Page 46 of Beautiful Enemy

Ash’s snort has me looking up. “Yeah. He bought it for himself,” he says dryly.

I set the instructions on top of the machine, spotting a Post-it note stuck to the stainless steel.

There’s a number scrawled on it.

Eleven hundred thirteen.

It’s the door from Thursday’s show—up from eight hundred when we started. Two thousand is capacity, so while it’s trending in the right direction, we’re nowhere near selling out.

“Maybe he bought it for when he returns?” I wonder aloud.

“If that’s what you think, you’re daft.” Ash is watching me with a grin and folded arms. “There’s something going on between you and my brother.”

I match his posture. “It’s called a grudge.”

“That might be how you both started, but it’s not why you were upset last night.”

“A month off from soccer and you’re a shrink?”

He plows on, unmoved. “I was twelve when our parents died. Harry showed up at the door of my boarding school. You know the first thing he said to me?”

I shake my head.

“‘No matter what anyone says about them, they loved you. That’s all you need to know.’

“That day, everything fell to him, legally and practically. He kept me out of the investigation into their deaths. Dealt with their business interests dissolving. It didn’t make him crumble; it made him more resolved. You can call him lots of things, but when he commits to something—someone—he’ll see it through or die trying.”

My chest aches as I think of Harrison, younger than Ash and I are now, being ripped from his education and confronting not only his parents’ deaths but the fallout.

“I still hate him half the time,” I admit.

“It’s the other half that’s interesting.” He pauses. “While they were engaged, Eva tried to get Harry to step back from his business, supposedly because she wanted time together. Turns out it was so Mischa could get a toehold in markets where his business was strong.

“La Mer would be the final nail in his coffin. It’s the biggest venue in the world, the most prestigious. Harry gets it, Mischa loses. It won’t bring our parents back, but he thinks it’s something.” Ash rubs a hand over his jaw. “Most people want to be near my brother for his money or his reputation. You see the man he could be, like I do.”

The invitation hangs between us.

It’s impossible to forget that amidst Harrison’s compulsive desire to empire-build is a genuine protectiveness for his family, a desire to do right by the people he loves.

Because he does love, in his way.

He put his brother first in a time when he himself was grieving and broken. He buys cars for Toro that the old man adores. Hired Leni as his right-hand woman and allows her to be her quirky self.

Judging by the champagne bucket of waters that arrives when I start to lose myself in a set, he even intervenes on my behalf.

“And if he succeeds in growing his business and buying La Mer, you think he’ll be that man?” I ask.

“I think he can let go of his grief and have a chance at it.”

I stare at the coffee machine, the encouragement implied by it. “Eleven hundred thirteen isn’t enough.”

“Enough for what?” Ash demands.

“It’s nowhere near,” I say, ignoring the question as I grab the note and crumpling it up before tossing it in the trash.

I pull up my social and message the reporter back to say I’ll meet her.

* * *

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