The Brothers Of My Undoing

Chapter 5 It’s Not Over

Ethan's Pov

I had always believed control was something you earned.

Until I realized I was never in control at all.

The meeting with Adrian ran over forty minutes and I came out of it with nothing.

"The fellowship sponsorship is reasonable," I said near the end.

"I did not say it was not."

"Then what are you saying?"

"I am saying I will consider it." He closed the folder. "Consider it is not a no."

"It is also not a yes, and she has a deadline in three weeks."

"Then I suggest you hope I read quickly." He looked at me across the desk with the specific patience he used when he was ending a conversation. "Is there anything else?"

There were about fifteen other things. None of them were about the fellowship.

"No," I said.

I found Rafe in the kitchen after. Second drink before noon, his version of a morning routine.

"How did it go?" he asked.

"He is considering it."

"He is not considering it," Rafe swirled his glass. "He had been studying her since she walked in. You need to see that."

"He studies everyone."

"Not like this." He turned and looked at me. "Your father looks at her like she is something he cannot put down. Like a problem he has to solve before he can focus on anything else."

"You are projecting."

"Am I?" He picked up his glass. "Or are you choosing not to read it because reading it is harder."

I did not answer. Rafe had a way of landing on things that were already bruised.

"Just watch him," Rafe said. "That is all I am saying. Watch him when he thinks you are not looking."

I went back to my room and opened my architecture files and did not look at them. I kept coming back to dinner. The quality of my father's attention.

The way it had shifted when she answered his question about her writing, that specific phrase she had used: people who believe they understand their situation until they have to watch that understanding come apart.

My father had liked that. I had watched him like it in real time and felt something go sideways in my chest.

I kept coming back to the quality of his attention. The specific way he had asked if she seemed familiar. The way he had kept watching after she answered.

I called Kali.

She picked up on the second ring. "Hey."

"Are you okay?" I asked.

"Fine. Why."

"Just checking."

A pause. "Ethan. What happened in the meeting?

"He is thinking about it."

"You said that in the text."

"It is still true."

Another pause. "Is there something else."

"No." I rubbed the back of my neck. "Just wanted to hear your voice."

She was quiet. "That is either very sweet or very ominous."

"Probably both." I tried to smile. "Get some rest."

"You too."

I hung up.

I sat on the edge of the bed for a while. Then I opened my laptop again and this time actually looked at the screen.

My email had a new notification.

A flag from the estate manager about maintenance log discrepancies. I was not on that distribution list, but I read it anyway.

It referenced documents on the private server. Room access logs. Medical file transfers. A name: Elise Blackwell, cross-referenced with a patient record number.

And then my name. Under the same file number.

I sat back.

I pulled up the private server. Adrian had given me partial access two years ago, packaged as professional development. I have used it for business and nothing else.

Until now.

I navigated to the file. Password protected. I tried the standard one.

The fifth attempt used my birthday. The code my father had set for my first bank account at fourteen. The one he had said I had better memorize because he would never remember it himself.

It opened.

PATERNITY / LINEAGE RECORD. CONFIDENTIAL.

I opened the document.

My name at the top.

I read what came below it.

Read it again. And a third time.

I thought about my father's face across the dinner table. The way he had watched Kali and then glanced at me afterward like he was comparing something. Measuring something.

I thought about the portrait in the corridor.

I thought about every conversation about my mother that had ended with a closed door. Every question answered with grief so sealed that asking again felt like cruelty.

I thought about Rafe saying your father looks at her like a problem he cannot put down.

I was on my feet. The chair had scraped back. The screen was still open.

I read it a fourth time. Not because I needed to. Because I was still hoping that repetition would change something.

It did not.

I picked up my phone, put it down. Picked it up again.

I thought about calling Kali. Telling her what I had found, asking her to sit with me in the strangeness of it.

I did not call her.

I thought about calling Rafe. He had been trying to warn me about something. Maybe he already knew. Maybe he had known for years and had been waiting for me to catch up.

I did not call him either.

I sat back down at the desk.

I could explain it now.

If what this document said was true.

If any of it was true.

Then Kali was not just Ethan's girlfriend who happened to look like a missing woman.

She was something else entirely.

I sat back down at the desk and looked at the document and thought about every dinner my father had ever deflected a question about my mother. Every time I am pressed and am given grief instead of answers.

Every time I had accepted grief as a sufficient explanation, because grief was real and grief made sense and grief was something I understood.

Lies were also real.

Lies also made sense.

I had just never applied that logic to this particular silence.

I had always believed the silence around my mother was grief.

I had never once considered it might be something else.

If this was true.

If any of this was true.

Then nothing about my life had ever been real.