Blood Brothers Read Free

Norse warlord bent in thought and shadow, brooding over plans for his next conquest.
    Ben decided to give his feet a rest and headed for the little grouping of chairs. As he got closer, he noticed that the clothing on the Viking mannequin didn’t look right, though the light was too dim to say exactly why. As Ben approached, the figure stirred and looked up. It was Gunnar. “Ah, Mr. Corbin. I see that I’m not the only escapee from the hot air blowing out there.”
    “The speeches do start to sound the same after a while. I figured the exhibit might be more interesting than the people talking about it.”
    “Well, what do you think?”
    “Pretty impressive, especially when it’s empty like this. They’ve really created the atmosphere of another place and time. When I walked in here, I almost felt like I’d arrived early for a Viking war council and that any minute the king and his generals would walk in.”
    Gunnar regarded him with an odd, piercing look for a moment. “It’s interesting that you should put it like that. I—” There was a noise behind them, and Gunnar looked past Ben’s shoulder. Ben turned and saw Karl Bjornsen walking up to them.
    “Gunnar!” he said in a booming voice. “I’m so glad you could make it to our exhibition.” He was smiling, but it was the hard, predatory smile of the victor greeting the vanquished.
    “I wanted to make sure you didn’t screw it up too badly after I left,” Gunnar replied. He stood and looked around. “It looks good. I assume someone else took care of it.”
    Ben shifted his weight uncomfortably and looked away, but Karl continued to smile. “You’re right. I was so busy cleaning up the mess you left at my company that I didn’t have time to work on this myself.”
    Gunnar’s face hardened. “Ditt selskap, sier du?”
    “Ja. Og min teknologi som du stjal,” Karl growled in reply.
    Gunnar tensed and clenched his fists. “Din helv—” He stopped himself as he noticed a group entering the exhibit hall from the reception. “Excuse me; do any of you speak Norwegian?”
    “Yes, I do,” replied a matronly woman with white hair and a tentlike dress.
    “How unfortunate. Since that is the case, I will limit my remarks to wishing you all a good night,” Gunnar continued with an icy smile. “Even you, little brother.” Then he pushed past Karl and out of the hall.

    Two hours later, the festivities were winding down. The bar was closed, everyone who wanted to see the exhibit had been through the hall, and most of the crowd had left. The Corbins had spent the past half hour near the door, saying good-bye to guests. At last, even Karl Bjornsen and his wife gathered their coats and were on their way out into the blustery night.
    As Ben watched the Bjornsens’ retreating backs, he leaned over to his wife and asked, “What’s the deal with him and his brother? I thought they were going to start fighting when they ran into each other in the exhibit.”
    “I told you about that,” replied Noelle. “They founded Bjornsen Pharmaceuticals together, decades ago. Karl was the chairman and Gunnar was the president, but they set it up so that neither of them could make any major decision without the other’s consent. That worked fine for a long time, but about a year ago they stopped agreeing. It turned into a feud over control of the company, and Karl won. He forced Gunnar out in a proxy fight about a month ago.”
    Ben vaguely recalled having seen articles about the brothers’ battle, though he hadn’t read them. “That was in the Tribune a while back, wasn’t it?”
    “And Crain’s ,” replied Noelle. “A couple of the board members didn’t want to invite Gunnar tonight, because they thought there might be a scene.”
    “There was a scene.” Ben recounted the incident in the exhibit hall.
    Noelle sighed. “I’m glad it wasn’t worse. It sounds like Karl gave Gunnar the bump just as their company was developing that new product, which could