A server owned by the holding company that secretly owned most of the shares of Thor Enterprises. And five minutes later, in the garden of her property in Connecticut, Elara Thor’s telephone vibrated. Elara wiped the dirt from her hands with her apron. She was thirty-two years old, with soft features and hazel eyes. To the outside world—and to her husband—she was Elara, the housewife, the orphan who had been lucky enough to marry a rising star. The woman, calm and careful not to go unnoticed, picked up the telephone from the patio table.
It was a secure alert. ALERT: VIP access revoked. Name: Elara Thor. Authorized by: Julia Thor. Elara stared at the screen. She didn’t cry. She didn’t gasp. She didn’t throw the phone. Instead, the warmth disappeared from her eyes, replaced by an absolute and terrifying cold.
She swiped the notification and opened another application: a fingerprint scanner and a sixteen-digit access code. The screen turned black and displayed a golden shield: The Aurora Group. The Aurora Group was a venture capital firm so exclusive it didn’t even have a website. It controlled shipping lines, pharmaceutical patents, and technology start-ups. Five years ago, when Julia’s first company was sinking in debt, the Aurora Group intervened with a massive injection of 50 million dollars. Julia believed she had impressed a circle of unknown Swiss investors. He never knew that Aurora was Elara’s second name.
He never knew that the money he spent, the penthouse where he lived, and the reputation of a tech visionary he so cherished had been carefully orchestrated by the woman he had just removed from the guest list for being “too simple.” Elara touched a contact labeled simply: The Wolf.
“Mrs. Thor,” a deep voice answered the call. It was Sebastian Vae, head of security and legal affairs for Aurora. “We received the deletion log. Is this a mistake?” “No, Sebastian,” Elara said, and her voice changed. The soft, submissive tone she used with Julia had disappeared. Now her voice was firm, authoritative, and full of authority. “It seems my husband thinks I’m a burden to his image.”
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