10. Ethan #2
“You’re an embarrassment.” The voice was cold, cutting. “Third in your class? A Cavill should be first. Always first.”
“Father, I—”
“Don’t make excuses. Excuses are for the weak. For people like your mother. Is that what you want to be? Weak? Pathetic? A disappointment?”
There was only silence. I could picture Max on the other side of that door, back straight and face blank.
“You will do better. You will be better. Or I will find someone who can carry the Cavill name with the dignity it deserves. Do you understand me?”
“Yes, Father.”
“Good. Now get out of my sight.”
The door swung open and Max walked out. He saw me standing there, saw the horror I couldn’t quite hide from my face. For a long moment, neither of us moved.
Then he just walked past me, shoulders rigid, and didn’t speak to me for three days.
When he finally did, it wasn’t to explain or apologize. He just sat down across from me at lunch and said, quietly, “Now you know.”
“I’m not going to say anything,” I told him.
“I know.” And in that moment, the first foundations of our pack were laid.
His coldness was never arrogance. It was self-preservation. He kept the world at a distance not to shut it out, but to keep it from seeing how close he was to breaking.
Finn was the bridge.
He always was. Even back then, he had this gift for making people feel comfortable, for finding common ground where none should exist. He dragged Max to the library to study with me.
He dragged me to the dining hall to eat with them.
He refused to let either of us retreat into our respective shells.
“You two are more alike than you think,” he said once, when Max and I had been at it again, probably about class privilege. “You’re both stubborn, you both think you’re always right, and you both need friends who won’t let you get away with your bullshit.”
“I don’t need friends,” Max said.
“Everyone needs friends.” Finn threw an arm around each of our shoulders, pulling us together despite our protests. “Especially friends who know all your secrets. Much harder to be a dick when someone can call you on it.”
He wasn’t wrong.
We graduated together four years later, a scholarship kid, an heir to a fortune I couldn’t comprehend, and the golden boy who never met a stranger.
We went to the same university. Started Synthera together in a tiny rented office with nothing but a dream and a stack of research papers.
Max gave most of his inheritance away that year.
He didn’t want anything of his father’s he couldn’t tear down.
The memory fades as I reach my office, and I realize I’ve been standing in front of the door for nearly a minute, lost in the past.
My phone buzzes.
“Ma.” I answer with a smile she can’t see but probably hears anyway. “What’s up?”
“Ethan, tesoro.” Her voice is warm and slightly breathless. She’s seventy-five now, and her heart isn’t what it used to be, but she refuses to slow down. “I’m calling about Saturday.”
I lean against my office door, already knowing where this is going. “I haven’t forgotten.”
“Then you’ll be there. All three of you.”
“Ma, we’ve got a lot going on right now. Maybe we could—”
“No maybes.” She’s not asking. “You boys work too hard. You need a home-cooked meal.”
“We have a chef.”
“Elena is wonderful, but she’s not your mother.” She pauses. “I’m making Max’s favorite.”
I close my eyes. Her braciole, beef braised low and slow until it falls apart, the sauce dark and sweet and rich with garlic. Max has been addicted to it since the first time she made it for us, junior year of university.
“Ma, you don’t have to cook. Let us order something. Or Elena can prepare—”
“Ethan Anthony Brooks.” My full name. She’s bringing out the big guns. “I am not so old that I can’t cook dinner for my boys. Don’t insult me.”
“I would never.”
“Good. Saturday. Six o’clock. And tell Max to bring that wine he brought last time, the fancy one.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And tell Finn to stop flirting with Mrs. Tanaka’s daughter. She’s too young for him.”
“I’ll pass that along.”
“Good boy.” Her voice softens. “I love you, tesoro. I’ll see you Saturday.”
“Love you too, Ma.”
I hang up and stand there for a moment, my phone warm in my hand.
She has a bad hip, a really bad heart, and arthritis in her hands that she reassures me doesn’t hurt but I know better. And still she insists on cooking elaborate meals for three grown men perfectly capable of feeding themselves.
That’s my mother. The toughest woman I’ve ever known. Also the most loving.
When my father died and the money ran out and the world felt like it was ending, she worked three jobs to keep us afloat, cleaning offices at night and taking in sewing during the day. She never once complained, never let me see her cry.
And when I brought Max home that first Thanksgiving, she took one look at him and saw an angry, wounded boy who had nowhere else to go, and opened her arms.
“You’re always welcome here,” she told him. “This is your home now too.”
Max’s eyes went glassy. I’d never seen that before, and I’ve rarely seen it since.
But in my mother’s kitchen, surrounded by the smell of her cooking and the warmth of her love, he opened up in a way few people ever got to see.
She gave him the family he never had. She gave all of us something worth protecting.
I push open my office door, my mind already shifting back to work. There’s research to review, data to analyze, and, most important, a mole to catch. Someone who tried to destroy everything we’ve built, and chose to do it now, with Equinox closer to the finish line than ever.
I think of Sophie. That uncanny ability to become whoever she needs to be, to vanish into a role so completely you forget there’s a person underneath. And I find myself wondering whether there’s any part of her left that’s real.