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My stomach curdled. The world came to a sudden halt. I’d never experienced shock before, but the way my blood roared through my ears was jarring.

“What’s wrong?” Harper asked me. She stepped in front of my frozen body, trying to draw my focus away from the mess around us. “Tell me what’s going through your mind right now. You stopped dead in your tracks the second you saw the safe had been emptied.”

“This feels like a cover-up job,” I told her.

She nodded in agreement, taking in the hurried way the person had ransacked every drawer.

“Almost methodical. As if someone knew exactly what they were looking for. A random break-in wouldn’t have found the safe.

If they hadn’t bothered with any of the other art out in the living room, why would they in here?

The only thing I can think about is that they knew that the safe existed and the only people that know about the safe are myself . .?.”

“And who?” Harper reached out to squeeze my hand for encouragement. “Who else knew?”

I stared into that empty safe a few moments longer because once I spoke the words out loud, it would make the betrayal that much more real. “My brother. He is in some trouble with a debt he couldn’t pay. He asked me to pay it for him, but I refused. I guess he took matters into his own hands.”

Harper’s lips parted slowly. My mother had given her a few details about Jordan, but she was still largely in the dark when it came to the extent of my brother’s problems. She was trying her best to be there for me, but without the full story, she was left in the dark.

“Let’s go talk to the officers outside and then I think you and I have a lot to discuss.”

To no one’s surprise, Harper didn’t press me for details immediately. Instead, she slipped her arm through mine—always there to provide me silent support as we walked back out of my trashed home. A home that had been wrecked by my very own family.

“Do you mind if I go pack a few things for him while he talks to you?” Harper asked the officers as soon as we walked back out the front door. “I’ll avoid all the areas that Jamil thinks will be important for you. I just want to grab him some clothes and toiletries.”

“That’s fine,” an officer told her.

My head felt full of cotton when it came to her, but my heart clenched as I watched her walk back into my home, sparing me from having to do it myself.

“I know who did this,” I told the officers once Harper had disappeared inside of my house.

I recalled the empty safe sitting ajar in my room and the only other person who knew of its existence.

The pieces started to fall into place. Jordan wanting to visit me at my home.

His disappearance right when we arrived.

The pressure he felt to pay off his previous debts.

One of the officers looked at me expectantly, his pen hovering over his notepad.

“It was my brother.” Only the smallest raise of an eyebrow was any indication that the officers were surprised by the news. I walked them through the past few years, fighting the struggle to detail my brother’s life since moving to Chicago.

When I told them about Jordan’s recent visit to my home, the officers’ interest piqued. “When he was here, did you notice anything strange from him?”

I’d been through plenty of moments where stress levels ran high, but nothing compared to this moment with my heart pumping loud enough that my ears began ringing.

The only memory my brain could cling to was the stretch of time when we’d first arrived at my house and Jordan was nowhere to be found.

Part of me wished I could disprove my own instincts, but my gut told me I wasn’t wrong.

The disappointment racked through my body as the officers finished their notes. I barely registered one of them asking me if I had a place to stay for the next few days at least while they continued their investigation and for my own safety.

“He’ll stay with me.” Harper emerged back out of the house with a bag slung over her shoulder, saving me from gaping at the officers who were looking at me like they should call an ambulance to the scene before I passed out.

Her arm slipped around my waist and the pressure was the only thing keeping me from toppling over as she guided me back toward my car.

“Do you have the keys?” she asked me as she gently patted down my front pockets before locating them. “Let’s get you to my place so you can lie down.”

The wariness in her eyes was the same as in the officers’ as she helped me into the passenger seat and reached across my body to buckle me in.

I’d had a couple of panic attacks in my life—after being cornered in the grocery store by two fans who wouldn’t let me go or the time I’d gone out for drinks with Tommy right after the World Series win and the bar we rented to celebrate in downtown Chicago ended up getting swarmed with fans. But this felt completely different.

My thoughts were detached from my body, floating around me as Harper put the car into drive and we pulled away from the house.

The lights from the cop cars flashed against the front facade of my home rhythmically.

I knew that this would be plastered all over the news tomorrow, but the despair I felt for my brother’s betrayal was taking too much of my energy for me to care.

I heard Harper on the phone with my mother, filling her in on what had happened.

“How’s Jamil?” Harper glanced over at me warily as she navigated back into the city toward her apartment.

“I’m not sure,” she told my mother. “He hasn’t said much since we left.”

“Let him know I’ll call him tomorrow. I managed to get a flight home tonight. I board in thirty minutes. My husband thought it would be best if we reconvened on what to do about Jordan. We’ve let Jamil carry too much of this on his own.”

I ended up in a guest bedroom with grey walls and a white comforter that I sunk into immediately.

Harper set a glass of water down on the nightstand and unpacked the things she had grabbed for me before we left my house.

She cracked the door, leaving me to fend off the beast inside my head that was roaring at me, taunting me, telling me that nothing I did would ever bring my brother back to me.

You’re a fool for continuing to believe in him when time and time again he proves you wrong.