Julian
TWENTY-TWO
Iknow Gabe’s handwriting better than most people know their own mother’s.
You don’t spend years building an empire with someone without learning the shape of the way they think, and Gabe thinks in columns.
In neat blocks. In coded little systems that only look casual if you’ve never watched him reorganize an entire contract folder because one page was half a centimeter out of line.
His notes are the same.
Which is why one wrong detail jumps out at me.
We’re in the upstairs office at Hawthorne House, the one Gabe claimed without ever having to say it out loud. It looks exactly as you’d expect. Everything in its place. Dark wood desk. Low shelves. Files lined up. Pens arranged by type, not color, because he’s a psychopath with standards.
He’s at the far end of the room on a call, discussing tour logistics for a band out of Chicago that still seems to think relocating for any length of time to a small town in upstate New York will somehow kill their credibility.
Gabe’s fixing that in three sentences and a promise about creative control.
I’m half listening, half doing what I usually do in here, which is annoying him by existing near his desk while pretending I’m helping.
To be fair, I did come up to ask about the Wild Hearts deal.
To be even fairer, I got distracted by the open notebook sitting beside his laptop.
Not because I was snooping. Because the man leaves things right in my eye line and then acts shocked when I read them. That’s on him.
I’m leaning against the bookshelf, guitar pick rolling over my knuckles, when I catch it.
A single line in the margin of a page that’s otherwise full of budget numbers, projected release schedules, studio allocations, and a shortlist of festival targets for next year.
DLR / call Thurs / masters?
I go still, because there’s only one DLR that makes sense in this context.
Dylan Luke Harlow.
Xander’s brother.
The one he hasn’t spoken to in a year.
The one whose name sits in this house as an old crack in the wall. Not always obvious, but always there if the light hits wrong.
Gabe ends the call with his usual smooth, efficient charm and looks up just in time to catch me still staring at the notebook.
His eyes narrow. “Why do you look interested?”
I straighten a little. “Because I am.”
“That’s never reassuring.”
“No, it usually isn’t.”
He reaches for the notebook, but I’m already pushing off the shelf.
“Is that Dylan?” I ask.
There’s no point easing into it. With Gabe, you either say it or you waste ten minutes watching him pretend not to know what you mean.
He doesn’t answer, which is answer enough.
He closes the notebook with one hand. “That depends on what you think you saw.”
I let out a short laugh. “Oh no. Don’t do that lawyer voice with me.”
“I don’t have a lawyer voice.”
“You do. It’s deeply annoying.”
He leans back in his chair, sleeves rolled once, expression flattening into that infuriating calm he uses when he’s already decided what the room is allowed to know. “Julian.”
“Gabe.”
His mouth twitches, just barely. “What exactly are you asking?”
I push away from the desk and cross the room, shutting the office door behind me before I answer.
That gets his attention, because if I’m closing a door, it means I’ve stopped being playful. I turn back to him. “I’m asking if you’ve really been in touch with Dylan.”
He studies me. “Yes.”
I blink once. “Since when?”
“A while.”
“A while,” I repeat. “Very helpful. Very specific.”
He folds his hands on the desk. “A few months.”
I stare at him. Months.
“You’ve been talking to Xander’s estranged brother for months,” I say, “and you thought maybe that didn’t need to come up?”
“That depends how useful it was going to be.”
I laugh then, because wow.
“Useful,” I repeat. “Amazing choice of word.”
“It’s an accurate one.”
“No, it’s a Gabe one.”
“Those overlap more than you imply.”
I drag a hand through my hair and pace once toward the window, then back. The room feels smaller now. More airless.
“You’re managing communication,” I say, more statement than question.
“Yes.”
“For who?”
He doesn’t blink. “Both of them.”
That stops me short. “What?”
He exhales, patient in a way that always means he’s about to say something infuriatingly rational. “Xander doesn’t know it’s active communication. Dylan reaches out. I don’t always respond. When I do, I keep it narrow. Business. Updates. Temperature checks.”
I stare at him. “Temperature checks?”
“You’re mocking the phrase because it’s clinical.”
“I’m mocking the phrase because you’re talking about two brothers who would rather bleed out than admit they miss each other and you’ve apparently turned them into a risk assessment.”
His expression doesn’t change. “That doesn’t make it inaccurate.”
“No,” I say. “It makes it bleak.”
Gabe stands and comes around the desk. Not aggressive. Just removing the furniture between us because he knows this conversation has moved past casual.
“I didn’t tell Xander because there was nothing useful to tell him yet,” he says.
“That’s a hell of a sentence.”
“It’s a practical one.”
I throw my hands in the air in frustration. “There you go again.”
He ignores that. “Dylan’s band is at risk of circling the drain.”
I go quiet, because that part, at least, I know.
The Last Rebels burned bright, burned messy, then started eating themselves alive in public. Great music. No infrastructure. Too much ego, too much damage, not enough discipline. The usual tragedy with better cheekbones.
Still, there’s a difference between knowing a band’s unstable and hearing Gabe say it casually because he’s already measured the collapse.
“They’re not done,” I say.
“No,” he agrees. “Which is exactly why this matters.”
He moves back to the desk and flips the notebook open again, this time on purpose.
I stay where I am and let him.
“Dylan’s been sending over rough material,” he says. “Not officially. Nothing polished. But enough.”
I blink at him. “You’ve heard demos?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
Gabe looks up.
The pure strategist falls away, and I can see the music guy underneath it. The one who still, despite everything, loves the thing itself more than the money around it.
“They’re good,” he says simply. “Very good.”
Gabe doesn’t hand out praise as candy. If anything, he under-calls things to avoid sentiment clouding the read.
If he says they’re good, they’re good.
I walk back toward the desk. “How good?”
His gaze holds mine. “Good enough to carry the label.”
I stop moving.
Redemption Records is built, but it isn’t anchored yet. We’ve got talent. Promise. A roster with teeth. But we need a flagship act big enough to force the industry to look up and stop calling this move a vanity retreat.
And The Last Rebels…
Christ.
They would do it.
I look at Gabe and feel the exact moment irritation starts mixing with understanding.
“That’s what this is,” I say.
“It’s part of what this is.”
“No, Gabe. That’s what this is.”
He closes the notebook. “It would be irresponsible not to consider it.”
I bark out a laugh. “You really can make anything sound noble.”
“It doesn’t have to be noble to be necessary.”
“Necessary for the label.”
“Yes.”
I turn away and pace again, because standing still is surrender.
The office smells of coffee and paper and the kind of order Gabe builds around himself when the rest of life refuses to cooperate. Usually I find it comforting in a weird way.
Right now, I want to knock something slightly out of alignment just to make him feel human.
“You know what happens if Xander finds out you’ve been talking to Dylan behind his back,” I say.
“Yes. He’ll be furious.”
I stop and stare at him. “That’s your answer?”
“It’s the expected outcome.”
“That doesn’t bother you?”
“Of course, it bothers me.”
He says it flatly, but I know him better than that.
It does bother him. More than he’s letting show. The problem is Gabe can file his feelings under “secondary” if he thinks the larger structure matters more.
Usually, that’s useful. This might be one of the times it ruins everything.
“You’re gambling with the one fracture in this house that still has blood on it,” I say.
The thing with Dylan was never just about career rivalry. Not really. It was about years of resentment layered on top of grief layered on top of betrayal, and all of it turning into something too ugly and too personal to pull apart cleanly.
People on the outside always make it about the girl because that’s easier to digest. Fiancée sleeps with brother. Brothers fall out. Big dramatic scandal. Simple.
It wasn’t simple.
By the time that happened, Xander was already half gone with grief. Josiah’s death blew the foundations out from under him. The band was fraying. He was fraying. And Dylan…
Dylan has always had terrible timing when it comes to pain. His own and everybody else’s.
Sleeping with Xander’s fiancée didn’t just break trust. It confirmed every dark thing Xander already believed about abandonment and loyalty and what people do when you stop being easy to love.
I know that.
Gabe knows that, too.
Which is why this is making me crazier than it should.
“You think Dylan’s worth the fallout,” I say.
Gabe doesn’t answer immediately. “I think The Last Rebels are.”
I shake my head. “And you don’t see how that’s a problem?”
“I see exactly how it’s a problem.”
“Do you? Because from where I’m standing, it looks a lot like you’ve convinced yourself this is clean if you call it strategy.”
His jaw tightens. “I haven’t called it clean.”
“No. You’ve called it necessary.”
“Because it is.”
I step closer to the desk. “For the label. Say the rest.”
He holds my stare.
“Redemption needs a premier act,” he says. “An undeniable one. Not eventually. Now. We have talent. We have infrastructure. We have vision. What we don’t have is the kind of gravitational pull that forces the market to take us seriously on first contact.”
I don’t interrupt. Partly because he’s right. Partly because once Gabe starts talking, cutting in is pointless. He’ll just route around you and keep going.