“And what about me? What if that isn’t what I want?”
I let out a deep sigh. “It’s not written in stone. I haven’t even asked yet, right now it’s only a thought. But I’m hoping you’ll think about it and we can talk about this more.”
He doesn’t say anything.
And that’s the first moment in this entire ugly morning where something in his face genuinely frightens me — not angry, not concerned, something else, gone almost before I’ve seen it. Like I’ve told him a piece of news about somebody else. Like he’s doing arithmetic.
Then he softens first, like he always does. That’s his whole gift, and I know it’s his gift, and it works on me anyway every single time.
“I’m sorry.” He rubs a hand over his face and suddenly looks tired in a way I hadn’t noticed. “God. Mar. I’m sorry, that was — I came in here to have a nice conversation with my sister and I’ve been a complete ass.”
“You have.”
“This contract’s got me twisted up. It’s the biggest thing we’ve ever taken and I’m not sleeping and I keep thinking about what happens if we get it wrong.” He looks up. “And you’re all I’ve got. That’s the thing. There’s just the two of us and I’ve been watching you get further and further into something I don’t understand, and I don’t like not being able to see where you are.”
And that lands, because it’s true, thereisjust the two of us in our tiny family. He’s my brother, and the only person left alive who remembers our mother’s kitchen. “I know.”
“Am I forgiven?”
“You’re forgiven.”
He hugs me at the door, and I hug him back, and it’s fine.
But.
Something was different this time. I don’t have a name for it. And yet, I let it go, the way I always do, and I get my gloves.
Chapter Fourteen
Scar
The call comes at the end of shift, when I’m closing down my screens and thinking about meeting with Mara again.
Then Ines’s face comes up on the wall screen and every thought I have goes out like a lamp. “Sit down,” she orders.
“I am sitting.”
“Good.” She takes a breath. “I found the money, it’s three payments sent over fourteen months into an account he’s been careful about. It’s not his working account or anything his sister would ever see.”
“How much?”
She tells me.
I make a noise in my chest. It’s more than I expected and more currency than a male like that would see in a decade of honest work.
“Routed?”
“Through four shells, and the fourth one is where it gets interesting.” She glances down. “A holdings concern out ofChronos. Mining futures, freight, the usual nothing. It looks like a hundred other companies.” She looks back up. “But Hallie knows the name.”
“From the ledger?”
Ines nods once. “It’s in there, Scar. It’s not the House itself, they’re not stupid, there’s no line in any document anywhere that says House Vaszneth. But it’s one of the concerns her ledger flags as moving House money. She recognized it before I finished saying it.”
I sit back. “That’s not inference,” I say.
“No, it isn’t.” Her voice is level. “I’ve been very careful to tell everyone that we had a story and not a case. Scar, we have a case. It’s not acourtcase — an arbiter would want the account holder named and the House connected by something better than a bride’s stolen ledger. But it’s a case. This is a male who owed everything to beings who break hands, and then three payments arrived from a Chronos concern with House money in it, and then he came here.”
“Dates.”
