8. Gideon
GIDEON
The olive oil sits on my kitchen counter, unused.
I bought it at the grocery store three days ago. Placed it on the counter when I got home, and haven’t touched it since, because every time I reach for it, I’m back in that aisle. Standing there while Bianca Donovan holds a bag of pistachio flour against her chest and asks me for a truce.
I want the truce. Ander probably wants a truce.
Harassing an insignificant bakery owner is not worth my time.
But it’s what my father wants. He wants to shut her down because our father loves petty bullshit.
It’s fucking annoying.
But he’s our father, and family loyalty is everything.
I pull out my laptop, then I open the ‘Revenge Spreadsheet.’ The name Ander gave it.
Health inspection violations—done. Supplier pressure—done.
Both moves improved her business.
She doesn’t panic. That’s the variable I didn’t account for.
The elevator door opens to my penthouse without warning.
Ander. Of course.
Both of my brothers have access to my home. But Ander never gives notice.
He comes through to the living room, then drops onto my couch like his bones have stopped working.
“You’re doing the thing,” he says.
“What thing?”
“Staring at the problem until it solves itself.” He kicks his boots off. They land wherever. “Has that ever worked?”
“Frequently.”
“On her?”
I close the laptop. “What do you want, Ander?”
He tips his head back against the cushions and looks at the ceiling. “Maybe I should go to the bakery again.”
“Why? Your report was useless.”
“I found out that she’s not scared.” He rolls his head to look at me. “Which is useful. You just didn’t like it.”
No, I didn’t like it.
“We need a new angle,” I say.
“Or.” He sits up. “Hear me out. We don’t.”
I wait.
“She didn’t start this,” he says. “Theo was an asshole. That’s on him.” He pauses. “And she didn’t take his shit. She told the truth.”
I set the laptop on the coffee table. “She humiliated this family.”
“Theo humiliated this family.” He crosses one ankle over his knee. “And she had the audacity to exist while he did it.”
Ander is right, but I won’t admit that.
Loyalty, I remind myself.
“The repercussions are real,” I say. “Contracts stalled. Two potential acquisitions are in a holding pattern. And because of the bad press, we’ve lost millions.”
“I know.” He runs a hand through his hair. “I also know that destroying a bakery isn’t going to fix any of that.” He meets my eyes. “She inherited that place from her mom, Gideon.”
“Her mother’s been dead for two years.”
“Yeah.” His jaw shifts. “And we also lost our mom when we were nine years old. The non-profit our mom started is her legacy, and we’d all fight to the death to keep that thing going. It seems like Bianca is doing the same.”
The back of my throat goes thick. I swallow it down before it becomes anything.
For her, it’s been two years. For us, it’s been more than two decades. The pain is still very real. And very raw.
This is the part of conversations with Ander that I find most difficult. He is frequently, inconveniently, almost pathologically not wrong.
“There’s another option,” he says. His grin starts at the corner of his mouth. “She’s hot.”
I say nothing.
“Like, objectively. Genuinely hot. Brown hair, hazel eyes. That mouth…” He bites his bottom lip. “And the way she stood up to Theo? She’s a handful, and I bet she’d have that same kind of energy in the bedroom.”
“Ander. No.”
He drops his arms, and the grin goes with them.
“I’m not saying let’s fuck her to get revenge.
That’s the opposite of what I want. I went in there.
She fed me and told me to share the baked goods with my brothers.
We’ve been assholes, and she has been nothing but kind.
I haven’t stopped thinking about her since that day.
” He looks at me. “I want her instead of all this. Not as part of it.”
“We are not going to start a relationship with her.”
“I volunteer.” He points at himself. “Selflessly. For the team.”
“This is not a team activity.”
“It could be.” The grin comes back. “I’m also available in a supporting capacity. Watching is good, too.”
My brother gets off on watching. Always has. Not hypothetical. We’ve done it. Ander finds a spot where he can see everything. Watches the woman we’re with until watching isn’t enough. Then it’s his hands on her, his mouth on her. Enthusiastically.
“We’re not doing that,” I say.
“We’re not doing that… yet,” he agrees pleasantly, like I’ve suggested postponing a meeting. He picks up my untouched glass of water from the coffee table and drinks it. “You want her. I can see it.”
“I want to get Dad off our backs. I want this resolved.”
“Sure.” He sets the glass down. “You also want her. Those things can coexist.”
I stand up, which ends the conversation as far as I’m concerned. “We need a new angle. Something cleaner.”
“Cleaner,” he repeats.
“Something that can damage her reputation.”
The grin is gone. He wants to leave her alone. I don’t blame him.
My phone buzzes with a text.
Theo: Coming over. Be there in five.
Five minutes later, the elevator dings.
Theo is still in his suit from whatever he had this afternoon, jacket on, tie loosened.
He stops in the foyer and reads the room.
Theo’s good at this. He sees Ander’s boots on my floor, body sprawled across my couch, and the closed laptop on the coffee table. He notices me standing. Whatever expression is on my face, he reads that, too.
“What did I miss?”
“Ander wants to fuck the baker,” I say.
Ander points at me from the couch without lifting his head. “I want all of us to fuck the baker. Be specific.”
Theo closes his eyes. Opens them. Then he walks past us to the bar cart, pours two fingers of whatever is closest, and doesn’t pour one for either of us.
“I came over to talk strategy.”
I sit back down. “Then talk.”
He takes a sip, sets the glass down, and he says nothing.
Theo is the one who started this, and now he has nothing prepared. He hates this as much as we do.
When his phone rings, he looks down at it, and his shoulders tighten.
Ander sits up. He knows the ringtone, too. We all know the ringtone.
Theo answers on the second ring. “Sir.”
He puts the phone to his ear and walks two steps toward the window.
“I’m at Gideon’s. Ander is here, too.”
Theo walks back over to us. He sits, puts the phone on speaker, and sets it on the coffee table.
Fucking great.
“Theodore.” Our father’s voice fills my apartment. “I’m waiting.”
“You’re on speaker,” Theo tells him.
A pause. Ice against crystal. He’s in the study.
“Good. I want all three of you to hear this.”
The signet ring taps. I don’t have to be in the room to know it’s the signet ring. I have flinched at that sound since I was a child.
“Four weeks.” Tap. “Four weeks since that girl has been a problem. And what do I see, when I open a newspaper this morning? A feature on her bakery. And of course, the gala incident is mentioned.” A breath. “She’s thriving, boys. She is thriving because she humiliated our family.”
Theo’s hand closes into a fist.
“It’s been handled, sir,” he says.
“Handled?” Our father laughs. It is the worst sound he makes. “Your efforts to destroy her are laughable. Your efforts have made her career.”
Silence.
“Enough games,” he says. “I want her finished. I don’t care how. I don’t care what it costs. I want her out of that building, out of that business, and out of this family’s life by the end of the month. Are we understood?”
Ander hasn’t moved.
Neither have I.
Theo opens his mouth, and what comes out surprises me.
“It won’t work, sir.”
“Excuse me?”
“If we destroy her outright—” Theo stops, trying to find the right words.
But I know what he’s going to say. He told us about the conversation he had with Bianca at the bakery.
Theo starts again. “People are already rooting for her. The public is invested. If she disappears from that storefront, it doesn’t end the story. It becomes the story. And we’ll be the villains.”
Ander’s eyes cut to me. Neither of us says anything.
“Theodore.” Our father’s voice has dropped half a register. “Are you telling me that a baker has more leverage in this conversation than your father?”
“No, sir.”
The signet ring taps. Slow. Three times. “Then what, exactly, are you telling me?”
“That the wrong move will cost us more than we’ve already lost.”
There is a long pause before my father speaks again. “We’ll discuss this later, Theodore.”
Theo flinches, and the line goes dead.
Ander stands up and walks to the window, putting his back to both of us.
This needs to end. We need to forget about Bianca Donovan. We need to forget about her hazel eyes. Her lips. Her very fuckable body.
But we can’t forget about her. I can’t offer her the truce she wanted.
No matter what happens, our father will continue to blame Theo for any failures. It’s always been that way.
Theo hates it. Ander and I hate it.
And I am not going to choose a baker over my brother.
“We need a different angle.” My voice is steady.
Theo looks up.
“The reputation,” I say. “Her bakery is known for being warm and cozy. Wholesome. The mother’s recipes. The community bakery. We don’t take the bakery. We take the image.”
Ander turns from the window. “No.”
“Ander, we have to,” I tell him, not needing to add the loyalty speech we’ve heard so many times from our father.
“I said no.” His mouth is a thin line.
Rarely have I ever seen my brother this serious.
He walks back to the couch. But he doesn’t sit.
“Father wants her finished.” I keep my voice level. “She’s young. She can come back from this.”
Ander won’t look at me. “Tell yourself whatever helps you sleep at night.”
Theo clears his throat. “What did you have in mind?”
I look at him. “Mice.”
Ander makes a sound.
“A viral photograph of a rodent in a bakery does what the health inspector failed to do.” I keep my eyes on Theo. “It’s deniable. It’s small. It plays into the news cycle that already exists. The public turns. Father gets his result. The bakery survives, scaled down. She survives.”
The word scaled down tastes wrong in my mouth.
I keep going.
“We use a third-party contractor. No paper trail to Sawyer Holdings. We pick the date. A food blogger happens to be in the bakery. A photograph happens to get taken. The story tells itself.”
Theo is quiet for a long moment.
Then he nods. Once.
Ander laughs. But it’s not his usual laugh. It’s cynical.
“You’re both fucking unbelievable.” He cracks his knuckles. “You’re going to put mice in her kitchen. Because Dad called.”
“Ander.” Theo uses a placating tone.
“Don’t.” He looks at Theo, then me. “She didn’t start it. She doesn’t deserve this.”
“This is the smallest version of what he asked for,” Theo responds.
“Grow some balls. Our dad is a dick.” Ander shakes his head. “I’m out.”
“Ander!”
“I’m out, Gideon.” He pulls on his boots. “You want to do this, you do it without me.”
He walks to the elevator.
He pauses with his hand on the button. Doesn’t turn around.
“I went to her bakery to cause trouble. And she sent me home with baked goods. And even though I ate all of them, she gave them to all of us.”
The elevator dings. The doors open.
“Think about that while you try to ruin her.” He steps in, and the doors close.
Theo and I don’t look at each other.
He picks up his glass and drinks, then sets it down with more care than the moment deserves.
“He’ll come around,” Theo says.
“He won’t.”
And fuck, he’s right. Ander is right, and we’re wrong.
Theo stands and buttons his jacket. “Tomorrow,” he says. “Have the contractor by tomorrow.”
He doesn’t say goodbye.
The elevator dings a second time.
I’m alone in my apartment, with my thoughts.
Loyalty, I remind myself again. Family always comes first.
I take out my phone.
There is a contact in my phone that I have used three times in my adult life.
I’ve used him for problems that can’t be traced. This is overkill.
Mice in a bakery. A child could arrange it.
I open up my secure messaging app. Type the request.
My thumb hovers over send.
I press it.