Chapter 5 - The Collapse of Thorne Capital
By eight o'clock the following morning, Dominic Thorne hadn't slept a single second.
He was sitting in the cramped, smelly back room of his sister Chloe’s one-bedroom rental apartment in Queens. His mother, Victoria, was crying dramatically on the sofa, clutching a cup of tap water, while Richard sat at the kitchen counter staring blankly at his phone.
Dominic was wearing the same wrinkled, dirt-stained suit from yesterday. His phone was ringing off the hook with frantic calls from his staff, his landlord, and his clients.
“Dominic!” his junior business partner, Marcus Vance (no relation to my lawyer), yelled through the phone speaker. “Where the hell are you?! There are two federal marshals and a building manager locking the front doors of our Wall Street office! They’re putting chains on the doors!”
Dominic bolted out of his chair, panic surging through his veins like poison. “What?! What are you talking about?! We pay our lease on time every month!”
“The building manager says our lease was terminated by the parent holding company!” Marcus screamed back. “They’re citing breach of contract! And that’s not the worst of it, Dominic!”
“What else?!” Dominic gasped, clutching his head.
“The three primary angel investors from Connecticut just pulled their five million dollar funding commitment! They said they received a formal credit risk warning from the Federal Reserve Compliance Division forty minutes ago!”
Dominic felt his stomach drop into a bottomless pit.
Without those three investment funds, Thorne Capital was completely insolvent. The firm owed two million dollars in short-term commercial debt that was due at the end of the week—a debt Dominic had planned to cover using my family trust money and my penthouse equity.
“Who issued the credit warning?!” Dominic demanded frantically. “How did they even know about our financial standing?!”
“I don't know!” Marcus yelled. “All I know is that the lead partner at Connecticut Capital told me we were blacklisted across every major financial network in New York! Dominic, what did you do?!”
Dominic slammed the phone down onto the counter, his breathing ragged and wild.
“Dominic...” Victoria whimpered from the couch. “My credit card just got declined at the grocery store. I tried buying tea and fruit, and the cashier said the account was terminated by the primary cardholder.”
“My card was canceled too!” Chloe yelled from her bedroom. “Audrey removed me from the authorized user list on the family account! I can't even pay my rent this month!”
Richard stood up, his face pale and shaking. “Dominic... you need to go find Audrey. You need to apologize right now. Bring her back! Promise her whatever she wants! Tell her you’re sorry about the car, sorry about the lunch—tell her anything!”
“I don't even know where she is!” Dominic screamed, pulling at his hair in pure desperation. “She blocked my phone! She cleared out the penthouse! Her dad’s old phone line goes straight to an automated government intercept!”
Suddenly, Dominic’s phone rang again. An unknown private number from Northern Virginia flashed on the screen.
Dominic grabbed the phone, pressing it to his ear with shaking hands. “Audrey?! Audrey, baby, is that you?!”
“Mr. Thorne,” a deep, icy, razor-sharp voice echoed through the receiver.
It wasn't Audrey.
The voice was mature, calm, and radiated a terrifying, overwhelming level of authority that instantly froze the blood in Dominic’s veins.
“Who... who is this?” Dominic stammered.
“I am General Charles Brooks,” the voice replied slowly. “I believe you spent the last three years referring to me as an ‘ordinary government retiree.’”
Dominic’s jaw went completely slack. “General...? Audrey’s father?”
“You left my daughter bleeding on a Manhattan sidewalk five days after major surgery,” General Brooks said, his tone dropping into a freezing whisper. “You gave her twelve dollars to take a city bus with my grandson while you drove my daughter’s vehicle to take your family to lunch.”
Dominic’s throat locked up. Sweat poured off his forehead. “General Brooks... please! It was a misunderstanding! I didn't know—I mean, Audrey didn't tell me—”
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“You are going to receive a delivery at your sister’s apartment in ten minutes, Mr. Thorne,” General Brooks interrupted coldly. “I suggest you sign the documents inside. Because if my legal team has to come find you again... it won't be lawyers who open the door.”
The line went dead.
