Chapter 19: Two Sons, One Father

Aurelia's POV

Cassian came back to us just as Robert Ellison walked away to join another conversation, his laughter still echoing behind him.

"There you are." Cassian said it to Kael, not to me, his eyes barely touching mine before moving on. "Robert mention the Q3 numbers? He's been cornering half the room about international all night."

"He did." Kael's voice stayed even. "Also mentioned he hadn't met Aurelia yet. Took care of that for you."

Something flickered across Cassian's face, quick and hard to name. "Should've done that myself."

"You usually remember."

It wasn't sharp, the way Kael said it....just plain, but plain landed harder than sharp would have, and I watched it land.

"I've had a lot on my plate this week," Cassian said, jaw tightening slightly.

"I know. I didn't say otherwise."

"Didn't have to." Cassian reached for a glass of wine off a passing tray, took a slow sip, his eyes flicking toward the cluster of investors near the bar before coming back to his brother. "Robert forgot I was standing there the second you walked up. That's been happening a lot lately."

"It's not a competition, Cassian."

"Everything in this family's a competition. Has been since we were boys." Cassian's voice dropped, quieter now, though there was nothing soft left in it. "Father made sure of that. You know it as well as I do."

Kael didn't answer right away. When he did, his voice had gone careful. "That was never something I asked for."

"No." Cassian looked at him a long moment, something old and unresolved sitting behind his eyes. "But you've always had a way of ending up ahead anyway. Without asking for a thing."

Neither of them said anything else for a moment. Two men who'd grown up under the same roof and the same impossible standard, decades of something neither had ever said out loud finally cracking open in a hotel ballroom over wine neither of them was really drinking.

Then Cassian's phone buzzed in his pocket. He checked it, exhaled, and some of the tension in his shoulders eased into something more familiar....the relief of having somewhere else to be. "It's the Whitfield people. I told them I'd stop by their table before dessert." He looked between the two of us once more, something unreadable there, gone before I could name it. "I'll find you both later."

He walked off without waiting for a response, already reaching for the phone again as he went.

Once he was out of earshot, Kael exhaled slowly. "He's not wrong. About any of it."

"That sounded like it's been building for a long time."

"It has." He watched the doorway Cassian had disappeared through, something tired in his expression now that the tension had drained out of it. "Our father was good at making two people compete for something that should never have been up for competition. It didn't start with the will. That's just the newest shape of it."

"Do you think he ever noticed? What it cost the two of you?"

"I think he noticed everything," Kael said quietly. "I just don't think it ever occurred to him to care."

I didn't have an answer for that, so I stood beside him instead, quiet, watching the reception move on around us. A string quartet had started up near the far windows, something slow and forgettable, the kind of music meant to fill a room without anyone actually listening to it.

Across the room, Cassian had reached the Whitfield table, already shaking hands, already laughing a beat too loud, a beat too eager, the way he did when he needed a room to believe he was exactly where he wanted to be.

He glanced back once, mid-laugh, his eyes finding the two of us still standing near the bar. It lasted less than a second. Long enough that I saw it....not long enough for me to read what was behind it.

Then he turned back to the table, and the moment folded itself away, wherever Cassian folded away things he didn't have room to examine yet.

"He saw that," I said quietly.

"He saw us standing here talking. That's all it was."

"Was it?"

Kael didn't answer right away, and that, more than anything, told me he wasn't entirely sure either.

*****

We didn't get the chance to say much else. Vivienne appeared beside me so quietly I nearly startled, a glass of champagne in her hand that she hadn't touched, her smile arranged with the same careful precision she wore for photographs.

"What a lively conversation," she said, her eyes moving between the two of us, unhurried. "You two do seem to find plenty to discuss, don't you."

"Kael was just telling me about the international division's plans for next quarter," I said, keeping my voice even.

"How thorough of him." She took a slow sip of champagne, her gaze lingering on Kael a beat longer than necessary before returning to me. "I do hope Cassian gets equal time to discuss his own division with you one of these evenings. It would be a shame if he started to feel outnumbered in his own family."

She drifted off before either of us could answer, the way she always did, her words left sitting there like something she fully expected us to spend the rest of the night turning over.

I watched her make her way toward the far side of the room, where Bianca stood near the windows, and I saw the two of them lean in together, Vivienne's mouth moving in something low and unhurried, Bianca's eyes flicking once, briefly, toward where Kael and I still stood.

I couldn't hear what they said, and I didn't need to. Whatever it was, it had already affected the one part of me I wanted to protect the most.

"She's testing something," I said quietly.

"I know." Kael's jaw was tight now, the ease from a few minutes ago gone entirely. "I don't think she has proof of anything yet. But she's decided there's something worth looking for."

"And once she decides that...."

"She doesn't stop looking," he finished, "until she finds it."