Chapter 6
Gavin did not hate Ella.
That made the cake worse.
Hatred would have been easier.
He liked her.
Bought expensive birthday gifts.
Taught her card tricks.
Once sat beside her hospital bed for six hours when I was delayed.
Then shoved her face into cake because Arthur told him it mattered.
I asked him why.
He stared at the frosting dried across his cuff.
“Because I’m tired.”
“Of what?”
“Being the extra son.”
There it was.
Not ambition alone.
A childhood.
I was five years older.
Firstborn.
Quicker at school.
Better with men.
Our father praised Gavin differently.
Not for achievement.
For obedience.
Good boy.
Steady boy.
Easy son.
Gavin learned early that compliance was the one arena where he could beat me.
I fought Arthur.
Gavin agreed.
Arthur rewarded him.
Years later, that pattern had become politics.
“He told you I stole your future.”
Gavin looked up.
“He didn’t have to.”
“Yes.”
I shook my head.
“He did.”
His jaw tightened.
“You got everything.”
“Did I?”
“The chair.”
“At twenty-six, after Dad nearly destroyed three alliances refusing to step back.”
“The estate.”
“With the chair.”
“The name.”
I laughed once.
“You have the same name.”
His face hardened.
“You know what I mean.”
I did.
Approval.
Gavin had spent thirty-seven years trying to turn Arthur’s approval into something concrete enough to hold.
A position.
A title.
My defeat.
Anything.
I looked at him.
“And Ella?”
His eyes moved away.
“She’s proof you don’t need him.”
Silence.
There it was.
Arthur’s real problem.
Not schedules.
Not succession.
My daughter gave me a family center that did not run through my father.
I could lose his approval and still go home loved.
Gavin could not imagine that.
Arthur could not tolerate it.
“What did Dad promise you?”
Gavin whispered:
“If you stepped back, I’d finally have my own house.”
I frowned.
“What does that mean?”
“The Whitlock estate.”
I stared.
My father had promised Gavin the home tied to the boss’s chair.
Not because Gavin needed a house.
May you like
Because he needed the symbol.
And Arthur had been teaching him that the only way to own something was for me to lose it.
