Chapter 6: What Brothers Do
Dominic stood up.
"That's not what you think it was."
"Tell me what it was."
"It was a gift.
She's a child, Adrian.
I was being—"
"The lab identified a contact compound on the fabric."
Dominic's mouth closed.
"Skin absorption," Adrian said.
"Designed for repeated exposure.
On a stuffed animal given to a three-year-old."
"That's not—" Dominic stopped.
Started again.
"You don't understand the full picture."
"Then explain it to me."
The room was very still.
Luca hadn't moved.
He was watching Dominic the way a man watches something he has already decided about.
Dominic walked toward the window.
He stood with his back to the room for a moment, and when he turned around, the warmth was gone from his face entirely.
What replaced it was something older and more honest.
"You were never going to step back," Dominic said.
"I waited.
For years, I waited.
I built half of what this organization is and you treated it like I was keeping your chair warm."
"So you dr*gged me."
"I managed the situation."
"You dr*gged me for three years and you treated a child like a tool."
"The child was never going to be hurt.
The dose on the bear was—"
"Was what?
Acceptable?
Calculated?
You measured out a dose for a three-year-old and called it management?"
Dominic's jaw tightened.
"I needed Hannah compliant.
If the girl had minor symptoms — fatigue, some irritability — Hannah would have taken her to a doctor, been told it was a virus, and stayed focused on her job instead of asking questions.
That's all."
The words sat in the room like something that couldn't be taken back.
"That's all," Adrian repeated.
"Don't perform outrage at me.
You've made harder decisions than this before breakfast."
"I have never used a child."
"You've used everyone else."
The silence that followed was not the silence of two men who had run out of things to say.
It was the silence of a conversation that had finally arrived at its actual subject after years of circling it.
"I built this with you," Dominic said, and for the first time his voice carried something that might have been real.
"I was here every day.
Every negotiation, every crjsis, every time something went wrong at three in the morning.
I was here.
And you looked through me like I was furniture."
"You could have told me that."
"I did tell you.
Twice.
You said we'd discuss it and then you didn't."
"So you decided to take it."
"I decided to stop waiting."
Adrian looked at his brother for a long moment.
Then he said: "Who helped you with the compounds."
It wasn't a question.
Dominic said nothing.
"I'll have the name by tonight either way," Adrian said.
"The only thing you control right now is whether you give it to me first."
Dominic looked at the window.
At the floor.
At some middle distance that held whatever calculation he was still running.
"Dr.
Renata Voss," he said finally.
"She consulted on the formulation.
She believed it was for a voluntary cognitive study.
I told her the subject had consented."
"Did she know about the child?"
A pause.
"No."
"Is that the truth?"
"Yes.
That part was mine."
Adrian nodded slowly.
"Luca."
"Sir."
"Call Ferrante.
Tell him the Antwerp meeting is postponed indefinitely and that all communications from Dominic's office are suspended as of this morning."
Luca was already moving toward the door.
"Adrian." Dominic's voice was flat now.
Stripped of everything.
"What happens next?"
"That depends on what the lawyers say."
"And if I cooperate fully."
"Then the lawyers will know that too."
Dominic sat back down.
He looked, for the first time, like a man who had reached the end of something he had been running for a long time and found that the end was just a wall.
"The organization," he said.
"Everything we built—"
"Is still standing," Adrian said.
"Because you weren't as patient as you thought you were."
He walked to the door.
"And because a three-year-old doesn't like the smell of drops."
He left Dominic sitting by the window with Luca's shadow across the floor and the sound of a phone call being made in the hallway that Dominic would not be part of.
May you like
In the east sitting room, the tea on the side table had gone cold.
Nobody had touched it.
