My post-sex high lasted precisely an hour and eight minutes. After our awkward run-in with Kai and Isabella in the library, a red-faced Alessandra left with the couple (I assumed she and Isabella had a lot to catch up on), and I went home with my blood buzzing.
I knew better than to assume sex meant anything more than a temporary melding of desires, but it was a modicum of progress in our relationship, and that was all I could ask for at the moment.
The penthouse greeted me with silence when I returned. I’d given the staff the week off for Christmas, and my footsteps echoed against the marble floors as I walked through the foyer to the living room. I should turn
—
Something moved in the darkness.
A cold dagger of fear severed the last tendrils of my warm, Alessandra-induced haze, and I came to an abrupt halt.
A second later, a lamp flicked on, throwing relief over midnight hair and cool green eyes.
“Late night,” my brother drawled. “Where’ve you been?”
My fear crisped, burning into anger. “How the fuck did you get in?”
Roman lounged on the couch like an emperor lounging on his throne. A silver dagger glinted against his all-black outfit, and he tossed it absentmindedly from hand to hand while surveying me with amusement.
“Your security system is good,” he said. “I’m better.” My jaw tensed into granite.
I had the best system money could buy. I also employed the best tracker in the city, and he hadn’t been able to dig up a single thing about Roman’s past or where he’d been since Martin Wellgrew’s suspiciously timed death at Le Boudoir.
What have you been up to since high school, Rome?
“Don’t worry. I come in peace.” He held up his hands, his tone half-mocking, half-sincere. “Wipe the suspicious look off your face. Can’t a guy pay a friendly visit to his brother for the holidays?”
“A friendly visit means a knock on the door, not breaking and entering.”
“No one was home when I dropped by, so a knock wouldn’t have done anything, would it?”
“Don’t bullshit me.” I crossed the room, cognizant of both the dagger in his hands and the gun I’d tucked in the fireplace’s concealment mantle.
“You disappeared after Le Boudoir, and you wouldn’t be here unless you want something.”
His mouth sobered, and the dagger came to a standstill in his left hand.
“Like I said, it’s the holidays. They make me nostalgic.”
“We had shitty holidays.” Our foster family hadn’t been big on gift-giving or Christmas cheer. The only present I’d received from them was a pair of hand-me-down socks.
Roman shrugged. “True, but they had their moments. Remember when we got drunk off eggnog for the first time and trashed Mrs. Peltzer’s garden gnomes? We could hear her screaming from half a block away.”
“We did her a favor. Those gnomes were hideous.”
“That they were.” Shadows danced over his face. “I didn’t have anyone to celebrate Christmas with after you left. Juvie was a hellhole. When I got out, I had no friends, no family, no money.”
Guilt pressed in on all sides. While I’d been rubbing elbows with classmates and professors at Thayer, Roman had been suffering alone. He’d made his choices and faced the consequences, but that didn’t ease the bitter heaviness in my throat.
Still, he was an adult now, a dangerous one, and I’d be a fool to let sentimentality dampen self-preservation.
“You seem to be doing fine now.” I stopped next to the fireplace, my eyes trained on Roman, my senses on high alert for any surprises that may leap out of the shadows.
“So it seems.” He pressed the tip of his blade against his finger. A tiny drop of blood welled. “I floated for a while after juvie until I met John. He was a World War II vet and prickly as hell, but he gave me a steady gig in his shop and a place to live. If it weren’t for him, I wouldn’t be where I am today.” The shadows darkened further. “He died last year.”
“I’m sorry.” I meant it.
I didn’t know the man, but I’d had a similar figure in my life, and Ehrlich’s death had unmoored me more than anything else had up to that point.
“I told him about you, you know,” Roman said quietly. “How close we were. How you betrayed me, and how much I hated you. That hatred kept me alive, Dom, because I refused to die while you got every fucking thing you wanted.”
The bitterness swelled. It was a hundred boulders tied around my waist, dragging me down until I drowned beneath its weight. “I would’ve helped you. If you’d asked me for anything else, anything except an alibi, I would’ve done it.”
“Who’s the one bullshitting now?” Roman rose from the couch, resentment carving deep cuts across his indifference until it lay in tatters on the ground. “You wouldn’t have done a single thing because Dominic Davenport always looks out for number one. How many times did I cover your ass when we were younger? Dozens. How many times did I ask for your help? One. ”
Flames of frustration licked at my guilt. “There’s a difference between lying about underage drinking and fucking arson!”
“You want me to believe you give a shit about the law?” His anger bounced off the marble with teeth-rattling volume. “Don’t tell me you haven’t done shady shit since I last saw you. You’ll do it to enrich yourself, but you won’t do it to help anyone else.” Animosity blazed through his eyes. “It wasn’t about the alibi. It was about loyalty. You didn’t even try to stay. You saw how my trouble threatened your precious get-rich plan, and you turned your back on the only family you ever had.”
The buzz returned with a vengeance. It was deafening, a cacophony of noise I couldn’t block out no matter how hard I tried.
“It seems to be a recurring pattern.” Roman’s expression smoothed with his kill shot. “Where’s your wife, Dom? Did she get sick of your shit and finally leave?”
The tight, hard knot that’d been building inside me since the night I came home and found Alessandra gone finally exploded.
A snarl ripped through the air as I charged forward. Fist met bone, eliciting a sharp hiss. Roman was caught off guard only for a second before he tossed his dagger to the side and returned my hit with so much force it knocked the breath out of my lungs.
A vase shattered on the ground as we attacked each other the way only brothers could, with hostility more potent because of our shared past. I didn’t go for my gun; he didn’t reach for his blade. Our confrontation had been fifteen years in the making, and we weren’t letting weapons soften our blows.
This was fucking personal.
Sweat and fury soaked the air. Skin split, pushing rivulets of blood down our faces. My vision flashed black, and the taste of copper filled my mouth. Somewhere, bone crunched.
It wasn’t the first time Roman and I had physically fought. As teenagers, we were quick to anger, and we often tussled our way to cuts and bruises. However, the years had ramped up our capacity for brutality, and we might’ve both died that night had we not clung so fiercely to our reasons for living.
Alessandra for me, something unknown for Roman that he would never share.
Finally, at some point between the grunts and blows, our energy depleted. We sank onto the floor, bruised and exhausted, our chests heaving from the aftermath of the storm.
“Fuck.” I spat out a mouthful of blood. It stained the edge of the twenty-thousand-dollar rug I’d bought in Turkey, but that was the good thing about being rich. Everything was replaceable. Almost everything. “You’re not a scrawny little shit anymore.”
“And you finally learned how to fight without cheating.”
“Fighting smarter instead of harder isn’t cheating.”
Roman snorted. Deep purple blotches were already forming on his face, and dried blood painted rusty streaks across his skin. One eye was swollen half shut.
I bet I didn’t look any better. Every inch of my body screamed with agony now that my adrenaline had crashed, and I was pretty sure I’d fractured a bone or two. However, while I’d taken a physical beating, the painful buzz in my head was gone. Our fight had expelled whatever had been festering inside me since I left Ohio, and that was worth every black eye and fracture.
Roman leaned his head back against the wall, his expression drained of anger. “Do you ever regret it?”
I didn’t have to ask what he was referring to. “All the damn time.”
Our breaths slowed to normal in the silence. It wasn’t a comfortable quiet, but it wasn’t destructive either. It just was.
“I tried looking for you,” I said. “After college. Multiple times. You were a ghost.”
“There’s a reason for that.” His reply carried hints of warning and tiredness.
A long-buried protective instinct flared to life. Despite our tumultuous history, he was still my younger brother. I didn’t have the resources to protect either of us back then, but I did now. “What have you gotten yourself into, Rome?”
“Don’t ask questions you don’t want the answers to. It’s better that way
—for both of us.”
“At least tell me you didn’t have anything to do with Wellgrew’s death.”
Orion Bank had been in chaos since his untimely demise. The new head of the bank was an idiot who seemed like he was trying to run the institution into the ground, and Wellgrew’s death had been ruled an accident despite people whispering otherwise.
“Don’t worry about him.” This time, Roman’s warning came through loud and clear. “He’s dead. That’s it. It’s over.”
I wiped a hand over my face. My palm came away bloody.
I wasn’t a boy struggling to survive in Ohio anymore, but maybe, beneath the money and power, I was still a coward. Because despite the alarm bells that rang with every word out of Roman’s mouth, I chose to ignore them.
We’d reached a temporary truce, and though I’d never admit it, it felt good to be around family again—enough so that I didn’t dare peel back the mask and see what my brother had become.
