Chapter 32
Chapter Thirty-Two
Leo
I stand there, stunned.
Vaughn.
For a second, all I can see are his similarities to Archie.
He’s got the same tousled dark-blond hair. The same straight nose and defined jawline. The same build, the same posture, although where Archie tends to lean into a room like he’s curious about it, Vaughn fills a doorway like he’s claiming territory.
But there is one major difference between them.
Archie’s eyes are normally sparkling with mischief, while Vaughn’s eyes are currently narrowed in suspicion.
We lock gazes, and neither of us blinks. I can feel eight years of swallowed anger pressing against the back of my teeth. From the look on Vaughn’s face, he’s swallowing something too.
“What are you doing here?” I manage to get out.
“I’ve come to find out what the fuck kind of games you’re playing with my kid brother.”
My heart pounds and my mind races.
Vaughn. Here. Now.
Of all the scenarios I’d imagined for this morning—making awkward client small talk, stale coffee, trying to resist checking my phone for texts from Archie—this wasn’t one of them.
“What makes you think I’m playing any kind of games with your brother?” I ask. I’m stalling for time, trying to get my head around how the hell to handle this.
“Don’t fuck around with me, Leo,” he growls.
He thrusts his phone in my face. On the screen is a picture on Elizabeth’s Instagram page. It’s the photo she took of us at the National Gallery. I’ve got my arm around Archie, and we’re both grinning broadly.
It almost hurts me to see how happy we both look.
Elizabeth posted it two days ago.
Vaughn must have seen it, and what? Flown straight over from San Francisco?
Vaughn’s face is still contorted in a scowl. “When I called her, Elizabeth gushed all about Archie’s new boyfriend Leo and how great he is.” He spits the words out.
My mind is racing. What can I do?
“Why don’t you come inside?” I say neutrally. I try to keep my pace steady as I walk back to the conference table and take a seat.
Vaughn steps inside, closing the door behind him, but he doesn’t sit.
The dynamic of him looming over me while I’m sitting down isn’t great, but it means I can discreetly take my phone from my pocket and quickly find the voice recorder app. I press record, leaving my hand gripped around my phone under the table.
“Why do you think I would target your brother?” I ask.
Vaughn sneers at me. “You know why.”
“Refresh my memory,” I say calmly.
“Because of all that shit that happened over the blockchain protocol.”
“All that shit? You mean how you stole my idea for the blockchain protocol and presented it as yours?”
The words land between us like something detonating. Eight years of swallowed anger, compressed into a single sentence.
Vaughn’s breathing hard. His jaw works. For a moment, I think he’s going to deny it. Use the same slick deflection he used at QuantumTech, the same confident smile that convinced everyone I was the one who couldn’t be trusted.
But he doesn’t smile.
“What the hell do you want me to say? It’s ancient history. I was young and dumb and did something stupid, okay? I admit it. But your career recovered. And that doesn’t mean Archie should have to suffer.”
I feel the weight of my phone in my hand, recording every word.
I was young and dumb and did something stupid, okay? I admit it.
There it is. After eight years. An admission.
Something I could use to destroy him. I could send it to his company and watch his career implode the way mine nearly did.
The satisfaction should be sweet. But it doesn’t feel that way right now. Not with the knowledge that Archie will be collateral damage.
“Look at his face.” Vaughn glances back at the photo on his phone.
“He looks besotted with you. That’s the same face he used to make when he’d show me something he was excited about, some book or some fact he’d just learned.
He’d get this look, like the whole world was amazing and he couldn’t believe no one else had noticed. ”
The words hit me somewhere deep.
Because I know the look he’s describing.
Vaughn drops his hand and fixes me with a glare. “What the fuck, Leo? Did you target Archie just to get to me? That’s incredibly fucked up. You need to stay the hell away from him.”
“Why the hell do you care?” The anger rises in me before I can stop it. “Didn’t you cut him out of your life? Tell him he’s too much?”
Vaughn continues to stare at me. “He told you that?”
“Yeah, he told me that.”
The silence stretches. Vaughn’s face does something complicated. It’s not the defensive anger I was bracing for, but something rawer. He staggers forward, dropping into the chair opposite me like the air’s been let out of him.
We sit in silence for a few seconds before Vaughn raises his gaze to meet mine.
“Does he know about your history with me?” he asks.
I can’t hold his eye. And Vaughn knows what that means.
Vaughn’s nostrils flare. “So you’ve been lying to him? What’s your game? Get to me through him?”
“No. That’s not my game. The whole thing was a mistake.”
“A mistake? You expect me to believe that you just accidentally started dating my brother?” His words are coated in disbelief.
“I accidentally injured your brother in a pirate-themed pancake restaurant because I thought he was you.”
Vaughn blinks. “What?”
“It’s a long story. The point is, it was never supposed to go this far.”
Vaughn’s eyes narrow. “I’ll tell Archie the truth. I’ll tell him you deliberately tried to hurt him because you wanted to hurt me.”
My heart pounds, but I lean back. “That’s fine. I want him to know anyway. And while you’re at it, you can tell him why I wanted to get revenge on you.”
Vaughn’s face goes still.
“Since you’ve just admitted what you did,” I say. “I’ve got it recorded.”
I bring my phone up from under the table, holding it up so the recording app is visible on the screen.
The color drains from Vaughn’s face.
“You—”
“You walked into my meeting room and confessed to stealing my intellectual property. On tape.” I keep my voice level. “Funny how things work out.”
For a moment, neither of us speaks. Vaughn’s staring at my phone like it’s a loaded weapon. Which, in a sense, it is.
I should feel triumphant. This is what I wanted for eight years—proof, leverage, justice. The ability to make Vaughn Mansley face consequences for what he did to a kid who was too poor and too powerless to fight back.
But my mind won’t stop doing something inconvenient.
It’s doing math.
Vaughn stole my idea when I was fresh out of college. I was twenty-two, and Vaughn was a few years older—twenty-five, twenty-six.
Archie started college at fifteen.
Which means around the time Vaughn stole my idea, Archie had just gotten into Harvard as a fifteen-year-old. The Mansley parents’ attention would have been entirely focused on their younger son.
And Vaughn—Vaughn who’d been the golden child, the protector—would have been desperate to do something to impress his parents and prove he was still worth their attention.
So he’d stolen an idea from a naive colleague who trusted him. Not because he was a sociopath, but because he was a twenty-five-year-old who’d lost his place in his own family to his genius younger brother. He’d grabbed at the first thing that might make him feel like he mattered.
It doesn’t excuse it.
But it explains it.
I stare at Vaughn. He looks so much like Archie. The shared DNA is written all over him.
But it’s not just DNA that Archie and Vaughn share. They also share a childhood of memories. A history that shaped both of them into who they are.
Archie’s perception of himself was shaped by Vaughn.
They are brothers.
Brothers.
I think about my little brother, how I’ve spent years throwing money at his rehab stints, telling myself this time would be different.
How I’ve sent checks when what he probably needed was for me to show up.
How distance became my excuse for not being present, and money became my substitute for love.
How Vaughn has just flown around the world to protect his little brother, whom he hasn’t spoken to for over a year.
Whatever else Vaughn Mansley is, he’s someone who got on a plane the moment he thought Archie was in danger.
That’s not nothing.
My mind races. What can I do? Tell Archie the truth about how his accident happened and that I’ve fallen in love with him?
And then what?
I try to picture it. Archie, sitting across from me, learning that I targeted his brother and injured him by mistake. That every day we’ve spent together started with a lie. Even if he forgives me—and that’s a colossal if—the truth would sit between him and Vaughn like a wall.
Because every time Archie looked at me, he’d remember what Vaughn did to me. I’d become the living reminder of every wrong the Mansley brothers have done to each other.
You can’t rebuild a relationship with your brother while you’re sleeping with the man your brother wronged.
The loyalties don’t work. Every family dinner, every phone call, every attempt at reconciliation would have me standing in the middle of it like a piece of shrapnel that can’t be removed without causing more damage.
What kind of future can Archie and I ever have?
I’m in love with him, but this morning showed he’s too damaged to be in a loving, committed relationship right now.
And why is he too damaged?
Because of what Vaughn did to him.
And nothing I do will ever repair that damage. I can love Archie with everything I have, but I can’t give him back his brother. I can’t rewire how Archie sees himself.
Only Vaughn can do that.
I look at the phone in my hand. The resolution of eight years of anger, recorded in a two-minute confession.
Then I raise my gaze to meet Vaughn’s.
“Look,” I say softly. “We both want the best for Archie.”
Vaughn snorts.
“I mean it. Whatever you think my motives are, I care about him.”
“You care about him so much that you’ve been lying to him since the day you met.”
Fair point. I don’t have a defense for that.
I rake my hand through my hair. I can’t believe what I’m about to do, but it’s not going to stop me from doing it.
“Here’s the deal.” I take a breath. “I’ll delete the recording.”
Vaughn goes very still.
“And in return, you need to be the brother Archie deserves. Be the brother Archie remembers from when you were little, the one who always looked out for him. Help your parents see that cutting Archie off just because he’s not following the path they mapped out for him isn’t fair, that he deserves to make decisions about his own life and what makes him happy. ”
Vaughn opens his mouth. Closes it.
“I’ll be watching you. Archie’s social media better be jammed full of photos showing you being the best big brother on the planet, or I’ll find another way to make sure the world knows what you did at QuantumTech.”
The words come out steady. Professional. Like I’m negotiating a contract and not dismantling my own life, not thinking about everything I’m about to lose.
Morning coffee with commentary. The sound of crutches in the hallway. Glitter in places glitter has no business being. The way Archie says my name when he’s half-asleep—soft and careless, like it’s a word his mouth knows by heart.
The weight of him against my chest in the dark.
I’m giving that up. All of it. Every morning and every evening and every ridiculous, infuriating, brilliant moment in between.
My throat closes. I force it open.
Vaughn is blinking at me.
“You’re bribing me to be a good brother to Archie?”
“I don’t think I need to bribe you.” I give him the most cut-the-bullshit glare I’ve ever conjured.
“The fact you flew all the way over here just to warn me away from him means you’re still the brother Archie loves.
You’re still his protector. You just need to be that guy all the time.
Because Archie needs you more than you realize. ”
Vaughn looks disoriented. Like the conversation has taken a turn he didn’t prepare for. He came in here ready for a fight, and instead he’s getting…what? A plea deal? A pep talk?
“You really care about him, don’t you?” Vaughn says.
“I’m in love with him.”
The words come out without me thinking. A reflex from the most primitive, instinctual part of my brain.
Like they are coded in there at the very core of me.
Vaughn’s head jerks back at my confession, his mouth falling open.
I plunge on. “But there will be lots of men who will fall in love with Archie, who Archie can be happy with. Archie only has one brother. And I think you need to heal his heart before he can ever give it fully to someone else.”
I swallow the lump in my throat.
“But there’s something you need to understand,” I say. “The thing you said to him—that he was too much—that’s been destroying him. He’s built this entire personality around making himself smaller so no one else walks away.”
Vaughn’s face goes pale.
“You didn’t just cut him out of your life. You taught him that being himself was dangerous. If you want to be his brother again, that’s the thing you have to fix.”
Vaughn is studying me with an expression I can’t read. It’s unsettling because it’s the same way Archie looks at me sometimes, like he’s seeing something I didn’t mean to show.
“What about you?” Vaughn asks slowly. “What happens to you in this scenario?”
I think about this morning. Archie in his robe, not looking at me. Don’t ruin this. The cold space in the bed where his body should have been.
“I’ll go home,” I say. “I’ll be fine.”
It’s the biggest lie I’ve ever told.
Vaughn stands. He looks at me for a long moment, then goes to leave.
“You know,” he says, “when Elizabeth described Archie’s boyfriend, she said he was the only man she’d ever met who deserved Archie.” He pauses with his hand on the doorknob. “I thought she was full of shit.”
The door clicks shut behind him.
I sit in the empty conference room for a long time.
My phone is still in my hand. The recording is still there. I replay it to listen. Vaughn’s voice, tinny and compressed, admitting to everything I’ve spent eight years angry about.
I press delete.
The file disappears. Eight years of wanting justice, gone in a tap.
I put my phone face-down on the table and stare at the two untouched glasses of water I poured for a meeting that was never going to happen.
I’m in love with a man I’ve just decided to let go.
But I’ll sacrifice myself if it means Archie gets to live his life whole and happy. That’s all I want for him.
That’s what he deserves.
Now I just have to tell him I’m leaving without telling him why.