SINS OF MY BROTHER'S BROTHER

THE DINNER TABLE

Dinner is a battlefield dressed in white linen.

The dining table stretches between us like neutral territory — long, dark wood, set with the kind of precision that suggests Dante's staff understands that presentation is a form of power. Crystal glasses. Silver cutlery. Candles that flicker against the rain-streaked windows.

Eight chairs. Seven occupied.

Dante sits at the head, naturally. I'm placed at his right — the position of honor, or perhaps the position of surveillance. He wants me close enough to protect.

What he doesn't realize is that proximity works both ways.

Kieran is directly across from me. Of course he is. Dante wouldn't have placed him there, which means Kieran chose the seat himself — positioned to watch me for the entire meal without appearing to do anything unusual.

I respect the strategy. I also see through it completely.

The others have arranged themselves with the particular choreography of men who know each other's habits. Ezra at the far end, back to the wall, sight lines to both exits. Roman beside Dante, close enough to murmur politically if needed. Lysander across from Roman, already reaching for the wine with the casual entitlement of someone who plans to enjoy himself regardless of the tension.

Kon sits beside me.

I felt him choose the seat — felt the deliberation in it, the way he paused before pulling out the chair, the micro-hesitation of a man making a decision he wasn't sure he was allowed to make.

He's enormous this close. Not just tall but dense — muscle layered over muscle, the architecture of a body built for impact. His hands rest on the table, and I notice the knuckles: scarred, slightly misaligned, the hands of someone who has broken them and healed them and broken them again.

Hands that have done damage.

Hands that are currently very, very still.

"So." Lysander pours wine with a surgeon's steadiness, filling glasses around the table. "Nine years in Europe. What exactly does one study for nine years, Doctor Morretti?"

"Monsters," I say.

The word lands differently than I intended. Or perhaps exactly as I intended — I'm not always sure anymore.

Lysander's pour hesitates for a fraction of a second. Then continues, smooth as before. "Monsters," he repeats. "Clinical term?"

"Common term. The clinical terminology is less satisfying."

"And what's the clinical terminology?"

"Antisocial personality disorder with narcissistic features. Psychopathy on the Hare checklist. Various combinations of cluster B presentations." I accept the wine glass he slides toward me. "But monster captures something the diagnostic criteria miss."

"Which is?"

"The enjoyment."

Silence. Not uncomfortable — weighted. The particular silence of people reassessing.

Roman sets down his fork. "You sit with these people? Regularly?"

"Three times a week, minimum. More if there's a crisis."

"Define crisis."

"Someone throws a chair. Someone attempts self-harm. Someone decides that today is the day they're finally going to tell me what they did with the bodies." I sip the wine. Excellent vintage. "The usual."

Ezra, from the far end of the table, speaks for the first time since we sat down: "And you feel safe?"

I look at him. He's watching me with that same controlled assessment from earlier — not hostile, not warm. Evaluating.

"Safety is contextual," I say. "I feel competent."

"That's not an answer."

"It's the only honest one."

Something shifts in his expression. Micro-movement, barely perceptible. Approval? Recognition? I file it away.

Dante clears his throat. "Irene's consulting assignment starts Monday. The contractor I mentioned — Marcus Webb — has been exhibiting signs of psychological instability. Paranoid ideation, sleep disruption, potential dissociative episodes."

"Potential?" I ask.

"His team reported gaps. Periods where he doesn't remember his own actions."

"How long?"

"Three weeks. Maybe longer."

I set down my glass. "And you waited three weeks to bring in a specialist?"

Dante's jaw tightens. "I was hoping it would resolve."

"Psychological instability doesn't resolve, Dante. It escalates or it's treated. Those are the options."

"Which is why you're here."

"No." I hold his gaze. "I'm here because you wanted me here and constructed a professional excuse to make it easier for both of us. The contractor is real. The urgency is manufactured. If Marcus Webb were genuinely in crisis, you would have flown someone in weeks ago."

The table goes still.

I've just called my brother out in front of his inner circle. Publicly. At his own dinner table.

His eyes flash — the particular combination of anger and respect that has defined our relationship since I was old enough to argue back.

"You always were too smart for your own good," he says quietly.

"I learned from you."

A beat. Then, impossibly, Dante almost smiles. "Fair."

The tension fractures. Not disappears — redistributes. I've established something important: I am not here to perform the role of grateful little sister. I am here as a professional, a peer, and someone who will not be managed.

Five men absorb this information differently.

Kieran's expression doesn't change, but his eyes sharpen. He's recalculating. Good.

Roman leans back slightly, the senatorial posture relaxing into something more genuine. Respect, I think. He respects people who don't perform.

Lysander grins outright. "I like her," he announces to no one in particular.

Ezra says nothing. But his eyes stay on me longer than before.

And Kon —

Kon is looking at me like I've done something miraculous. Something he didn't know was possible.

Stood up to power, I realize. That's what he's seeing. Someone standing up to power and surviving.

I wonder what that means about his history. I wonder who taught him that standing up was dangerous.

I file that away too.

The meal continues.

Conversation flows — business matters, mostly, the kind of strategic discussion that happens between people who operate in overlapping spheres of power. I listen more than I speak, cataloging:

Kieran and Dante discuss a security breach at one of Blackwood Industries' properties. The breach is presented as routine, but the undercurrent suggests otherwise — someone is testing Kieran's perimeter, probing for weakness. He's concerned, though his voice betrays nothing. I hear it in the precision of his word choices. Controlled people become more controlled when they're worried.

Roman deflects a question about his upcoming reelection campaign with practiced ease. But there's something beneath the deflection — strain, carefully hidden. Something political is happening that he doesn't want to discuss at this table.

Lysander drinks steadily and tells a story about a surgery gone wrong that is both horrifying and somehow hilarious. He's performing, I realize — being the relief valve, the charm, the one who keeps the table from becoming too heavy. It's a role he's played before. I wonder if anyone's ever noticed it's a role.

Ezra speaks only when directly addressed. His answers are brief, factual, devoid of social padding. Not rude — efficient. A man who learned that words are commitments and uses them sparingly.

Kon doesn't speak at all unless someone speaks to him first. But he listens — intensely, completely. His attention moves around the table like a searchlight, tracking every speaker, every reaction. He's the most observant person here besides me.

This surprises me. Dante described him as a fighter. Fighters, in my experience, are often reactive rather than observant. But Kon is cataloging — the way I catalog, the way people who've learned that information is survival catalog.

What happened to you? I wonder. What taught you to watch like this?

Halfway through the main course, Lysander turns to me with the particular gleam of someone about to ask something impolite.

"So, Dr. Morretti. Your professional opinion."

"On?"

"This table." He gestures with his wine glass. "Five men, one pact, countless years of brotherhood. What does the criminal psychologist see?"

Dante stiffens. "Lys—"

"It's a fair question," I say.

The table waits.

I take my time. Lift my glass. Sip. Let the silence build.

"I see five men who are far more complicated than their public roles suggest," I say finally. "I see overlapping traumas that have been converted into competencies — which is adaptive, but not the same as healing. I see loyalty that functions as both bond and cage. I see power distributed carefully enough to prevent internal conflict but not carefully enough to eliminate underlying competition."

No one moves.

"And I see," I continue, setting down my glass, "five men who are working very hard not to look at me too long, which tells me something interesting about the pact Dante mentioned earlier."

There it is.

The word lands like a grenade.

Pact.

Dante's face goes carefully blank. "What do you know about the pact?"

"Only what I've observed. Which is considerable." I meet his eyes. "You made them promise something. About me. Years ago, probably — when I was young enough that the promise felt abstract. They agreed. But something's changed, and now the promise feels..."

I look around the table. Five men, five different expressions, five different ways of not meeting my eyes.

"Heavy," I finish. "It feels heavy now. Doesn't it?"

Silence.

Then Kieran speaks. His voice is soft. Controlled. The voice of a man who could buy or destroy anything in this room and is choosing, deliberately, to do neither.

"Your brother," he says, "asked us to protect you."

"And?"

"And to never see you as anything other than someone to protect."

The words hang in the air.

To never see you as anything other than someone to protect.

I let them sit. Let them breathe. Let every man at this table feel the weight of what's just been said aloud.

"That's not a pact," I say finally. "That's a cage."

"It was protection," Dante says sharply.

"Was it?" I turn to him. "Or was it control dressed up as love? Because from where I'm sitting, you made a decision about my life — about who could want me, who could approach me, who could see me as a woman rather than a responsibility — and you made it without ever asking what I wanted."

"You were fourteen—"

"I'm not fourteen now."

The words c***k through the room.

Dante stares at me. I stare back.

Nine years of distance. Nine years of phone calls and text messages and careful, managed affection. Nine years of him deciding what I needed to be protected from while I was across an ocean, building a life he wasn't part of.

I love my brother.

I am also furious with him.

Both things can be true.

"Irene," he says quietly. "This isn't the place—"

"No," I agree. "It isn't. But you put me at this table. You surrounded me with the men you made promise not to want me. So let's be honest about what's happening here."

I push back my chair. Stand.

"Thank you for dinner," I say to the table. "Gentlemen. I'm sure we'll have much more to discuss."

I walk out of the dining room without looking back.

Behind me, I feel five sets of eyes follow my exit.

And one word echoes in the silence I leave behind:

Dangerous.

End of Chapter Two