Page 70 of Brox Boar

I lean back, spreading my hands on the armrests like this is a casual conversation on a lazy morning. My posture sells comfort. My chest doesn’t.

“Valentino raised us, owned us, shaped us into what we are. Rio and I spent years thinking we knew the story of how we ended up with him. Turns out it was fake.”

Lana’s brow tightens. “What do you mean?”

“Evidence suggests we were taken.” My jaw sets.

Lana’s lips part, then close. She looks out the window for a second, as if the sky might help her place the weight of that sentence.

I expect her to recoil. Or to ask the obvious, stupid question. Who would do it? Why? When? She doesn’t. She studies me instead.

“How does that feel?” she asks.

I let out a slow breath through my nose. My fingers flex once against the leather.

“Annoying,” I answer.

She tilts her head. “Annoying?”

“Feels like someone moved the ground under me,” I say, keeping my voice steady. “Feels like I built my life on a set of facts that might be a lie.”

She nods as if she’s filing it away. “And what’s underneath the annoyance?”

I almost laugh. It comes close, then dies in my throat.

There’s something about being asked that way. Underneath it. As if I’m a layered object, not a man who’s solved every problem with a clenched fist and a locked jaw.

“Don’t do that,” I tell her.

“Come on, humor me,” she says.

My eyes narrow, more reflex than threat. “You’re getting bold.”

Her mouth curves slightly. “I’m sitting across from you in a private jet. I think bold already happened.”

I stare at her for a beat. Then something inside me shifts, reluctant, irritated, real.

“Under it,” I say, “is…” I pause, as if the word might stain my mouth. “Uncertainty.”

I look down briefly at my hands, my rolled sleeves exposing forearms that have done things I won’t confess to the sky.

“Valentino controlled everything when we were young,” I say. “Even dead, he’s still trying to do it.”

Lana’s eyes are steady on mine. “That makes you angry.”

“It makes me want to tear something apart,” I admit.

“And nervous.”

The word hits too close. I sit up a fraction, shoulders squaring as if I can physically push the truth away. “I’m not nervous.”

Lana’s gaze doesn’t drop. “Okay.”

That single word–flat, accepting–does more damage than an argument would. It leaves space for the truth to walk in by itself.

I exhale slowly. The cabin feels smaller.

“I don’t like not knowing,” I say.