SINS OF MY BROTHER'S BROTHER

THE SLEEPLESS

I don't sleep.

This isn't unusual. I haven't slept well since London — since the first note appeared under my door with handwriting I didn't recognize and words that made my skin crawl.

I see you even when you sleep.

The stalking stopped eight months ago. The insomnia didn't.

I lie in the bed Dante prepared for me — the soft sheets, the east-facing window, the orange still on the nightstand because I couldn't bring myself to move it — and I stare at the ceiling and I think about Kieran Blackwood's eyes in the rain.

I will consume you.

Not because I want to destroy you, but because I don't know any other way to love.

Clinical assessment: obsessive attachment style with possessive features. Potential for emotional dysregulation under stress. High-functioning, but the functioning is a performance. Underneath is something vast and hungry and probably terrifying.

Personal assessment: I want to see what's underneath.

This is a problem.

I turn onto my side. The city glitters through the window — New Avalon's skyline, all those lights representing all those people making all those choices. Somewhere out there, Kieran is probably not sleeping either. Probably standing at a window just like this one, thinking about the same conversation, running the same calculations.

We're the same, you and I.

I hate that he might be right.

At 2 AM, I give up on sleep entirely.

I pull on the silk robe Dante left in the closet — black, expensive, the kind of thing that makes you feel like a different person — and I walk through the penthouse in the dark. My feet are bare. The marble floor is cold. I like the sensation. It keeps me present.

The kitchen is sleek and empty. I find the coffee maker — Italian, complicated, requiring a manual I don't have the patience to read — and eventually produce something that approximates espresso. I take it to the library.

Dante's library is the only room in the penthouse that feels lived in. Books everywhere — not decorative, but read. Dog-eared pages. Cracked spines. Annotations in margins. My brother devours information the way other people devour food, and this room is the evidence of his appetite.

I curl into the leather armchair by the cold fireplace and sip my espresso and try not to think about the rooftop.

I fail.

Four other men who apparently share your affliction.

I said it to Kieran like I was making a clinical observation. But the truth is more complicated. The truth is that I felt all five of them watching me at dinner — five different kinds of attention, five different frequencies of want — and instead of feeling hunted, I felt...

Seen.

Is that pathological? Probably. A woman who was stalked for eighteen months developing an attraction to being observed? My colleagues would have a field day.

But there's a difference between being watched by someone who wants to possess you and being watched by someone who wants to know you. The stalker in London wanted possession. He wanted to own my fear. He wanted to reduce me to prey.

The men at that dinner table wanted something else.

They wanted to be allowed.

Permission, I think. That's the difference. The stalker never asked. These men are asking — not with words, but with restraint. With the way they hold themselves back. With the pact itself.

The pact that I called a cage.

Was I wrong?

I turn the question over like a stone, examining it from different angles. The pact was designed to protect me — Dante's intention was clearly protective. But intent and impact aren't the same thing. A cage built with love is still a cage. A decision made for someone is still a decision made without them.

And now I'm here. Twenty-three years old. A criminal psychologist who has built her career on understanding the minds of dangerous men. And I'm surrounded by five of them, all bound by a promise that's unraveling in real time.

What do I want?

The question is terrifying because I don't have a clean answer.

I want to be seen. I want to be chosen. I want to understand why five men who could have anyone are looking at me like I'm the answer to something they've been searching for.

And I want — this is the part I can barely admit to myself — I want to feel something. Something bigger than clinical observation. Something that bypasses my training and goes straight to the parts of me I've kept carefully controlled for years.

You're the same as him, a voice in my head whispers. Control as armor. Analysis as distance. You've been alone inside your own fortress for so long you've forgotten what it feels like to let someone in.

I close my eyes.

The espresso is cooling in my hands. The library is silent. The city hums somewhere far below.

And then I hear footsteps.

---

I don't startle. I learned not to startle in London — it gave the fear too much power. Instead, I open my eyes slowly and turn my head toward the library doorway.

Ezra Cole stands at the threshold.

He's wearing dark clothes — not a suit like dinner, something more tactical. Black shirt, black pants, the kind of boots you can move silently in. His sandy hair is slightly disheveled, and his hazel eyes are doing that controlled assessment thing again.

He doesn't speak.

Neither do I.

The silence stretches between us — not uncomfortable, but weighted. Two people who are used to watching, finding themselves watched.

"You check the perimeter every night," I say finally. Not a question.

"Yes."

"Even here? In Dante's secured building?"

"Especially here." He doesn't move from the doorway. Doesn't enter without invitation. "Security is only as good as its verification."

"That sounds like something from a training manual."

"It is." A pause. "Doesn't make it wrong."

I study him. The rigid posture. The way his weight is distributed — ready to move in any direction. The faint shadows under his eyes that tell me he doesn't sleep well either.

"What happened to you?" I ask.

The question is direct. Too direct for normal social interaction. But we're past normal social interaction — we were past it the moment I walked into that dining room.

His jaw tightens. "That's not a casual question."

"I'm not a casual person."

Another silence. I can see him calculating — deciding whether to deflect, lie, or tell the truth. Wondering which option I'll respect more.

"Eastern Europe," he says finally. "Four years ago. My unit was ambushed. Bad intelligence. Everyone died except me."

The words are flat. Clinical. The way trauma survivors speak when they've told the story enough times that it's become just words — the meaning stripped out, leaving only structure.

"How did you survive?"

"I played dead." His eyes don't leave mine. "For eleven hours. Under the bodies of men I'd served with for three years. Listening to the hostiles walk around, finishing off anyone who was still breathing."

My chest tightens. Not with pity — Ezra wouldn't want pity. With recognition.

"And now you check perimeters," I say quietly. "Verify security. Position yourself with sight lines to every exit. Because you learned that safety is an illusion, and the only way to feel even partially secure is to be constantly vigilant."

He stares at me.

"Your brother warned us about you," he says.

"Did he?"

"He said you see too much. That it's uncomfortable."

"Is it? Uncomfortable?"

He considers the question. Really considers it — not just the polite response, but the honest one.

"No," he says finally. "It's... clarifying. Like someone finally turned on a light in a room I've been stumbling through in the dark."

I set down my espresso cup. Rise from the chair. Walk toward him slowly — giving him time to retreat if he needs to.

He doesn't retreat.

I stop three feet away. The same distance Kieran maintained on the rooftop. Close enough to speak quietly. Far enough to maintain boundaries.

"You haven't been touched in a long time," I say. "Not intimately. You flinch when people get close — I noticed at dinner. It's a trauma response. Your nervous system interprets proximity as threat."

His breathing changes. Slightly faster. Slightly shallower.

"And yet you're standing here," I continue. "Three feet from a woman you barely know. At 2 AM. In a dark library. That takes effort."

"Yes."

"Why? Why make the effort?"

He's quiet for a long moment. When he speaks, his voice is rougher than before.

"Because when I heard you walking through the penthouse, my first instinct was to verify you were safe. And my second instinct—" He stops.

"Your second instinct?"

"Was to see you again. Just... see you. Make sure you're real. That you're not just something I imagined at that dinner table."

My heart does something complicated.

This is different from Kieran. Kieran wanted to consume. Ezra wants to confirm. To make sure the thing he's feeling isn't a malfunction. To understand how a woman he met hours ago has somehow become essential to his sense of reality.

"I'm real," I say softly.

"I know." He swallows. "That's the problem."

"Why is it a problem?"

"Because I made a promise to your brother. And I keep my promises, Irene. It's the only thing I have left that feels clean. If I break it—" He shakes his head. "I don't know who I am without my word."

The honesty cuts through me. This is a man who has lost everything — his unit, his sense of safety, his ability to sleep through the night — and the only thing he has left is integrity. Breaking the pact wouldn't just be a choice. It would be an unmaking.

"Then don't break it," I say.

He looks at me sharply.

"Not yet," I clarify. "Not until you're ready. Not until the cost of keeping it is higher than the cost of breaking it." I reach out — slowly, carefully — and let my hand hover near his arm without touching. "I'm not going to be the reason you lose the last piece of yourself you trust, Ezra. Whatever this is — whatever's happening between you and me and Kieran and all of them — it has to be a choice you make with your eyes open. Not something that happens to you."

He stares at my hand. Hovering. Not touching.

Then — so slowly it's almost imperceptible — he moves his arm until it makes contact with my palm.

The touch is barely anything. Just skin against skin. Warmth.

He shudders. Full-body. Like something inside him is breaking open.

"Irene," he breathes.

"I know," I whisper. "I know."

We stand there in the dark library, connected by the smallest possible touch, and I feel the weight of what's happening settle into my bones.

This is not a game.

This is not a competition.

This is five broken men circling a woman who might be able to put them back together.

And I have no idea if I'm strong enough to try.

End of Chapter Five