Forgotten Blood

The Other Brother

The pharmacy on Eleventh wasn't the kind of place anyone from the foundation circuit ever set foot in, which was exactly why Lena had picked it.

She came here for her mother's prescriptions twice a month, paid in cash, used a name that wasn't Lena Hart and wasn't her real one either. This was the only version of her life Marcus didn't get to script.

"That's an interesting place to run into foundation money."

She knew the voice before she turned around. Lower than Adrian's. Less practiced at sounding warm.

Damien Sterling stood a few feet away, hands in his coat pockets, looking entirely too comfortable for a man standing outside a pharmacy in a part of the city his family's name had probably never been spoken aloud in.

"I didn't realize I needed permission for where I shop," Lena said, sliding the paper bag into her purse before he could see what was in it.

"You don't." His eyes moved over her once, quick, cataloguing. No gala dress tonight. No careful hair. Just a woman in a worn coat who looked tired in a way that had nothing to do with performance. "I just find it interesting that the version of you my brother described doesn't match the one standing in front of me."

"People look different off duty."

"Most people don't have an off duty that looks this far from the on duty version." He said it lightly, almost amused, but his eyes weren't amused at all. "What's in the bag, Lena Hart?"

"Nothing that's any of your business."

"Probably true." He didn't push, which unsettled her more than if he had. Damien struck her as the kind of man who collected information quietly and used it later, not the kind who needed an answer immediately. "Adrian's taken with you. You know that."

"I wasn't aware that was something you kept track of."

"I keep track of everything." He said it without arrogance, which made it worse. "It's the family talent. My grandmother taught us that the things people hide are always more useful than the things they show you."

Something in Lena's chest tightened at the mention of the grandmother, quick and involuntary, gone before her face could betray it. She'd gotten good at that. Not good enough, apparently, for a man who'd just told her watching was his talent.

"You should be careful what you go looking for," she said. "Sometimes the hidden things aren't useful. They're just sad."

"Now that," Damien said, "is the most honest thing you've said since we met."

The wind picked up between them, cold enough that Lena pulled her coat tighter, and for a moment neither of them said anything. He wasn't looking at her the way Adrian looked at her. Adrian looked like a man discovering something he wanted. Damien looked like a man already three steps into figuring out what she was.

"My brother thinks you're a mystery worth solving," he said finally. "I think you're a woman who's spent a long time making sure nobody solves anything."

"Maybe those are the same thing."

"Maybe." He almost smiled, the same fraction of a smile Adrian had given her at the gallery, and for a second the family resemblance startled her more than it should have. "I'll figure out which one it is eventually. I always do."

"Is that a threat?"

"It's a fact." He took a step back, the conversation apparently over on his terms, not hers. "Take care of whatever's in that bag, Lena Hart. Whatever it is, it matters enough to bring you somewhere like this in clothes like that. That's not nothing. That's the first true thing I've learned about you."

He walked away without waiting for a response, hands still in his pockets, unhurried in a way that made it clear he didn't think he needed to rush toward anything he wanted.

Lena stood outside the pharmacy long after he'd disappeared around the corner, her pulse refusing to slow down the way it usually did the moment a mark walked away.

Damien wasn't supposed to matter. He wasn't even the primary target. Marcus's whole plan ran through Adrian, through the soft hunger of a man starved for something real.

But Adrian was easy to manage because Adrian wanted to be charmed.

Damien didn't want to be charmed. Damien wanted to be right.

That, Lena realized walking home with her mother's medication clutched too tightly in her hand, was a far more dangerous thing to be wanted by.

That night, back in the small apartment Marcus still didn't know the real address of, Lena sat at her mother's bedside and watched Grace sleep, her breathing thinner than it had been a month ago, a fact Lena had been quietly pretending not to notice.

"You're home late," Grace murmured, eyes still closed.

"Work ran long."

"It always does lately." Grace's hand found hers in the dark, weaker than it used to be, papery and warm. "You look like you're carrying something heavy tonight."

"I'm fine, Mom."

"You've been saying that since you were twelve." Grace's eyes opened just enough to find her daughter's face, searching it the way mothers did when they already suspected the answer wasn't the one being offered. "One day you're going to have to tell someone the truth instead."

Lena didn't answer. She pressed a kiss to her mother's forehead instead, turned off the lamp, and sat in the dark a long while after Grace's breathing evened back out into sleep.

Way across the city is an experienced woman ripe in age tallying threats that is yet to exist.Her grandson in a well furnished room has taken the mantle upon himself to find out more about Lena Hart.

Lena already felt a c***k in her mission but just couldn't tell where the c***k is from.

The solution to this mystery all laid in a cupboard that smelled like medicine and would soon get discovered by Lena Hart herself who would not be ready to handle the truth herself.