Page 56 of To Heist and to Hold
But Isaac was waiting for an answer.An answer Ethan was not ready to admit to his brother, much less himself.Clearing his throat, he tugged at his jacket sleeves.“I’d best be going,” he muttered.“I’ll leave you to close up, then.”
Before he reached the door, however, Isaac’s voice stopped him.“Aren’t you going to ask me what things I try to figure out when I come here?”
Ethan turned his head and regarded his brother cautiously.“I daresay it’s none of my business.You’re a grown man; you can do as you like.”
“But it is every bit your business,” Isaac replied softly.
Was it?And even if it was, did he have any right to hear it after the way he’d pushed Isaac aside these past years?He very nearly shrugged him off and left, the comfort of solitude like a beacon.
Until a small voice in his head, Heloise’s voice, urged him to wait, just a moment.And that small moment was all it took to shift his mind entirely.As he continued to look upon his brother’s familiar features, the echo of Gavin in them, he saw it: the tightness about his eyes; the faint trembling of his lips before he pressed them tight together; the clenching of his hands into fists that told of great stress, a stress that Isaac was attempting to hide with a mild expression and easy tone.Ethan saw how he’d left his brother to deal with his grief alone while he’d shut himself off from the world, and how his brother had attempted to mask that grief to protect Ethan.As he was still doing.That door Heloise had opened in his heart opened even further and he knew, no matter how loud that creature of self-preservation was within him, he could no longer turn his back on Isaac.
“Tell me,” he said, voice gruff as he turned to fully face him.“Tell me why you come here.”
Isaac’s eyes flared wide, his lips parting.Then, as if he feared Ethan would take advantage of the lull in conversation to turn and bolt from the room—he was tempted to, God knew he was—he quickly gathered himself and began.
“I keep thinking over that last day with Gavin, when we learned he was the one responsible for the cheating at the club.”
A memory washed over Ethan at those words, a vivid recollection of the moment they had discovered that Gavin was the viper in their midst, the way his stomach had dropped when they had discovered the missing funds in his brother’s desk, his world falling apart in an instant.Isaac, in his youthful fury, had rushed to Gavin, to confront him.And it had been as Gavin had hurried back to Dionysus that he had made a fatal misstep, had careened into the path of a speeding carriage and been thrown from his horse and died before Ethan could beg him for a reason why he had done what he had.
“Yes,” Ethan said through numb lips.“I recall it well.”
Silence filled the room, heavy and bleak, nearly suffocating him as the horror of that day seemed to manifest between them.And then Isaac spoke, his voice reed thin.
“If I had not come here in the heat of the moment, if I had been able to control my anger, Gavin would not now be dead.”
Ethan’s head snapped back in shock.“You cannot have been blaming yourself for his death all this time?”But he saw with painful clarity that Isaac had been.Dear God, his brother had been dealing with guilt on top of his grief?He had not even considered the extra burden Isaac must have carried.
He took a step forward, laid a hand on his brother’s shoulder.“You are not to blame,” he said hoarsely.“It was an accident and nothing more.”
“Perhaps,” was all Isaac said.But that one word was enough to reveal that Isaac didn’t believe it one bit.
“Be that as it may,” he continued, in an obvious effort to steer the conversation to safer waters, or at least the tumultuous waters he was familiar with, “I keep mulling over that last conversation I had with him.I was angry, and distraught, and so was he.Yet there has been something bothering me about it these three years, something that keeps me awake at night and sits like a vulture on my shoulder during my waking hours.”He paused.“And lately I believe I’ve come to understand what that thing might be.”
Why, Ethan thought as he gazed upon his brother’s suddenly haggard face, did it seem as if everything in his life would shift in the next moment?And then it did, in a flash.
“I’m not certain Gavin was guilty of the cheating.”
Ethan froze, shock paralyzing his lungs until spots began to swim in his vision.But his brother was looking at him with something like fear and worry, and he could not allow his disquiet to show lest he add to his brother’s burdens.“Tell me why you think so,” he said gently.
Isaac released a shaky breath, wiping his hands on his pants.“He said one word, and one word only: ‘How?’That was all he said to me before leaving, before he rushed out of here in an effort to get to you.”He closed his eyes and shook his head, as if trying to dislodge something infinitely painful.“That last word is still ringing in my ears, as clear as if Gavin just spoke it.I can still hear the disbelief and pain and fear in it.But after three long years, I’m beginning to wonder if that single question was not asking how we could have found out about his betrayal, but rather how he could have been blamed when he was, in fact, innocent.”
Those quiet words, said with a sad resignation and a thick guilt, nevertheless hit Ethan like a wave smashingagainst a cliff face.And he saw then those questions deep in his heart that he had been ignoring since the latest information regarding the corruption at Dionysus had cropped up: What if this betrayal was not new at all, but a continuation of the one from three years ago?What if the perpetrator had been lying low all this time after the tragedy of Gavin’s death, letting everyone believe in his brother’s guilt, an act of cowardly self-preservation—letting a dead man, someone who could not defend himself, take the blame?
His breath left him in a rush.Truly, it made perfect sense.Which meant that all this time, as he had been thinking his brother a villain and closing himself off from everyone, the one responsible for the betrayal in the first place had been safe and secure at Dionysus.The cuckoo in the nest.
“Fuck,” he growled, slamming his fist down on the desktop.
Isaac, however, misconstrued the source of Ethan’s anger.His face paled, the trust of a moment ago gone.“If you would just listen—”
But Ethan was not about to allow miscommunication to come between them again.Nor was he going to keep information from his brother that he had every right to know.“I believe you,” he cut in gruffly.
Isaac’s face went slack.“You… do?”
“Yes.”
“Oh.”And then, quietly, “Thank you.”
A humorless laugh tumbled from Ethan’s lips.“Thanking me is the last thing you should be doing.In fact, you should be cursing me.If not for me pulling away from you, we might have had this conversation sooner, might have come upon the truth long ago.”He swallowed hard.“Especially as it seems whoever was responsible for the cheatingthe first time may have resurfaced.”
