The Serpent's Curse by Lisa Maxwell (read an ebook week .TXT) 📕

weariness in Harte’s body said otherwise. “It’s a long story, and honestly, it’s one you’d probably be better off not hearing.” Harte hesitated, trying to figure out the best way to go about what he had to do, but in the end he found that he didn’t have the stomach for anything but sincerity. He softened his voice. “How have you been, Sammie?”

At first his brother simply stared at him—in shock or disgust or sheer confusion, Harte couldn’t tell. His stomach sank as he realized that maybe he’d miscalculated. He’d hoped that his brother would welcome seeing him, but now he wondered if he should have been more careful.

But then his brother seemed to come to terms with the situation he’d found himself a part of. “It’s been a long time,” Sammie said, giving Harte an expectant look. “A lifetime…” Then, when it was clear that Harte wasn’t going to volunteer any real explanation, his brother shrugged. “You know how lifetimes go—there’s good and there’s bad mixed together. I’m lucky. I’ve had more good than bad.”

“I’m glad to hear that,” Harte told him, and he meant it.

“I have you to thank for it,” his brother said, leaning against his desk.

Harte frowned. “I doubt that.” He’d caused Sammie more trouble than anything else.

His brother’s brows went up. “You don’t think I remember that you saved my life that day?”

Harte shifted under the intensity of his brother’s gaze. He wasn’t any hero, and the last thing he wanted now was praise. Especially when he knew the danger he might be dragging Sammie back into. So he deflected. “Your father wouldn’t have really let them—”

“Yes, he certainly would have,” his brother interrupted. “You knew it, and I knew it too, even as young as I was back then. Our father would have let those men kill me if it meant saving himself and his precious reputation.” Sammie lifted a single brow. “If you hadn’t done what you did, I doubt I would have lived past that day.”

At first Harte thought he must have misheard. “Our father?”

“She told me who you were,” Sammie told him. “My mother, I mean. She said she knew the second you showed up at our home that you were his son. He’d never talked about having another child or another family, but Mother knew what kind of man she’d married.”

Harte hadn’t realized how still he’d been holding himself, fearing what Sammie might think or do. Now he felt only relief. It made his legs unsteady enough that he lowered himself to the leather sofa that stood against the wall. “I didn’t realize she knew.”

“She recognized him in you. She told me that it scared her at first—that you scared her with your intensity and your demands—but she realized that you weren’t anything like him when you saved me that day. It’s why she took care of you instead of returning you to the Committee.” Sammie let out a breath, like he was letting go of part of the past he’d been carrying for too long. “He never came back, you know. Wherever he sailed off to, he stayed gone.”

“I’m sorry…”

“Don’t be,” Sammie said, waving his hand in dismissal. “Our father was a weak and unhappy man, made all the worse because he thought he was being guided by some higher power. His disappearance was the beginning of my life, not the end of it.”

Sammie’s words were an unexpected balm. Even in the midst of the fever that had almost killed him, Harte had worried what his actions might have done to the boy and his father’s wife. He’d worried about how they might have suffered for his impulsiveness, as his own mother had.

“It must be some life you’ve lived,” Harte said softly. “You have quite the place here.”

When Esta had discovered that Sammie owned a nightclub, Harte hadn’t expected anything half as opulent as the Dragon’s Pearl. How his brother had gone from the shy, skinny little kid to the man now sitting behind the desk, a golden bracelet glinting on his wrist, Harte couldn’t imagine.

Or maybe he could. After all, hadn’t he done the same for himself ?

Sammie’s expression turned a little smug. “I built it all myself.”

“Really?” Harte asked, wondering if it had been built from the profit from a priceless lost artifact. “That must have been… difficult.”

“No more difficult than anything else I’ve lived through,” Sammie said. “Mother died when I was very young—not long after we met, actually. I was just a kid, and it was a struggle to stay alive for a long while.”

“Was it one of the earthquakes that took her?” Harte asked, thinking of the exhibit they’d seen the day before.

“They were hard—terrible to live through—but no. Mother died because of what came after.” Sammie got up from where he was leaning against the desk, went to a sideboard, and poured some amber-colored liquor into two crystal glasses. Then he handed one to Harte before downing his own in a single swallow.

“What came after?” Harte asked, not bothering to lift the cup to his lips. Instead, he watched the emotions play across Sammie’s expression.

Sammie was old—older than Harte had ever imagined himself being. His dark-blond hair had already turned an ashy gray, and there were deep creases at the corners of his eyes that spoke of a lifetime filled with laughter. Even as old as he was, Sammie looked fit and healthy. He was about the same height as Harte, but he had a presence to him, a confidence and sense of self-possession that Harte had noticed from across the nightclub. With his hair slicked back and the sharp cut of his perfectly tailored suit, Sammie could have stood next to the richest and most powerful men in the country and not looked one bit out of place.

Sammie quirked a brow in Harte’s direction as he poured himself another glass. “You know what came after.…” He gave Harte a pointed look.

“I’ve been away,” Harte said, giving up nothing.

“Must have been a hell of