All Chapters of Between Two Brothers : Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

ISLA'S POVThe hotel suite Dare had booked was the kind of beautiful that made you feel poor just standing in it. Marble floors, floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking a coastline turning gold with evening light, a walk-in wardrobe someone had already filled with clothes in my size. I hadn't asked how. I'd stopped asking how anything worked in Dare's world.I was still staring at the view when his voice came from the doorway."There's a dinner tonight. Voss and her board. You'll come as my date."I turned to him. He'd changed into a charcoal suit that made him look carved rather than dressed, and he said it the way he said everything now — not a request, an instruction with my name attached."No," I said."It wasn't a question.""Then ask me a real one sometime and see what I say." I crossed my arms. "I'm not a prop for your business dinners, Dare.""You're my assistant." His eyes didn't move off mine. "This is work.""Work doesn't require me on your arm in front of people who'll assume

DARE'S POVI hadn't slept. Not because of the deal, not because of Voss's signature still hanging in the balance, but because of the sound of Isla's voice through a bathroom door, quiet and wrecked, telling me she didn't know what to do with me. I didn't know either. That was the problem with mornings after nights like that — the truth didn't go anywhere. It just sat there, waiting to be dealt with in daylight."You're quiet," Finn said, falling into step beside me as we crossed the marble lobby of Voss Industries. He'd flown in overnight, summoned the moment I realized Camille's appearance hadn't been a coincidence I could afford to ignore. "Which usually means something's wrong.""Nothing's wrong.""Right." Finn glanced past me to where Isla walked a few paces back, composed, professional, giving nothing away except the faint shadow under her eyes that told me she'd slept about as well as I had. "You two look like you both survived a car crash.""Focus on the deal, Finn.""I am." He

ISLA'S POVI sat on the edge of the hotel bed, phone pressed to my ear before I'd even decided to call, my thumb finding Thea's name the way it always did when the world got too loud to carry alone.She picked up on the second ring. "Isla? It's the middle of the night here, you'd better be — ""I need to tell you everything," I said, and the words came apart before I could stop them.I told her all of it — Dare's threat to get me into that dress, Camille's hand closing around my wrist, the wine, the room going silent, Dare's face when he'd recognized her. I told her about the boardroom this morning, Elena and Camille circling like they'd rehearsed it, the question about whether I always ended up wearing consequences that weren't mine. I told her what I'd said on the terrace, what Dare had admitted back, the way he'd stood there and told me I'd stopped being just his assistant, like that confession was supposed to fix anything.By the time I finished, my voice had gone hoarse, and Thea

DARE'S POVBy the time I got home, my tie was already off, undone somewhere in the lift on the way up, and I still felt like I was wearing it. Ten hours of back-to-back calls trying to salvage what Camille and Elena had nearly torched in Spain, and none of it had managed to push Isla out of my head for longer than a few minutes at a time. I'd catch myself mid-sentence in a meeting, replaying the sound of her voice on that terrace — "I don't know what to do with you" — and lose the thread of whatever I was supposed to be negotiating.I dropped onto the sofa without bothering to turn on more than one light, and my phone buzzed against the cushion beside me."Family dinner. 7pm. Your father expects you." — sent from the family group chat, in Marcus's clipped, dutiful phrasing, the way he always relayed Victor's expectations like they were his own idea.I stared at the message longer than it deserved. The last thing I wanted tonight was a table full o

MARGOT'S POVThe night rush had thinned to its usual  lull, the kind of quiet I'd grown to treasure over the years — just the hum of the kitchen behind me and the soft clink of cutlery from the last few tables. I was wiping down the counter when the bell above the door chimed, and I looked up expecting a regular.I did not expect her.I recognized the coat before I recognized the face — the kind of tailored elegance that didn't belong in a place like mine, all soft lighting and mismatched chairs collected over a decade of making do. But it was the face that stopped my hands entirely. I'd seen it multiple times before, in photographs Isla had shown me once, in a magazine spread about the Blackthorne family I'd read years ago with no particular reason to remember it, and the face that always tormented me at work; Irena Blackthorne, Dare's mother."Good evening," I managed, setting down my cloth, smoothing my apron out of some old instinct toward hos