Chapter 5 - HOLLOWAY WALKED BACK IN
Holloway entered bleeding from the shoulder.
Raymond Thorne walked behind him in a camel coat, perfectly calm.
Julian stood.
“Explain.”
Holloway placed the missing ledger on the table.
“I took it because someone inside the tower was trying to erase it.”
“Who shot you?”
“Raymond’s driver.”
Every eye turned.
Raymond sighed.
“Holloway, that’s needlessly dramatic.”
Holloway drew a gun.
Julian’s men responded instantly.
Dileia did not move.
Raymond lifted both hands.
Then smiled.
“You all think I’m the thief?”
Dileia answered:
“Yes.”
Julian looked at her.
“What?”
“He came voluntarily.”
“So?”
“So someone stealing forty million doesn’t walk into the building carrying the one man who can accuse him unless he wants us looking at him.”
Raymond’s smile faded.
Good.
Dileia continued.
“He wants to control the story.”
She opened Tommy’s ledger.
The missing money flowed through foundations Raymond chaired.
But it never stayed there.
It went onward.
To offshore accounts.
Then back into Thorne subsidiaries.
Layered.
Circular.
Forty million disappeared on paper, but only twelve million truly left.
“Where did twelve million go?” Julian asked.
Raymond answered:
“To Vincent.”
Silence.
Julian’s supposedly dead uncle.
Alive.
Raymond admitted it.
Vincent survived the plane crash.
He had staged his death.
For eighteen years, Raymond secretly paid him to remain outside the United States.
“Why?”
“Because Augustus would have killed him.”
Julian looked disgusted.
“And you thought paying a human trafficker millions every year was better?”
Raymond’s jaw hardened.
“I thought containment was better than war.”
There was that word again.
Protection.
Containment.
Silence.
Rich men loved nouns that made cowardice sound strategic.
Then Holloway spoke.
“Raymond stopped paying three years ago.”
Exactly when Augustus became terminally ill.
Vincent returned.
Quietly.
He began rebuilding Harbor 17 through modern logistics subcontractors.
Tommy discovered it.
Raymond insisted he never ordered Tommy killed.
Then Dileia asked:
“Who did?”
Raymond looked toward Holloway.
“Him.”
Holloway exploded forward.
Julian’s guards grabbed him.
Dileia stood.
Holloway shouted:
“I didn’t kill Thomas!”
“Then why would Raymond say you did?”
“Because he knows who did.”
Raymond’s calm vanished.
Holloway continued:
“Tommy’s brakes weren’t cut by Vincent.”
He looked at Julian.
May you like
“They were cut by your father.”
Augustus Thorne had ordered Tommy’s death.
