Page 31 of Silence and Surrender

“You’re here often enough that the waiter knows your wine preferences?” I asked after the man left.

He was quiet for a moment, studying the stem of his water glass. “More lately. Sometimes paperwork and silence make poor company.” His voice dropped lower. “And sometimes home feels too empty. Too quiet.”

The admission seemed to surprise him as much as it did me. Colton never showed weakness, never revealed the cracks in his armor. But here, in the intimate lighting of this hidden gem of a restaurant, something was shifting between us.

The wine arrived—deep garnet catching the candlelight. I watched him taste it with practiced ease, noting the changes in him. The new strength in his hands. The way he filled space differently now.

“Your brother taught you about wine?” I asked, curious about this version of him.

“Only recently—since he started the vineyard.”

“Do you have other family?”

His expression clouded slightly. “Our mother died of cancer when we were six. And now Dad...” He took a careful sip, the loss still fresh. Even though he looked away briefly, I could see how deeply it wounded him. “He just passed earlier this year. Cancer again. Like some cruel family legacy.”

I found myself reaching across the table, covering his hand with mine. The contact surprised us both, but he turned his palm up, letting our fingers intertwine.

“Cooper handled it differently than me,” he continued, thumb brushing absently over my knuckles. “When the medical bills got bad, he started running with Steele—art heists, smuggling, anything to help pay for treatments. I tried staying legitimate at first, but...”

“But you couldn’t let your brother carry it alone.”

“No.” His smile was sad. “Law school loans were crushing me. Creditors calling constantly. So, I started helping Cooper, handling the financial side when his business partner, Steele, left. Laundering money, creating paper trails...”

“You were both just trying to survive.”

“Cooper found freedom in it, somehow. Breaking rules became his way of fighting back against everything we couldn’t control.” Colton met my eyes then, and the intensity of his gaze made my breath catch. “But I went the other way. Needed structure. Order. Something I could hold onto when everything else was chaos.”

“Until his wife found him?” I asked, understanding dawning as the stories I’d pieced together merged into a complete picture.

“She saved him. Showed him better ways to find that freedom he craved.” His fingers tightened on mine. “The right person can do that—help you find a different kind of freedom. A better way to live.”

Heat crept up my neck at the implication. I understood what he wasn’t saying—that maybe I could be that person for him. That maybe I already was, challenging him while giving him new reasons to trust.

The waiter’s arrival broke the charged moment between us. We ordered, pasta for me, steak for him, and I found myself studying him in the candlelight, seeing past the controlled exterior to someone who’d built walls not from coldness, but from loss.

“Tell me about your father,” he said after a moment, as if sensing my thoughts. “What was he like before...”

“Before they killed him?” The words hurt less here, in this intimate space with him. “He was...brilliant. Passionate about art, about truth, about justice. I grew up in his study, watching him examine brushstrokes under magnifiers, testing pigments, tracing provenance through the centuries.” The memory ached, but sweetly. “He made it feel like solving mysteries. Like uncovering buried treasure.”

“You must miss him terribly.”

“Every day.” I met his eyes, finding unexpected understanding. “Everyone accepted the heart attack story. It was a simple explanation for an older man’s sudden death.”

“And you took his job…why?”

“To understand everything.” My hands clenched around my wine glass. “To finish his legacy…to be close to his memory…but now…now I’m scared about what I’m uncovering.”

Colton’s entire hand now covered mine, his palm warm and steady. His fingers curved around mine naturally, like they belonged there. “We’ll find the truth,” he said. “What he discovered, what they’re hiding, we’ll bring it into the light.”

I should have pulled away. Should have remembered that caring made you vulnerable. Instead, I turned my hand under his, bringing our fingers back together.

“Your…physical transformation…” I said, needing to shift focus before emotions overwhelmed me. “What really started it?”

“Three drunk bankers outside The Wolseley.” His thumb traced absent patterns on my wrist, making it hard to concentrate. “I couldn’t defend myself. Needed waiters to intervene. Cooper would have handled it easily, but I just stood there, frozen. Useless.”

“That’s why you found a trainer?”

“Yes, his name is Stryker. I was tired of needing rescue. Tired of being the brother who only fought with words.” His hand tightened fractionally on mine. “Tired of feeling helpless.”

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