Exposed (Ethan Frost 3)

“Come on, Ethan. I might be young and I might be new to the table, but I’ve read every article and interview with or about you that I can get my hands on. I even stood there and let your mother spew vitriol all over me as she listed all the reasons I’m wrong for you. I can read between the lines. You’re the son of a real-life American hero. You’re a self-made almost billionaire. You’re a huge philanthropist who works to save the planet, poor children and US military veterans. If there’s a better political candidate than you out there, then believe me, I haven’t seen him.”

“I’ve never wanted that. Politics is a dirty game, one I don’t want to play.”

“Exactly my point. You don’t want to run. Brandon does. Your mother is putting all her political and social capital behind him, trying to make him into something he isn’t and never will be. But you can’t stand there and tell me Brandon was her first choice for this role. You can’t tell me she hasn’t tried to talk you into running.”

“It was a long time ago. I told her I wasn’t interested. She pushed. I pushed back.”

“Exactly. And now your brother is running for office. And he’ll probably win. After all, he can make it to the House of Representatives. Maybe he’ll even make it to the Senate. But you, you can make it to the presidency in a heartbeat—Jesus, it’s practically tailor-made for you. Or at least, it would be if you hadn’t married the girl with the murky past.”

“Loving you is more important than any political aspiration I might or might not have.”

She blushes, looks at her feet. “However you feel about it,” she says huskily, “you have to know that Brandon is aware of the discrepancy. You have to know that he hates you for it. He’s a child. He’s weak and spoiled and arrogant and it has to kill him that the whole world is pretty much at your feet while he has to beg for everything he gets.”

“I work damn hard for what I have.”

“Of course you do. I know that, you know that, nearly everyone who knows you knows that. But the Brandon I used to know, the Brandon who runs up gambling debts, who does drugs and hurts women just because he can, who abdicates any and all responsibility for his crimes, doesn’t see it like that. All he sees is that he’s getting your leftovers and that has to grate on him. Add in the fact that you’re actively trying to gather enough evidence to effectively tie him up in a bow and deliver him to the district attorney’s office, and you have to know he’s going to fight back. You have to know he’ll do everything he can to tear you down.”

Her words make sense. They hurt, because there’s a tiny part of me that is—that will always be—Brandon’s older brother. But it’s the same part I silenced when I talked to Valducci, the same part of me I silenced when I told myself that destroying him was the only way to avenge Chloe and truly make her feel safe again. And it’s the same part of me I’ve despised since I found out about what he did to Chloe and the part I played in hurting her because of him.

The relationship we once had—a relationship that was always more in my head than it was in actuality—isn’t enough to save him. Nothing is. The moment I found out what he did to Chloe any collateral he had with me was used up.

“I understand what you’re saying,” I tell Chloe. “I do. But Brandon isn’t the bogeyman. He doesn’t get a free pass because he’s too awful a human being to take down. I can handle him and whatever he decides to throw at me.”

“But that’s just it. I don’t want you to have to handle it. He’s not like you, Ethan. He won’t fight clean. He’ll do whatever he has to do to protect himself—and to hurt you.”

“Don’t you understand that you’re just making more of an argument as to why he has to go? He’ll continue to hurt people with impunity until someone stops him.”

“But why do you have to be the one to stop him?”

“Who else is going to do it?”

“Anyone else. I don’t care. I just want you safe.”

“I am safe. I will be safe. By the time Brandon knows what’s hit him, it will be too late for him to save himself.”

She narrows her eyes at me. “And how is that going to make you feel?”

“I’ll deal with that when I come to it.”

“Don’t you think we should deal with it now?”

I shake my head, give her a rueful smile. “Not even a little bit.”

“Can you at least promise to think about what I’ve said? Maybe you could go after him a little easier—”

/> “There is no easy way to do this.”

“I know that. I do,” she insists when I eye her skeptically. “But could you maybe scale back the revenge, make it a little smaller? Maybe just kill his political career but don’t actually send him to prison? Hurt him, but don’t destroy him and make him come gunning for you?”

“And how exactly do you propose I do all that?”

“How am I supposed to know? You’re the genius in this relationship.”

I can’t help laughing at the indignation in her tone. “More like I’m one of the geniuses.”

I wrap an arm around her waist, start propelling her back toward the stairs. “Now, come on. Enough of this talk. Let’s focus on what we’re going to do for once, instead of on what Brandon has done or will do.”

As a change of subject, it isn’t a very good one. But Chloe nods anyway as she allows me to guide her up the steep stairs and into the house.