Nate had been the last one to join them, back when they were all just teenagers and none of them had learned yet what the rest of their lives would cost. Alex was the heir. Arianne came from money old enough to have its own weather. Julian’s family sat one branch over from Arianne’s, close enough to share holidays. Nate had none of that. He was Warren Jacobs’s mistake, the fourth son nobody put on the family portrait, brought into the house at fifteen only because his mother had gotten sick enough that Warren’s money became the only option left on the table.
Nobody in that house had let him forget what he was for the first six months. Then Alex showed up at a summer gathering Nate hadn’t wanted to attend, sat down next to him without being introduced, and asked what he thought of the food instead of asking who his mother was. Alex kept doing that for the rest of his life. Never raised it. Never made Nate’s name into a topic that needed managing. By the time the others found out where Nate had come from, Alex had already decided it didn’t change anything, and the rest of them had learned to follow his lead on that the same way they followed it on everything else.
Twenty years later, Nate remained the one who caught things first and said them last.
He found Arianne near the dessert table, glass in hand, watching Lexx get passed to yet another relative. "Can I get a minute with you?"
Something in his voice made her set the glass down before she answered. "Of course." She studied him a second longer. "Is this something the rest of them should hear too?"
"It doesn’t have to be."
"That’s not what I asked." Arianne’s eyes hadn’t left his face. "If it matters, I’m not going to be the reason Gilbert and Julian find out secondhand later. I don’t leave people in the dark when I don’t have to."
Nate hesitated, jaw working once before he nodded. "Fine. All of them, then."
She caught Franz’s eye across the room, then Gilbert’s, then Julian’s, and the four of them peeled away from the party one at a time, unhurried enough that nobody watching caught on that anything had changed. Nate led them down a short hallway to a private room Bellamy’s used for smaller parties, empty tonight, chairs stacked against one wall.
"Is this the investigation?" Gilbert asked, once the door was shut.
"No." Nate looked at Arianne. "I need help finding a surgeon. For Mikaella."
Arianne’s expression didn’t change, but something behind it did. "Has she gotten worse?"
"Yes." Nate said it flatly, the way he said most things that cost him something. "The surgeon in Montclair won’t operate. Says the odds are too low to justify the risk on his table. I’ve been calling around for two weeks looking for someone who’ll say something different."
"I’ll ask people I know abroad. There are a few favors I made years ago I’ve never cashed in." Arianne didn’t hesitate over it, the decision already made before she’d finished the sentence. "Give me a name and a diagnosis and I’ll have something back to you by the end of the week."
"There’s something else." Nate’s hands flexed once at his sides. "I want to pawn the bar to you. The restaurants too, all three of them. Whatever this costs, I don’t want it landing on you as another bill for my sister. I’d rather owe you something with collateral attached to it. I want the chance to buy it back, if that’s something you’d let me do."
"Nate—"
"I already know what you’re going to say." He kept going before she could. "I know you’d cover it without blinking. That’s exactly why I don’t want to ask you to. I’ve spent fifteen years watching you and Alex hand me things I couldn’t pay back, and I need this one to at least look like a transaction I can walk away from with my name intact."
Gilbert had said little through most of it, arms crossed, his attention fixed on Nate the way it always fixed on someone he was worried about. "Is there no other way? Flying her overseas with her condition as unstable as you’re describing it, that’s its own risk. Doesn’t she need to be stable enough to survive the trip before any of this matters?"
"I’ll get clearance from her doctor before anything’s booked. If he says she can’t fly, we find someone who’ll come to her instead." Nate’s voice didn’t waver on it. "I’m not moving her anywhere that isn’t cleared first."
"I’ll talk to Ellie," Julian said. "If there’s a version of this where she consults from here, or knows someone in the field who owes her a favor, she’ll know before anyone else does." He looked at Nate directly. "And don’t rush into signing over three businesses you built from nothing. Let us help you look for options that don’t end with you owning less of your own life."
"That’s exactly why I want it going to Arianne and Gilbert specifically, not a bank." Nate’s mouth flattened. "A bank doesn’t care if I buy it back. I’m hoping the two of you might."
"We would," Gilbert said, even and immediate.
"What does Warren say?" Gilbert asked it carefully, like he already suspected the answer wasn’t going to be a surprise.
"Nothing worth repeating. He made it clear a long time ago there’s no olive branch coming from that side of the family. I stopped waiting for one before Mikaella was even born." Nate looked at the four of them, the room hushed enough now that the party down the hall sounded like it belonged to a different building entirely. "She’s the only blood I claim. I’m not losing her because I was too proud to ask the people who actually are my family for help."
Nobody argued with that. Franz was the one who finally broke the silence, stepping forward to put a hand on Nate’s shoulder, brief and solid. "You’ll have whatever you need. All of it. Starting tonight."
"I appreciate that."
Julian crossed his arms, considering something before he said it out loud. "You know none of us ever cared where you came from. You were the one who decided that mattered more than we did."
"I know that now." Nate rubbed a hand over his jaw. "Took me twenty years and a sister in a hospital bed to actually believe it instead of just hearing it."
"Better late than never," Gilbert said.
"Don’t thank us yet," Arianne said. "Thank us when we’ve actually found someone who can help her. Until then, all of you get back to the party before Amanda notices five of us are missing and assumes the worst."
Nate almost laughed at that, the sound catching somewhere before it fully arrived. He followed them back down the hallway toward the noise and the candlelight, five names heavier on the list of people he owed something to, and for the first time in two weeks, the weight of it looked survivable instead of impossible.