Read Chapter 17: The Brother's Warning

The night air of the opening had cooled into a biting edge by the time Elise slipped away from the after-party. She’d told Theo she needed air, that the champagne and the compliments had gone to her head, and he’d let her go with a squeeze of her fingers that lingered a beat too long. The hand-holding in the theatre had been one thing—performance, she’d told herself, for the cameras that always found them—but this was different. This was private. This was real.

She rounded the corner of the theatre’s side alley, heels clicking against wet stone, and stopped.

James Blake leaned against the brick wall, hands in the pockets of his coat, a cigarette burning between his fingers. He hadn’t moved to smoke it. He’d been waiting.

“You’re not supposed to be here,” Elise said.

“I’m not supposed to exist, as far as Theo’s concerned.” James pushed off the wall, dropping the cigarette and crushing it under his heel. “But you already knew that, didn’t you? That’s why you didn’t tell him I came.”

Elise’s throat tightened. She’d kept that secret tucked behind her teeth like a poison pill, waiting to dissolve. “He didn’t see you. I didn’t want to upset him on his opening night.”

“His opening night.” James laughed, a dry, hollow sound. “You mean the night he finally proved to Dad that he could do something right without smearing the family name. Must have been a real victory lap for him.”

“What do you want, James?”

He studied her for a long moment, his eyes carrying the same sharp blue as Theo’s, but where Theo’s held warmth—even through the anger, even through the accusations—James’s were flat. Measured. He’d seen too much, she guessed, or not enough.

“I want to tell you something about my brother. And then I want you to tell me you won’t hurt him.”

Elise crossed her arms, the night chill seeping through her coat. “I don’t owe you reassurances.”

“No, you don’t.” James stepped closer, his voice dropping low. “But you owe him. Whatever arrangement you two have—and don’t insult me by pretending it’s real—you owe him the truth of what you’re walking into.”

She didn’t deny the arrangement. She couldn’t. James had already proven he knew more than he should.

“Theo wasn’t always the saint the papers made him,” James said. “When we were kids, he was the wild one. The one who climbed too high, ran too fast, spoke too loud. Our father—he had a way of expecting perfection and punishing its absence. And Theo, he was never going to be perfect. Not in Dad’s eyes.”

Elise’s chest tightened. Theo had only ever shown her the controlled surface, the careful smile, the measured words. She’d glimpsed cracks tonight—the vulnerability when he confessed about the funding, the raw edge in his voice when he accused her of exploiting his grief—but she hadn’t imagined the wound went that deep.

“What happened?” she asked.

James’s jaw tightened. “He was fourteen. We were at a family gathering—our father’s company picnic, all the right people in attendance. Theo got into an argument with our cousin, something stupid about a football match. The cousin shoved him, Theo shoved back, and the cousin fell. Hit his head on a stone bench. Blood everywhere. Ambulance. Panic.”

Elise felt the cold seep deeper into her bones. “He was a kid.”

“He was a liability,” James corrected. “Our father made sure the story never left that lawn. Paid off the cousin’s family, threatened the staff, rewrote the evening so that Theo wasn’t even there. And then he sat Theo down and told him that his entire future depended on never being that boy again. Never letting anyone see the temper, the impulse, the failure. He built the clean image you see today—not because Theo wanted it, but because Dad made him believe it was the only way to be loved.”

The words landed like stones in Elise’s stomach.

“Do you understand now?” James’s voice softened, just slightly. “Theo doesn’t know how to be anything other than what’s expected of him. He performs because he thinks that’s all he has. And you—” he looked at her, and for the first time, she saw something like pleading in his eyes. “You’ve been performing longer than he has. You know what it costs. So I’m asking you, woman to man’s brother, to not make him pay for it.”

Elise opened her mouth to argue, to defend herself, but the words died. Because she *was* planning to hurt him. Nathan Cole’s offer burned in her bag—a contract that required her to publicly denounce Theo’s film, to eviscerate the work he’d poured his grief into, the work that had funded his brother’s secrets and his father’s shame and his own fragile redemption.

She hadn’t signed. Not yet. But she was still carrying it.

“I won’t tell him you were here,” she said quietly. “Your secret stays with me.”

James nodded slowly. “And Theo?”

Elise felt the weight of the question press down on her. She thought of Theo’s hand in hers during the screening, his thumb tracing small circles against her knuckles. She thought of the way he’d looked at her when he confessed about the film—naked, terrified, trusting her with something he’d never told anyone.

She thought of her mother, alone in Lyon, and the threats Marcus had whispered against her name.

“Theo is safe with me,” she said. And she hated how much she meant it.

James held her gaze for another long moment, then nodded once. “Good. Because if he isn’t—” He didn’t finish the sentence. He didn’t need to.

He turned and walked away, disappearing into the shadows at the end of the alley. Elise stood there, heart hammering, the cold air filling her lungs until she felt she might freeze from the inside out.

She pulled out her phone. A text from Theo glowed on the screen: *Where did you go? I’m grabbing our coats. Meet me at the car?*

She thumbed a reply—*Coming*—and then she stood there, staring at the dark alley where James had vanished.

Theo had built his entire life on burying the boy he used to be. And now she knew. The question was whether she would become another secret he had to hide, or the person who finally let him breathe.

Her hand drifted to her bag. Nathan Cole’s envelope crinkled under her fingers.

She didn’t have an answer. Not yet.

But as she walked back toward the theatre’s front entrance, her phone buzzed again. This time, it wasn’t Theo. It was an unknown number. A message with a single photo: Elise leaving Nathan Cole’s office, the envelope visible in her hand, the timestamp clear.

Beneath it, the text read: *Before Friday, Elise. Or this goes to every outlet in London.*

Elise stopped dead. Her blood turned to ice.

She looked up. At the far end of the street, a black car idled, its windows tinted, impossible to see through.

Cole wasn’t waiting for her decision.

He was making it for her.