Chapter 3
“Why does she get more?” Sophia asked teasingly.
Ethan shrugged.
“She’s smaller.”
As though that explained everything.
After that, Lily became the little sister Ethan had never asked for and quickly refused to live without.
The second person he let close was Vivian Brooks.
Vivian was thirty-five, an art consultant from Boston who had met Dominic at a charity auction two years earlier.
She did not chase him.
That interested him.
Most people either wanted something from Dominic or were afraid of wanting anything at all.
Vivian seemed unimpressed by both possibilities.
Their first conversation lasted less than fifteen minutes.
Their second happened three months later over coffee.
Their relationship grew slowly because Dominic trusted slowly.
Ethan trusted even slower.
For almost a year, the boy remained polite but distant with her.
Vivian never forced affection.
She showed up.
Friday nights, she read to him.
Saturday mornings, they painted in the sunroom.
When Ethan disliked one of her drawings, she let him say so.
When he asked whether marrying his father meant she would become his new mother, Vivian answered carefully.
“No one replaces your mother.”
Ethan had watched her for a long moment.
“What would you be, then?”
“Whatever you decide I’m allowed to be.”
Several months later, Dominic noticed Ethan had started saving the chair beside him for Vivian at breakfast.
Their wedding was scheduled for spring.
Dominic’s closest friend approved.
Marcus Bell had been beside Dominic for eleven years.
Calling Marcus an employee had always felt insulting.
He was family without blood.
When Dominic’s father died, Marcus stood beside him through the funeral.
When rival crews challenged Dominic’s leadership in his early thirties, Marcus defended him before some of Dominic’s own relatives had made up their minds.
During an ambush at a warehouse six years earlier, Marcus had taken two bullets protecting Dominic.
Dominic visited his hospital room every day.
On the tenth anniversary of their partnership, Dominic gave Marcus a custom-made watch.
Its face carried a tiny gold crown crossed by a star, a design Dominic had sketched himself.
Only one existed.
Inside the case, a single word had been engraved.
Brother.
Marcus wore it every day.
Perhaps that was why Dominic stopped noticing it.
Trust makes familiar things invisible.
On Ethan’s birthday morning, Vivian asked to help make the cake herself.
Because of Ethan’s allergy, that request mattered.
Dominic gave permission only after Vivian agreed to prepare it alongside Helen Parker, the family’s longtime chef.
Every ingredient was checked.
Then checked again.
By four that afternoon, the white three-tier cake was finished.
May you like
Vivian carried it into the temperature-controlled preparation room beside the kitchen.
Then she went upstairs to change.
