But the pressure does not spread down my arm or steal the air from my lungs the way the medical sites warn about. It does not feel like dying.
It feels like waking up.
Like something frozen and forgotten deep in my chest has started to thaw, cracking through ice I did not realize I had let form. The sensation is uncomfortable, almost painful, the way blood rushing back into a numb limb brings pins and needlesbefore the relief. I rub at the spot with my knuckles, frowning at my own body's betrayal, and I catch Rafael watching me from the corner of his eye.
I drop my hand. Reach for my scotch instead. Pretend the burn of alcohol explains the heat spreading through my ribs.
But I know better.
Something is different tonight. Something has been different since the moment I caught Katriana in my arms and felt the delicate weight of her against my chest, since her scent wrapped around my senses and reminded me that I am still capable of wanting something beyond power and profit. The walls I spent decades building have developed a crack, and I can feel the pressure of everything I have been holding back pushing against the fault line.
I’m done watching from a distance.
The decision settles into my bones with the weight of inevitability, like I have been walking toward this moment my entire life and only just now realized the destination.
"Drake." Rafael's voice cuts through the fog of thoughts clogging my brain, pulling me back to the boardroom and the pile of wishes waiting to be sorted. "You with us?"
I grunt an affirmation and reach for the decanter. The scotch is smooth and expensive, nothing like the cheap whiskey I stole from my mother when she was working. That stuff burned like hell and left tears in my young eyes at the time. Nowadays I’ve learned to love the burn.
"Let's get this over with." Massimo breaks the seal on the first wish and begins reading in his clipped, efficient voice. "Dear RedLetter Syndicate. I wish for my husband's business partner to suffer a tragic accident so that my husband inherits full control of their company."
Kon sucks air through his teeth.
“Agreed,” I murmur to Kon’s shock.
“People are fucking cold-ass fuckers.” Rafael does not even hesitate. "Black pile."
The wish lands in the reject stack, and Massimo reaches for another.
We work through the pile with practiced efficiency, sorting the desperate from the depraved, the legitimate cries for help from the thinly veiled requests for murder. A woman wants her stalker to disappear. Red pile, assigned to Kon's division. A man wants his daughter's abuser to face consequences the legal system refused to deliver. Red pile, Rowan claims that one with a coldness in his eyes that promises the abuser will regret ever being born.
An elderly widow wants help paying for her grandson's cancer treatment. Red pile, and Massimo makes a note to route the wish through one of our charitable fronts so the money cannot be traced.
"These next few are grim," Rowan observes as he fans through a cluster of envelopes. "Three requests for assistance with terminal situations. Two domestic violence cases. And..." He pauses, his ice-colored eyes narrowing slightly. "Hm. This one feels different."
Kon reaches across the table and plucks the envelope from Rowan's fingers with the casual efficiency of a man who has beenstealing things since before he could walk. He breaks the seal, unfolds the letter, and reads aloud in his rumbling bass.
"Save my family from the debt that's destroying us. Please. I'll pay any price. Signed Katriana Bellrose."
The words hit me like a fist to the chest. Kon flips the wish around and I immediately recognize the handwriting. Round letters, slightly cramped, the penmanship of someone who probably spent hours as a child practicing cursive in composition notebooks. I have seen it exactly once before, three years ago, on a Christmas card she wrote to my mother's memory and left on the mantle when she thought no one was watching.
I am moving before I make the conscious decision to stand. Three strides carry me around the table, and I jerk the paper from Konstantin's massive hand with enough force that the edge tears slightly. He looks up at me with raised eyebrows and something like amusement flickering in his dark eyes, but I do not explain or apologize. I am not a man who wastes words on things that should be obvious.
"This one is mine."
The silence that follows is thick enough to taste. Massimo's pen stops tapping. Rowan's eyes narrow with calculation. Kon takes another pull from his flask and waits.
Rafael is the only one who moves. He leans back in his chair and studies my face with the particular intensity of a man who has known me for twenty years and can read my tells even when I think I am hiding them. His dark eyes search mine, cataloguing the tension in my jaw, the rigid set of my shoulders, the way Iam holding that scrap of paper like it contains the secrets of the universe.
Understanding dawns slow and certain across his features.
He knows Katriana’s name and how I felt about her. Feel, I guess.
Of course he knows. He watched me linger in the shadows around Katriana for three years, and he has never once asked why I never moved in once my brother was out of the picture. I’m not sure I had an answer then, much less now. It felt wrong. But now, she’s made the first move.
Okay, she doesn’t know I’ll be the one answering her wish, but then again…
"Brother." Rafael’s voice is quiet, pitched for my ears alone when he faces me and leans an arm on the table. "You sure about this?"
