Page 61 of Dark Billionaire Predator

Gabriel calls at noon.

I'm at the workbench, cleaning the blades with oil and a cloth, the ritual that follows the practice. My hands smell like steel and mineral oil and the faintly sweet scent of the leather case. Gabriel's name on the screen interrupts the calm that knife work built, the way it always does—my eldest brother's gravity pulling me back into orbit.

"Saturday," he says. No greeting.

"I'll be there."

"Seven o'clock. Poppy's been cooking since Wednesday." A pause. The quality of Gabriel's pauses could fill a textbook on nonverbal communication—each one precisely calibrated, weighted with whatever he's choosing not to say. "There's someone I'd like you to meet. A man named Harlan Cates. He manages several investment vehicles for families in our circle. He's been asking for an introduction."

"An introduction to me? Why?"

"He says he has business interests that overlap with ours in the northeast corridor. He wants to discuss opportunities."

Gabriel's voice is level, informational, entirely neutral. Which means there's something beneath the surface that he'schoosing not to share. Gabriel is never neutral by accident. Neutral is a choice, and Gabriel's choices are always strategic.

"What families?" I ask.

"Several. I believe the St. Croix family is among his clients."

The name lands in the quiet of the church like a blade hitting wood. I keep my voice even. Years of practice—keeping my face steady, my tone unremarkable, my reactions invisible. Gabriel trained me to lie by never telling me he was teaching me. He simply created an environment where survival required deception, and I learned.

"I'll look forward to meeting him," I say.

"Good. And Benedict—"

"Yes?"

"Whatever you've been distracted by lately. Set it aside before Saturday. I need you present."

The line goes dead. Gabriel doesn't say goodbye. Never has. Conversations with my eldest brother begin and end on his terms, and the silence that follows is always his—shaped by his departure, defined by his absence.

I set the phone down. Look at the wall.

Harlan Cates. Manages investments for families in our circle. St. Croix among his clients. Gabriel introducing him to me specifically, at a family dinner, with a casualness that Gabriel has never applied to anything casually in his life.

Either Gabriel is testing me—probing to see if the St. Croix name generates a reaction, which would mean Gabriel knows more about my investigation than I thought—or Gabrielis genuinely conducting Brotherhood business and the St. Croix connection is a coincidence.

There are no coincidences with Gabriel.

I pick up the phone. Search for Harlan Cates. The results are sparse—a LinkedIn profile with no photo and minimal detail, a mention in a trade publication about boutique wealth management, a registration with the SEC for a firm called Cates Capital Partners. Nothing remarkable. The kind of digital footprint that could belong to a legitimate financial advisor or to someone who's been carefully constructed to look like one.

I screenshot the SEC filing. Print it. Pin it to the wall beside the law firm, below the monthly payments, next to the shell entities. Another name. Another thread. The web is growing, and Saturday it's going to be sitting at my family's dinner table in the person of a man my brother wants me to meet.

The church, the cold, the light fading early. I stand at the west-facing window—Mary at the well, the blues deeper in this glass than in the east windows—and watch the light drain from the sky over Gowanus.

My phone buzzes.

Josiah:Gabriel's in a mood. What did you do?

I almost smile. Josiah—the middle brother, the one who mediates between Gabriel's control and my chaos. He's been playing this role since we were children, translating Gabriel's silences and my provocations into something the family could survive.

Nothing. I exist. That's usually enough.

He asked me if you'd been handling your obligations. I told him you had.

Thank you.

Don't thank me. I lied. You were late on Philadelphia by four days and you've missed two check-ins this month. I covered for you because I didn't want to deal with the fallout. But Benedict—whatever's pulling your attention, get it sorted before Saturday. Gabriel isn't asking about your schedule because he's curious. He's asking because he's already decided something is wrong and he's building a case.