pryce. Freelance enforcer with a record for intimidation and strong-arm work. He's got loose ties to organized crime, but he's a hired gun. Deniable." He paused, his grey eyes locking with mine. "Mark is cross-referencing his known associates with everyone on our board, but his presence at Sterling last night confirms one thing: David and Diana have escalated from corporate sabotage to direct, physical intimidation. They're getting desperate."
The clarification was a cold splash of water. "They're panicking. They know we're close."
"My thought exactly." Kaelen's gaze was approving.
We sat in silence for a moment, the hum of the laptop the only sound. Then, Kaelen's phone vibrated on the table. Mark's name flashed on the screen. Kaelen put it on speaker.
"Report."
"Mr Vancourt, we've tracked the primary payment stream to Helios Development," Mark's voice was crisp. "The liquidation is proceeding at an unnatural speed. But we hit a wall on the legal intermediary—a ghost. However, we managed to pull the original corporate registration documents from the national database before the purge." There was a rustle of paper. "There's something off about the timing."
"What timing?" I asked, leaning forward.
"The first invoice from Helios to Diana's Westland project was dated February 12th of this year," Mark said. "But according to this, Helios Development was incorporated two years ago. October, to be precise."
The air left my lungs. The date landed not like a fact, but like a key turning in a lock deep in my memory.
"Crestwood Printers," I whispered.
Kaelen's head snapped toward me. "What?"
"Crestwood Printers," I repeated, my voice stronger, the pieces tumbling into a horrifying new configuration. "Remember the files you gave me? It went into receivership two years ago. In October. It was one of the companies Diana set on fire." I looked at Kaelen, my eyes wide with the implications. "Helios wasn't created for the Westland project. It's been sitting dormant for two years. It's a ghost from a different grave."
The silence on the line from Mark was palpable. Kaelen's expression had shifted from intense to utterly still, the way a predator freezes before the strike.
"They didn't create a new shell for this scheme," Kaelen said, his voice dangerously soft. "They had a portfolio of them, pre-established. Sleeper cells in the corporate world. This isn't just about embezzling from a single project. This is a long-term, systemic operation."
"It's a pipeline," I breathed, the scale of it dawning on me. "Helios was one conduit. They used it to bleed Crestwood dry two years ago, let it go dormant, and then reactivated it for Westland. That's why there wasn't a red flag. It's not a company that was recently incorporated. And now they're retiring it, moving to Haven Logistics." I met Kaelen's gaze, a cold certainty settling in my bones. "Kaelen," I lowered my voice. "Arachne Trust is behind this."
The game had just changed. The conspiracy was older, deeper, and far more professional than we had ever imagined. The enemy wasn't just trying to steal a company; they had been systematically dismantling and looting it for years, right under our noses.
And we just found one loose end.
Kaelen leaned back in his chair, the glow from the screens painting his features in stark light. "We couldn't find a trace of Arachne before," he said, voice low. "Not even through offshore chains or holding accounts. Every lead ended in a blank trust document and a registrar signature that didn't exist."
I nodded, staring at the chart. "But if Helios connects to them—"
"It means they slipped up." His eyes cut to mine, sharp and cold. "Arachne's been buried for years. The Helios liquidation was not planned properly. Maybe it was because we were looking into it. They didn't cover their trail properly this time."
He was thinking out loud now, a habit that surfaced only when he was balancing between strategy and instinct. "If Helios was one of their older shells, then there's a maintenance record somewhere. Something that predates their purge cycles."
"Which means," I said slowly, "we need someone who can dig beneath deleted corporate archives."
He met my gaze. "Sienna."
I didn't hesitate. I reached for my phone, thumb already moving over the screen. The call rang twice before I heard a sleepy, muffled groan.
"Elara… do you have any idea what time it is?"
"Too late for comfort," I said, pacing to the window. "I need you to wake up. We found something."
The sound of rustling blankets vanished, replaced by the crisp staccato of keys. "You have my attention."
"Remember Helios Development?" I said. "We think it was dormant for a while before they used it for Westland project funds. They might have reused an old identity since we didn't find anything connecting Helios to Crestwood Printers."
There was silence, followed by a sharp intake of breath. "That's… bold. Stupid, but bold. Give me the company number."
Kaelen slid a file across the table. I read it out.
"Got it," Sienna muttered, the sound of her typing filling the line. "If they recycled an old structure, I might be able to find a mirror record. Ghost data doesn't delete cleanly if they reused the same incorporation spine."
I frowned. "A what?"
"Think of it like DNA," she said. "When a company is purged and re-registered under a new name, the code that forms its legal ID leaves a trace in the metadata. Most people can't see it. But if Helios was reactivated from an older entity… I can."
Kaelen leaned forward, eyes narrowing. "And if you can see it, can you trace it?"
"I can try," she said. The line went quiet for a few seconds, just the muffled sounds of her laptop firing up and her voice switching into clipped, professional cadence. "Alright… pulling the registry logs now—hold on."
The silence stretched. Kaelen paced the room once, twice, the muscles in his jaw working.
"...What the hell?" Sienna muttered finally, half to herself. "This registry is… wrong. Half the metadata's scrambled. And the timestamps don't line up with the public incorporation record. That's not just concealment, that's reconstruction. Someone rewrote this company's history."
"Can you break through?" Kaelen asked.
"I can try, but it's not a clean system. I'm hitting a live countermeasure—wait, wait—"
A sharp beep cut through the line. I flinched.
"Shit," Sienna hissed. "They've got trace monitors running. Someone's watching the access logs in real time."
Kaelen swore under his breath, already crossing to his laptop. "Route through one of Vancourt's test servers, mask it as a compliance audit. That'll buy you three minutes, maybe four."
"On it," Sienna said, her voice taut. "Elara, I'm going to need you to open Westland's old procurement folder from your end. It's the only legitimate anchor point I can use."
My fingers were trembling as I typed. "Done."
"Okay," she said, typing faster. "There's… something here. But it's buried under layers of corporate aliases—Helios, Haven, Pantrail Papers, Solarity Holdings… Jesus, this is a web."
I exhaled shakily. "Arachne Trust," I murmured. "It really is a web."
"Yeah, and I have a feeling this is just the tip of the iceberg," she said grimly. "Elara, tell Kaelen to be ready for blowback. If I get too close, they'll feel it."
Kaelen looked up at me, expression flat and cold. "If they trace her, they'll know we're on to them."
"They already do," I said quietly. "Last night proved that."
For a moment, no one spoke. The only sounds were the low hum of the laptop fans and the quiet rhythm of Sienna's keystrokes.
Then she swore softly. "There's an encrypted link branching off Helios's liquidation chain. Not a bank. Not a trust. Something else. It's in Zurich."
"Zurich," Kaelen repeated. His tone changed—sharp, decisive. "That's offshore jurisdiction. They're hiding their core accounts there."
"And you're not going to like whose name is on the first layer," Sienna said. "I'm sending you the snapshot now, before it disappears."
Kaelen's tablet buzzed. The screen lit up with a corporate logo, sleek and minimal: Arachne Trust (Private Custodial).
He exhaled, eyes narrowing. "We have them."
But before he could say more, Sienna's voice cut through again—urgent, tense. "No, you don't. The node's closing—someone's purging the record right now. They saw me."
"Disconnect," Kaelen ordered.
"Too late—"
The line went dead.
I stared at the phone, my pulse thundering in my ears.
Kaelen's hand came down on the table, hard enough to rattle the coffee cups. His voice, when he finally spoke, was quiet and lethal.
"They know we're watching."
The silence after Sienna's line cut was suffocating. The hum of the fridge, the ticking of the wall clock—every sound felt too sharp, too loud.
Kaelen was already on his feet, switching to another device, pulling up network monitors with mechanical precision. His movements were calm, but the air around him vibrated with anger held under glass.
"Can you re-establish her channel?" I asked, hating how small my voice sounded.
He didn't answer immediately. His eyes were fixed on the screen. "I'm trying to isolate the breach point. Whoever hit her didn't just terminate the connection—they erased the route."
"Meaning?"
"Meaning they're not amateurs." His tone was ice. "They built a feedback loop. Any further attempt to reconnect through the same node would burn her system."
I pressed a hand to my chest, trying to steady the rising panic. "Kaelen—what if they—"
Before I could finish, his phone rang again. He snatched it up.
"Mark?"
"No, it's me," came Sienna's voice—tight, breathless, but alive. "I'm okay. They hit me with a backdoor trace. Fried one of my proxies, but I cut the connection in time. I'm clean."
Kaelen exhaled, shoulders dropping a fraction. "Status?"