Fort Brothers

0017 — Edmund

My eyes flicked to the clock.

Way past the end of her shift.

Yet Isa was still sitting by the fireplace. Her fingers were laced together in her lap, her gaze fixed on them.

I dropped my briefcase beside the chair and shrugged out of my jacket, tossing it over the armrest.

She turned, and our eyes met.

The moment she saw me, she was on her feet.

My brow furrowed. "Bryan?" I asked.

The question was out before I could stop it. My chest tightened as I searched her face, looking for the answer before she spoke.

"Bryan's okay. He's asleep now." Isa said.

I nodded and looked away.

Margaret had been here yesterday. Isa was more than capable. There was no logical reason to assume something had gone wrong.

Tell that to the part of my brain that spent every day waiting for the phone call that would change everything.

"How did you... How did you find out about my past?"

I remembered the other night.

The question had been there then too. Buried beneath everything else.

The moment I mentioned Scott, she'd gone still.

A second later she was off my lap, flustered and scrambling for an escape. Gathering herself. Putting distance between us. She'd disappeared down the hall before she could ask what she really wanted to know.

At the time, I'd ignored it.

Now I couldn't.

The more I thought about it, the less I liked the way I'd handled any of it. The things I'd said. The way I'd let her know I had information about her life without explaining how I'd gotten it.

"I investigated," I said. The words were simple. Blunt.

An excuse would have been easier.I gave her the truth instead.

Isa stared at me for a moment.

"You were checking my background before I opened my mouth."

She wasn’t accusing me. She just sounded like she couldn’t quite believe it.

The truth was exactly what she'd said. I had people who could find things out. I'd used them.

I sat down, finally taking the weight off my legs. Normally, when I felt this wound up, I'd pour myself a drink and let the burn do its job.

That solution had become my default lately, more than I would admit out loud.

I cleared my throat. "I've known Scott for a while now. We've done business together. I signed a deal with one of his companies years ago. He's smart. The kind of man who walks into a room already knowing where he wants the conversation to end. Most people don't even realize they're being steered until they've agreed to exactly what he wanted."

Her fingers pulled at the hem of her shirt. I cataloged it. No scrub dress today. Just a two-piece uniform that fit differently.

"That company is everything my father has worked for," she said. "Years of his life. His reputation. His future. And Scott is demanding it like it's owed to him. I had no idea they owed him that much. No idea they borrowed so heavily from him."

She swallowed.

"Nobody told me what was at stake. Nobody told me that if I divorced him, it could cost my family everything... I didn't know. I honestly didn't know."

A bitter laugh escaped her.

"And all this time, they had me walking into that marriage without telling me the truth. I was collateral, Edmund. That's what I was. They wrapped it up as a marriage, but it was a business arrangement from the start."

I frowned. "Why do you care?"

She looked at me, confused.

"They sold you into a marriage. If Scott wanted leverage, there were a dozen ways to get it without putting a ring on your finger. Your father needed money. Scott had money. Fine. That's business. You, however, should never have been part of the deal in the first place."

"What else was there for me to do?"

Her voice softened. Tears gathered in her eyes, and my jaw clenched hard—my chest turning heavy in a way I didn’t like.

I could see it now. The grief of a self that never existed. A lifetime of weight she thought was duty, now revealing itself as something closer to betrayal.

It brought back moments I wasn’t proud of myself.

Times I’d scared her without meaning to. Or maybe I had meant it, in the way men sometimes blur the line when they think they’re in control.

"That's right. Why do I even care?" she said quietly. "Maybe I shouldn't. Arthur isn't my father, after all."

She looked down at her hands.

"I overheard them talking about it once. That's why I kept asking about him. The man you wouldn't let me mention by name."

I looked away, toward the dying embers in the fireplace.

It didn't sit right anymore.

Not the memory of pulling her close without asking. Not the way I had stepped over the line between what I wanted and what she had allowed.

I had promised Margaret. I made that promise to Margaret. I was not supposed to drag Isa into the dark, twisted part of me.

And I was doing everything in my power to keep it.

Maybe this was me finally understanding the weight of that promise. It was not just words. God knows I wanted to keep them. And if I meant to keep them, then I had to understand every reason why I had to.

It was Sunday today. I went to the chapel and prayed for God’s atonement, for every sin I could name and the ones I still wanted to commit. It’s one thing to stumble ignorantly through fire. It’s another to walk straight into it with your eyes open, already half-hard at the thought of the burn.

I'd even made a donation before leaving. Not a small one, either. I'd personally committed to funding a new five-hundred-seat auditorium for the chapel.

Maybe it was generosity. Maybe it was guilt. Maybe it was me trying to convince myself that good deeds still counted for something.

I wasn't entirely sure.

The pastor had been appropriately grateful. I sat there in the quiet after the service, the weight of the wooden pew pressing into my back, and wondered how many rows of seats it would take to offset the memory of Isa’s body under my hands, the dark thrill of knowing I could still drag her upstairs and test that possible Fort blood with every thrust.

Margaret’s warnings, Bryan’s innocent face, the empire’s latest triumph, none of it quieted the hunger. The disciplined man had shown up to pray. The darker one had already calculated how soon he could sin again.