Page 13 of Dark Billionaire Predator

I drop into the leather armchair across from his desk and wait.

He hangs up. Studies me.

"You look tired."

"Charming as ever, brother."

"I'm serious. You look like you haven't slept." He sets his phone down, gives me his full attention. Gabriel's full attention is not a comfortable thing to receive. "What's going on?"

"Nothing dramatic. Just restless."

"Restless how?"

"The ordinary kind. The kind where a man in his thirties realizes he lives alone in a church and talks to a mosaic for company." I smile—the easy smile, the one that deflects. "I came to check on the Hargrove acquisition. Are we closing this week or next?"

He lets me redirect. We talk business for twenty minutes—property deals, a distribution issue in Queens, a council vote coming up on expansion into New Jersey. Normal Brotherhood business. The machinery of the organization grinding forward, as it always does.

I participate. Offer opinions. Play my role. And the whole time, I'm calculating how much to tell him.

Gabriel is the smartest person I know. He's also the most cautious. If I tell him I'm investigating our father's death—that I'm digging into the St. Croix family based on a tip from Vanderwal—he'll do one of two things. Either he'll try to control the investigation, fold it into his own strategic framework, or manage it the way he manages everything. Or he'll shut it down entirely, calculating that the political risk of antagonizing the St. Croix family outweighs the value of answers we've lived without for eleven years.

Neither option is acceptable.

"How's Poppy?" I ask. "And my niece?"

"Both well. Iris is walking now. Into everything." Something softens in his face—the way it always does when he talks about his daughter. "She found my desk drawer yesterday. I spent twenty minutes fishing paperclips out of her mouth."

"Future Brotherhood leader. Already swallowing evidence."

He almost smiles. Then the sharpness returns. "Benedict."

"Gabriel."

"Is there something you're not telling me?"

I meet his eyes. Hold them. Gabriel can read a lie from across a room—it's what makes him dangerous, and what makes him impossible to live with. But I'm not lying. I'm omitting, which is different. A lie is an active construction. An omission is just silence, and silence is something I've always been comfortable with.

"There's always something I'm not telling you," I say. "That's the nature of brotherhood. We each carry things the others don't need to bear."

"That's either very wise or very evasive."

"Why not both?"

He watches me for a long moment. I can see him deciding whether to push—weighing the cost of confrontation against the risk of ignorance. Gabriel is always calculating. It's exhausting and admirable in equal measure.

"If you need help," he says finally. "With whatever this is. You know where to find me."

"I know."

"And if whatever this is puts the family at risk—"

"You'll be the first to know."

He nods. Accepts it. But his eyes say he's filing this conversation away, adding it to the running ledger he keeps on everyone in his orbit. Gabriel doesn't forget. He just waits.

I leave the manor with the taste of evasion in my mouth and drive back to Gowanus.

***