Aine was quiet for a moment. "You never went to school?"
"Not in any real sense."
She looked at him sideways. "You really did have a thoroughly ruined childhood."
The park's speaker system crackled overhead before he could respond. A cheerful automated voice filled the air around them.
Please buckle your seatbelt. We are about to lose our minds.
He held her hair back without being asked.
When the roller coaster had done its worst and Aine was bent forward doing exactly what she had warned him she would do that's to throw up, his hand gathered her hair away from her face and held it there, steady and without comment, until it was over.
He produced a bottle of water and handed it to her when she straightened.
"Thank you," she said, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand and looking completely unbothered.
"I am never bringing you back to this place," he said flatly. "I thought you were going to vomit your guts out."
"Have you ever played video games?"
He looked at her. "No."
"Come on then."
The game centre was loud and bright and Aine moved through it with the ease of someone who had spent significant time in places like this. She stood beside him and walked him through the controls with the patient efficiency of someone who had been teaching Tesni how to lose gracefully for years.
Within twenty minutes he was ahead of her on the scoreboard.
"That is a cheat," Aine said, staring at the screen. "You just learned how to play."
Ravi raised one eyebrow without looking away from the game. "I am always the winner."
"I have never lost before," she said. "I always beat Tesni. Every single time. No contest."
He checked his watch and the easy expression settled back into something more measured. "It is almost six. I cannot keep you out much later."
"One more stop."
"Where?"
She was already walking.
"The beach," he said when they arrived, looking out at the water.
"Aha."
"What is particularly special about it?"
She did not answer immediately. Instead she reached up and tilted his head gently to the left with two fingers.
The sun was setting directly over the water, the sky pulling every shade of orange and gold it had into one place and laying them across the surface of the sea.
"Oh," he said.
"My mother used to take me to the beach in Singapore every evening to watch this," Aine said, her voice quieter now, carrying something old and warm in it. "She said it brings good things into your life. Good wishes." She sat down on the sand. "Come and sit."
He sat beside her without argument.
They watched the sun for a while without speaking, the water moving in and out at its own pace, indifferent to everything happening on the shore.
"If what your mother believed about this is true," Ravi said eventually, "I should bring my entire operation here. Every one of my men. Line them all up on this beach for the good luck."
Aine almost smiled. "You are already first in the mafia rankings. What more could you possibly want?"
He did not answer that.
She stood after a moment and picked up a stick from the sand. She wrote his name in large letters at the waterline, then drew a heart around it carefully, the lines even and deliberate. She stepped back and gestured for him to come and look.
"People do this at the beach," she said simply. "It is a thing."
He looked at it. The water crept up toward the letters and retreated again. "Nice," he said.
His hand found hers.
She looked down at their locked fingers and did not pull away. She did not know why she did not pull away. She looked up and found him already facing her, closer than she had registered him moving, his mask lowered for the second time she had seen it, his green eyes level with hers.
He kissed her. Brief and unhurried and entirely deliberate.
When he pulled back she could feel the warmth in her own face and she looked away from him toward the water because she did not want him to see that she had wanted more of it.
What is this, she thought, watching the waves erase his name from the shore letter by letter. What do I call this?
She had no answer.
The drive home was quiet in the best way. Aine fell asleep somewhere between the beach and the city, her head tipped slightly toward the window, her face carrying none of its usual guardedness in sleep.
Ravi drove and occasionally looked at her.
The car in front of them stopped without warning.
He braked hard. The jolt moved through the car and Aine stirred, her eyes flickering.
"It is fine," he said quietly. "Go back to sleep."
She settled again.
He got out of the car and stood in front of it, his arms folded, his eyes on the vehicle blocking the road. He already knew who it was before the door opened.
Jokull stepped out.
"Surround the car," he said to his men without raising his voice.
"Yes sir."
Ravi looked at him with the expression of someone who had been expecting an interruption and had simply been waiting to find out what shape it would take. He crossed one leg over the other and leaned back against the bonnet.
"What is it?"
"You know exactly why I am here," Jokull said. "Hand her over."
"She is asleep." Ravi tilted his head toward the car. "You are welcome to come back at a more considerate hour.When she is awake ."
He turned back toward the car.
Jokull's hand closed around his arm from behind. The barrel of a gun pressed against the back of his head.
"You can act savage with anyone you want," Jokull said, his voice carrying the particular edge of someone who had decided tonight was the night. "But not with me."
Ravi looked at him.
Then he smiled. Just slightly. Just enough.
His hand moved faster than Jokull could track it, catching his wrist and twisting his arm up and back in one clean motion, bending it behind his neck and holding it there with a pressure that made the options very clear. With his free hand he lifted the gun from Jokull's grip and turned it around, pressing it forward.
"Get back in your car," he said quietly. "All of you. Weapons down. Now."
The men lowered their guns slowly, one by one, and filed back into their vehicles without a word exchanged between them.
Ravi held the gun steady until the last door closed.
Then he lowered it and looked at his half brother properly for the first time since the funeral table. He exhaled slowly, something between exhaustion and contempt moving through the sound of it.
"I cannot believe I used to envy you," he said. The words came out with the particular disgust of someone who has just remembered something embarrassing about their younger self. "All that schooling. All those years of being the one she kept and the one she loved and the one who got to leave." He shook his head. "And you still did not learn a single thing worth knowing."
Jokull said nothing.
"Learn your place," Ravi said, his voice dropping to something quieter and more final. "Whatever you do, whatever world you build, whatever ranking you climb to, you will never be me. You cannot be better than me. You have been a loser your entire life and tonight has not changed that."
He pushed him back toward his car, not violently, just firmly, the way you move something out of a doorway you need to walk through.
Then he turned and got back into his own car without looking back.