Page 67 of Dark Billionaire Predator

"And you can't ask Ezra directly because—"

"Because asking Ezra directly tells Ezra I'm interested. And I'm not interested in Ezra knowing I'm interested. Not yet."

Brotherhood politics. The careful, layered game of information and positioning that Gabriel plays the way concertpianists play Rachmaninoff—with total command and the appearance of effortlessness. The St. Croix family is one of the founding families, our equals in stature if not in current power, and any inquiry Gabriel makes directly would be read as aggression or weakness depending on the hour.

"I'll get him talking," I say.

"Good. And Benedict—"

I wait.

"Whatever you've been distracted by lately. Set it aside before tonight. I need you sharp."

The line is delivered without emphasis, without edge. Which is how Gabriel delivers everything that matters most.

I leave the library. Walk to the kitchen, where Poppy is surrounded by steam and the smell of rosemary and roasting meat, her red hair tied up, flour on her cheek, Iris in a high chair banging a wooden spoon against the tray. Poppy looks up when I enter, and her face does the thing that Poppy's face always does—opens. Completely. No calculation, no assessment, no hidden agenda. Just warmth.

"Benedict." She smiles. "You're early."

"Gabriel sent me to tell you everything looks perfect."

"Gabriel has been in the library for three hours and hasn't seen a single thing I've done."

"That's never stopped him from having opinions." I cross to Iris, who drops the spoon and reaches for me with both hands, babbling. I pick her up. She grabs my jaw with sticky fingers and examines my face with the intense scrutiny of a one-year-old who hasn't yet learned to pretend she's not staring. I let her look. Of all the Ambroses, Iris is the only one whose scrutiny doesn't feel like a threat assessment.

"The table is set in the dining room," Poppy says. "Eight places. Gabriel, me, Josiah, Ava, you, Ava's sister, Mr. Cates, and Bryan Vanderwal."

Bryan. The old man. Ninety-three, Brotherhood co-founder, the last surviving member of Edward's generation. The man who gave me the thread three months ago—the conversation at the wedding reception that cracked open the St. Croix connection and sent me down the path that led to Dominic's financial records and the wall in the church.

Bryan at this dinner. Gabriel planned that too. Every person at this table chosen, positioned, deployed.

"Where did you put me?" I ask, keeping my voice light.

"Between Mr. Cates and Lucy. Ava's sister," she adds, as though I might not know the name. "I thought you'd be good at making her feel welcome—she seemed a little overwhelmed at the wedding."

Poppy. Placing me next to Lucy out of pure social consideration, because I'm charming and Lucy seemed shy. No strategy. No design. Just the instinct of a kind woman arranging a table so everyone feels comfortable.

The irony is so thick I could choke on it.

I bounce Iris on my hip and smile at Poppy and say the right things about the food and the flowers and the candles, and inside my chest the familiar pressure builds—the sensation of multiple operations running simultaneously, the mental architecture that allows me to be charming and calculating and watchful and afraid all at the same time.

Lucy will be here in an hour. Next to me. Close enough to touch under the heavy linen tablecloth. My promise sitting in her body like a lit fuse.

I kiss Iris's forehead. She smells like baby powder and mashed banana. Clean. Innocent. Untouched by any of this.

Seven o'clock. The guests arrive.

Cates first—a man in his late fifties, gray at the temples, the kind of expensive casual that communicates wealth without advertising it. Good shoes. A watch that costs more than most people's cars but doesn't flash. He shakes Gabriel's hand with the practiced deference of a man who understands hierarchy, then turns to me with a smile that has been engineered to set people at ease.

"Benedict. I've heard a great deal about you."

"All lies, I hope. The truth is much less interesting."

He laughs. The laugh is engineered too—warm, generous, the kind of laugh that makes you feel like you've said something clever. I recognize the technique because I use it myself. Harlan Cates is a performer. The question is what he's performing for.

Bryan Vanderwal arrives next—in a wheelchair now, pushed by a nurse who positions him at the table with the careful efficiency of someone who's done this a thousand times. Bryan is ninety-three and looks every year of it—sunken cheeks, thin hands, eyes that have seen the Brotherhood rise and fall and rise again over seven decades. But those eyes are sharp. Sharper than his body. They find me across the room and hold me with an intensity that reminds me why I went to him in the first place.

Bryan knows things. Things that are buried so deep in Brotherhood history that only the very old and the very dangerous remember them. He gave me the St. Croix thread because he wanted me to pull it—wanted someone to dig into what happened to Edward, because Bryan loved my father in the complicated way that men love the men they build empires with. Not simple affection. Something more architectural. Apartnership so deep that the death of one left the other structurally unsound.