Page 57 of Main Event

Luke looks at me.

“At dinner. When I brought her to meet our family.” I keep my voice level. “Marin sat at that table and listened to our mother talk about a process she couldn’t understand and made a sympathetic sound.”

Something moves across Luke’s face. Not anger yet—but that anger is simmering just below the surface, ready to explode like an unpredictable volcano. I’ve learned this part of him is more dangerous than the explosion itself.

“Yes, she knew,” he says. “Andi and I have already talked that scenario through.”

“She knew everything that was happening to our family, and she sat at our parents’ table and showed sympathy.” I look at the file. “I want you to know that I understand now why you didn’t tell me sooner. The order mattered. I’m not arguing with it.” I stop and set the file down. “I’m telling you what I know so the picture is complete.”

Luke nods slowly.

“The accidents,” I say. “Andi’s crash in Phoenix. Mine.”

He looks at me. “Both.”

“Evelyn ordered them.”

“Yes.”

I absorb this. I force myself to pause—to breathe it in, to swallow it down—because I’ve built my whole professional life on not reacting. And right now, that’s the only thing keeping my voice level.

“She tried to kill Andi,” I say. “Twice.”

“Twice that we know of.”

“And my accident⁠—”

“Was meant as a warning,” Luke says. “After you found Garrett Cole, she needed you to slow down.”

I look at the wall behind Luke’s head. At the framed case, the precedents and the degrees, and the photograph of Luke and me at his first professional fight, him at twenty-two, me at twenty-eight, and both of us thinking the world was straightforward.

“What do you need from me?” I ask.

Luke leans forward. “The financial connections you’ve been mapping—the Dalton Group, Garrett Cole’s sealed case, everything you’ve built in the last few months. Bill needs it. No copies. The originals, your sources, and how you came to the conclusions and calculations.”

“He’ll have it by the end of the day.”

“And Brandon—” He stops. Tries again. “I need you to be careful. Whoever came to your condo knew you’d been to Marin’s. They were positioned. That means she’s still reporting and they’re still watching.”

“I know.”

“Which means⁠—”

“I know,” I say again. “I will not do anything that tips them. I have enough professional discipline to run out the play.” I look at him. “What I’m not going to do is pretend to still be in a relationship with a woman who sat at our parents’ table and watched our mother describe something she was complicit in.”

“How do you end it without⁠—”

“Carefully,” I say. “I’ll end it in a way that reads as a normal breakup. Incompatibility. Distance. Nothing that suggests I know what she is.” I straighten the file on my desk. “I’ve built entire cases on less theater than this.”

Luke looks at me for a moment.

“Brandon,” he says.

“Yeah.”

“I’m sorry. About all of it. The timing, the holding back, what it cost you not knowing.” He holds my eyes. “I was trying to protect you, and I did it the wrong way.”

I look at my brother. The man who showed up at my hospital bedside before I’d called anyone. Who’s sitting across from me right now with bruises from a gym session still visible on his knuckles, having come straight from training because the first break Reyes allowed was the earliest he could get here.