“My brother, Jonathan,” she begins.
I keep still. My heart is pounding hard enough that I can feel it in my throat.
Jonathan.The brother who came to dinner once and spent the whole night flirting with the waitress and making jokes about how Lila never relaxes. The brother who always smells like cheap cologne and regret. The brother who borrowed money from her last year and promised it was the last time. The brother who shares her mother, but not her father.
“He got in trouble,” she continues. “He always gets in trouble, you know that. But this time it wasn’t… it wasn’t a hangover and a bad decision. It was real.”
My fingers tighten on the chair again. “What kind of trouble?”
Lila’s throat moves. “Gambling.”
The word fits too easily. It slides into place like it’s been waiting there the whole time.
“How bad?” I murmur.
Her eyes go glassy again. “Bad enough that he stopped answering my calls.”
That worse than the gambling itself. Lila isn’t ignored by the people who love her. She bulldozes through walls when she has to.
“He didn’t stop because he wanted to,” she adds quickly, like she can’t stand the implication. “He stopped because he was scared.”
“Of who?”
She hesitates, then forces the words out. “Loan sharks.”
The room feels colder again, and a faint chill works its way up my spine.
“They came for him,” she continues. “At his apartment. They were calm at first. Smiling. Like it was a business discussion.” Her voice shakes, and she wraps her arms around herself. “Then it wasn’t calm anymore.”
My stomach twists, and I press my palm briefly against it as if I can soften the reaction through touch. I keep my breathing even because if I lose it, I’ll be sick, and if I’m sick, I lose clarity.
“What did they do to him?”
Lila’s eyes close briefly. When she opens them, they’re wet. “They broke his arm.”
A sharp, bright pain sparks behind my ribs. I know that kind of injury. I’ve seen it. The way the body tries to protect itself after. The way people shake from shock, even when they try to act tough.
“He came to me,” she whispers. “He didn’t go to the police. He came to me.”
“Because you’ve always cleaned up his messes,” I return before I can stop myself.
The sentence tastes like bitterness. Not toward her. Toward a world that keeps putting her in positions where she has to choose between pride and survival.
Lila’s chin lifts in reflex, then drops. “Yes.”
“How much does he owe?”
“More than I could ever get in time.” The wordtimeechoes.
“They gave him a deadline?” I probe.
She nods. “They gave him days. Not weeks.Days.”
I stare at the floor for a moment, then back at her.
“You could have told me,” I tell her.
Her eyes flash. “And what, Rowan? What would you have done? Written them a check? Put yourself on their radar?”
