19
── ? ──
EVANDER
The board meeting was pointless.
Three hours of quarterly projections and acquisition strategies and Laurent Holdings executives trying to impress me with graphs and charts that all said the same thing: we're making money, we'll continue making money, here's how much money we'll make next quarter.
I stopped listening forty minutes in. Just sat at the head of the conference table, nodding at appropriate intervals while my mind circled back to the same thought on repeat.
Aurora's dead eyes. Her pleasant, empty voice. The way she exists in my penthouse like a ghost haunting the space where a living person used to be.
I did that. I broke her so thoroughly that there's nothing left to fight. Nothing left to fix.
The meeting finally ended. I declined the invitation to dinner—some networking event at a restaurant where a single entree would drain most people’s weekly pay check. Made an excuse about campus obligations. Left.
Marcus drove me back in silence. Efficient. Professional. Not asking questions I don't want to answer.
The campus is quiet when we arrive. It's Monday afternoon—most students either still in class or holed up in their dorms to avoid the incessant, frigid gloom that followed the storm three days ago.
I dismiss Marcus. Tell him I'll walk back to my building. Need the air. Need to clear my head before I go back to that penthouse and face what I've created.
The breeze is cold. Freezing. Biting through my expensive coat within minutes. I don't care. Just walk with my hands shoved in my pockets, my mind a thousand miles away.
I'm cutting through the main courtyard—past the fountain, toward the path that leads to the Elite housing buildings—when I hear it.
Children's voices. High-pitched. Excited. The kind of noise that comes from elementary school field trips when kids are seeing something new and interesting.
I glance toward the source. See a cluster of small figures in neon-bright coats near the museum. A field trip. Must be from one of the local schools, brought to campus to visit the art museum or the historical archives or whatever educational bullshit they're selling to parents.
I keep walking. Not my concern. Not my problem.
That's when I see him.
Liam Lane.
Aurora's brother. Seven years old. Wearing a neon green coat that's slightly too big for him, standing near the edge of the group, looking at something on the ground.
And behind him, walking up with deliberate steps, is Thomas Hastings.
The Inner Circle student whose family I destroyed two weeks ago. Whose father's hotel empire I systematically dismantled piece by piece because he looked at me wrong in a bar.
My steps slow. Something cold slides down my spine.
Thomas is twenty-two. Six feet tall. Athletic build. And he's walking toward a seven-year-old child with an expression I recognize immediately.
Revenge.
I start moving faster. Not running. Not yet. Just walking with purpose, closing the distance.
But I'm too far away. At least fifty yards across the courtyard.
Thomas reaches Liam. Says something I can't hear from this distance.
Liam turns around. Looks up at the stranger. Confused. Uncertain.
And Thomas shoves him.
Hard.
Directly into the lake.
The world slows down.
I watch Liam's small body hit the water. See the splash. Hear the sound—that particular, horrible sound of something breaking the surface of deep water.
And I freeze.
My feet stop moving. My entire body locks up. Every muscle goes rigid, my lungs seizing, my vision tunneling until all I can see is the dark water where Liam disappeared.
The water.
Cold. Deep. Murky with sediment and runoff from three days of heavy snow.
The same water that took Matthias.
[FLASHBACK]
I'm eight years old. The Laurent estate pool is Olympic-sized, crystal clear, heated to exactly 82 degrees.
Matthias is six. He's wearing his favorite swim trunks—the ones with cartoon sharks on them that he begged our mother to buy. He can't swim yet. We were supposed to start lessons next month.
"Evander." My mother's voice is calm. Controlled. The same tone she uses in board meetings when she's explaining why someone's getting fired. "Sit down."
I sit on the edge of the pool. My feet dangle in the water. It's warm but I'm shaking anyway.
She's holding Matthias by the shoulder. He looks scared. Confused. Keeps glancing at me like I'm supposed to explain what's happening.
I don't know what's happening.
"Attachment is weakness," she says. Not to me. To herself. Like she's reciting a mantra. "Fear is weakness. You need to learn this, Evander. Before you're old enough for it to matter."
She pushes Matthias into the deep end.
He goes under immediately. His arms flail. His mouth opens in a scream that gets cut off by water.
I try to jump in. Try to save him.
Security grabs me. Two men in dark suits who work for my mother. They hold me down, keep me on the edge of the pool while I scream and fight and beg.
"Watch," my mother says. She's holding a stopwatch. Timing it. "This is what happens when you care too much. When you let emotion control you."
Matthias surfaces once. Gasps. Goes back under.
I'm crying. Screaming. Trying to break free.
The men hold me tighter.
My mother stands at the edge of the pool. Perfectly still. Watching her youngest son drown with clinical detachment.
Matthias surfaces again. His eyes are wide. Terrified. Looking directly at me.
Help me.
I can't. I can't move. Can't breathe. Can't do anything except sit there and watch.
My mother checks the stopwatch. "Two minutes. That's the threshold before brain damage begins."
She nods to the estate doctor standing nearby. He jumps in. Pulls Matthias out.
They perform CPR on the pool deck. Matthias coughs up water. Starts breathing again.
My mother crouches down in front of me. "Fear makes you weak, Evander. Attachment makes you vulnerable. Remember this lesson."
She pulls a silver cross necklace from her pocket. Hands it to me. "Faith is for the weak. The only thing you can rely on is control."
Six months later, I'm at a different pool. A friend's birthday party. Matthias wanders too close to the edge.
He falls in.
I see it happen. See him go under.
And I freeze.
The water terrifies me. The memory terrifies me. I stand there, paralyzed, while other adults jump in, while someone pulls him out, while they try to revive him.
But it's too late.
He's been under too long.
They call the ambulance. Perform CPR. Do everything right.
Matthias doesn't wake up.
He died because I was too afraid to move. Too broken by my mother's lesson to save him.
[END FLASHBACK]
I'm eight years old again. Standing frozen while someone I should protect drowns. While water takes another person who matters. While I do nothing except stand there and watch.
The paralysis is absolute. Total. I can't move. Can't breathe. Can't do anything except stare at the dark water where Liam went under.
He's going to die. Just like Matthias. Just like—
"LIAM!"
The scream cuts through my paralysis like a blade.
Aurora.
She's running. Sprinting across the frost-nipped grass, her coat streaming behind her, her hair plastered to her face with melting snowflakes. She's coming from the direction of my building—must have been looking for her brother, must have seen what happened.
She's twenty feet from the lake. Fifteen. Ten.
She kicks off her shoes. Doesn't slow down. Doesn't hesitate.
She's going to jump in.
She's going to throw herself into that dark, freezing water to save her brother.
And she can't swim. I know she can't swim. I've read her file. Reviewed every detail of her life. There's no swimming lessons. No summer camps with pool activities. Nothing that would have taught a girl growing up in poverty how to navigate deep water.
She's going to drown trying to save him.
I'm going to watch Aurora Lane die the same way I watched Matthias die.
The same way I watched my brother's eyes go wide with terror and then empty.
The same way I stood frozen while the only person I've ever cared about disappeared beneath dark water.
No.
The word doesn't come from my conscious mind. It comes from somewhere deeper. More primal. The part of me that's been screaming since the moment Liam hit the water, the part that's been trying to break through the paralysis and the terror and the horrible, suffocating memory.
No.
I don't care if this water kills me.
I don't care if I freeze. If I drown. If the cold and the terror stop my heart.
I will not let her lose her Matthias.
I will not stand here and watch another person I care about die because I'm too afraid to move.
Aurora is five feet from the water's edge. Her hands are reaching forward, preparing to dive.
I move.
My legs unlock. My body surges forward. I'm running—faster than I've ever run, faster than should be physically possible, my shoes slipping on the grass, my coat weighing me down.
I reach her just as she's about to jump.
Don't stop. Don't slow down. Don't let the fear catch up.
I blow past her. My shoulder brushes hers—the contact brief, barely noticeable.
And then I'm at the edge.
I close my eyes. Shut out the memory. Shut out the fear. Shut out everything except the knowledge that there's a seven-year-old boy under this water and I'm the only one close enough to reach him.
And I dive.
The cold hits me like a physical blow.
Freezing. Absolute. Every nerve ending screaming in protest as my body hits water that can't be more than forty degrees.
The shock nearly stops my heart. Nearly sends me into immediate hypothermia.
I force my eyes open. The water is murky. Dark. I can't see more than a few feet in any direction.
I kick downward. My clothes are dragging me down—expensive fabric soaked through, heavy, trying to pull me to the bottom.
I don't care. Keep swimming. Keep searching.
My lungs are already burning. The cold is making it hard to think. Hard to move. Hard to do anything except panic.
But I don't panic.
I can't panic.
Liam is down here somewhere.