BE MY BRAYSHAW

by Meagan Brandy

  Her cries begin to soften, and when Victoria pulls her in tight, they stop, her little hands tucking in as her eyes begin to close, the warmth and comfort she needed having been given to her with zero hesitation.

  My baby girl, so tiny.

  “Does she have a name?” the nurse whispers.

  My core tightens, and I look to Mallory as they do, but she keeps her eyes closed, shaking her head as if she knew the question was directed at her.

  Again the nurse looks to Victoria who stares at Mallory a long moment, before moving her attention back to my baby in her arms.

  Her smile is soft and a little sad as her knuckle comes up to rub along my daughter’s cheek. “She almost never made it to the world, was almost never given her sweet little life.”

  A knowing smile finds the nurse’s lips, one that I don’t quite understand, and Victoria nods.

  “Zoey,” she whispers. “Her name is Zoey.”

  The video cuts off, and I stumble back, falling to my ass on the comforter, my hands burying into my hair.

  Oh god. Oh fuck.

  No, no, no.

  I try to swallow, but my airway is coated with the painful knowledge of my mistakes, of all I felt deep fucking down that Victoria was, and weakly allowed another to taint.

  Fuck, I—

  “Look, ZoZo.”

  My head snaps up as another video begins to play, but Victoria can’t be the one who turns it on.

  Zoey sits in Victoria’s lap, drool falling from her lips as she chews on her little fingers.

  Zoey giggles and Victoria smiles wide. “You know him, huh?” She taps her hands on the frame, my sophomore basketball photo locked inside of it. “That’s your daddy and look at this one.” She swaps out the image, and suddenly it’s one of Mallory.

  Victoria holds it up for my daughter. Zoey smiles at this image, too, like she’s seen it before. “There’s your mom.”

  Her mom.

  Solid fucking proof, if I were to still need it, she never tried to replace Mallory, but in fact wanted Zoey to have all she felt she lost, or was losing.

  Before anything else can be said on the camera, Victoria spins around, frowning at whoever is there, and the screen goes black.

  I spin, scrambling for the remote when suddenly it’s lifted into my face.

  I look up, meeting Royce’s sorrow-filled eyes as I grab it from him, ready to turn it off, to breathe a minute, when once again laughter fills the air.

  I look to the screen and this time I can’t hide my emotion, can’t fight it off, as Victoria sits on her knees, and across from her, my baby girl takes her wobbly first step.

  Steps I missed and hated myself for, a memory I would never get back but desperately wanted plays before me.

  “Oh my god.” Victoria’s voice cracks. “Come on, Mama. Come see me.”

  She holds her hands out, a light chuckle leaving her as she smiles wide at my little girl.

  Zoey laughs, clapping her hands as she takes another, and then another before she falls into Victoria’s arms.

  Victoria laughs, holding her to her chest and clapping her hands for her.

  She stares at her, at the little girl she clearly loves with all she is, as if she didn’t save Zoey, but Zoey saved her, blessed her life and gave it meaning.

  “You did it, ZoZo!” she says softly, but something shifts in her eyes, and she gently sets Zoey down, setting a little toy in her lap. “You did it... and your daddy missed it,” she whispers, pulling her lips in.

  I bite into my cheek as she grows closer, and right before she reaches the camera to turn it off, guilt washes over her.

  I quickly press pause, stopping anything else from coming onto the screen.

  I want it all, all the memories, all I missed, but I can only take so much at once.

  Defeated, fucking wrecked, I turn to my family.

  “You didn’t know, bro,” Royce stresses.

  “I need a minute.” I swallow, looking away from them.

  Without hesitation, they walk out, closing my door behind them and I fold my hands behind my head, dropping my chin to my chest.

  This is why.

  This is fucking why.

  The pull, the goddamn noose around my neck, tugging me toward her, cutting off my air until she was near or in sight, finally allowing me to breathe.

  She didn’t even fucking know me, and she felt for me, hurt for me, fucking fought for me. She was the voice I wasn’t given, protected what I didn’t know needed protecting, and preserved what I’d thought I lost.

  My daughter’s journey to birth, her first breath in this world, first step, and who knows what else is on that video, what else she can share with me.

  Victoria gave my life meaning.

  And I couldn’t even give her the benefit of the doubt.

  Mallory pointed the gun, and I pulled the trigger, just like that.

  Blindly.

  And what did she do?

  Maybell’s words slam into me so hard I fall to the wall, smacking at my chest for the air I can’t find, that my body denies.

  This person will dive headfirst into dark waters, not caring to make it back to the surface, because to fix what’s broken in you is worth the risk of losing everything...

  She let me turn her into the devil when she was the saint, and all so I could have whatever it was I was chasing after.

  A fool’s dream.

  A naïve man’s thoughts.

  I was wrong.

  My eyes fall on the remote again, so I pick it up and press play, fast-forwarding through a few clips I will be watching on repeat later, until I find a place to pause.

  Victoria sits on a brown suede couch, Zoey tucked into her side, a little blanket draped around her, as they sleep.

  There they are.

  My baby.

  My girls.

  My sleeping beauties.

  Fire builds in my gut, and I toss the remote to the ground, charging for my door and tear it open.

  I freeze in the doorway when Maddoc, Raven, and Royce are still standing right there, waiting for me.

  Royce nods his chin. “Now we find her?”

  “Now we find her.”

  Chapter 33

  Captain

  “How the fuck can we not find her?” Maddoc glares.

  “It’s been three days, how far could she get?”

  “China,” Royce scoffs. “Antarctica. Fuckin’ Transylvania.”

  I swing my scowl to him.

  “Just sayin’.” He shrugs.

  Raven sits forward. “You think she’d go out to Maria’s, sleep on the property or whatever?”

  “Doubt it,” he says, pushing to his feet. “Nothin’ there but ash and flowers.”

  “Flowers?” Maddoc frowns.

  He nods, looking between us. “Them and that wall’s the only thing that didn’t go down in flames.”

  “What wall?”

  “You know.” He lifts his hands, looking up as he draws it in the air. “Big ugly thing, leaves and shit all over it.”

  I yank my phone from my pocket, scrolling through old photos until I get to the ones my PI sent me of Maria’s property, before I had ever seen it. I pull up the one that shows the garden, shoving it toward him.

  “Yeah, those flow—” he cuts himself off, his hand wrapping around my wrist and bringing it closer. “Where’s the wall?”

  “There was no wall.” I shake him off, my frown moving from Maddoc to him. “When she was little, Donley Graven kept her locked in a studio, a garden outside the doors, and stone wall surrounding it, covered in thorns and ivy.”

  Maddoc frowns. “Donley Graven got a bullet to the back of the head months ago, he’s six feet under and Collins Graven took off to Europe. His every move is tracked, hasn’t looked back since.”

  Raven’s hands slide along her belly, tension in her eyes. “Yeah, but knowing about the wall and considering everything else, how I had their shit burnt, the fire screams Graven to me.”
<
br />   “She might have different enemies, Raven. She ended up here, she didn’t start here.”

  “Didn’t she?” she challenges. “You said she was born here and kept locked away.”

  “Yeah, but she had no human contact then, not until Mero—” I cut myself off. “Wait. She did talk to one person there.”

  “Who?” she asks.

  Royce flies from his seat right then. “Incoming.”

  We jerk around to spot a black car rolling up the driveway.

  Nobody comes down this road.

  Maddoc pushes Raven behind him, but she shoves him, gripping his arm to see best she can.

  The door opens and none other than Connor fucking Perkins, our old principal, our father’s once friend, and my biological father, steps out.

  What the fuck?

  I’m down the porch steps, freezing him in his before he has a chance to close the door behind him.

  “The fuck are you doing here? You were told to leave this place.”

  “Where is she?” he rushes out, ignoring me completely.

  Anger builds in my gut and I move closer. “You are not seeing my daughter.”

  “Not her, Captain. Victoria.” He shocks me.

  My muscles grow stiff.

  Royce pushes forward, eerily slow. “Why you care?”

  Perkins’ shoulders fall, his eyes moving across us. “You sent her away like you sent me away, didn’t you?”

  Maddoc pushes forward. “Why wouldn’t we?”

  Perkins’ head tugs back, his eyes flying between ours. “Maybe I made a mistake. I guess I thought...” He closes his mouth, nodding. “Never mind.”

  “No, no, no.” Royce slips by him, yanking the keys from his hand, putting them in his pocket. “Say what you came to say. Why do you care about a poor little group home girl?”

  “I think she’s in danger,” he says.

  My gut twists. “Why?”

  “I went to Maria’s. It’s gone.”

  “We know,” I snap. “If that’s all, you can go now.”

  His mouth falls open the slightest bit, and he shakes his head, eyeing me. “Was I wrong to believe Victoria means more to you than she does?”

  My jaw tics, but I give him nothing.

  “Did she explain anything to you?” he asks. “Why she came?”

  “Let’s pretend she didn’t,” Royce snaps. “Fill us in, Perkins. Now.”

  “All right.” He swallows with a nod. “I guess I’ll start at the beginning,” he says.

  “Victoria was born but never held, stolen from her mother, and taken back to the Graven Estate,” he begins. “She was raised but never spoken to, fed and clothed, but left alone.”

  All shit I already know but is news to my family, so I let him continue.

  “She had a garden she cared for, and nothing else. Not even a name, no identity whatsoever.”

  “Until Mero,” Raven guesses, reaching out for Maddoc’s hand.

  Perkins nods. “She’d never even seen beyond the walls she lived in until Mero Malcari showed up and bartered for her. She went from being invisible to being adored. From having her own garden to her own greenhouse. Mero was everything to her, so she followed him blindly. It wasn’t until she came here, she began to question everything she ever knew.

  “After years of coaching her, he was finally ready to come home, back to Brayshaw. He asked his precious tool to come first.” I glare, and he moves his eyes to the ground a moment. “Her job was to find one secret, something nobody else knew. She started with who she saw as the weakest link.”

  Weakest link?

  He must see it, because he shakes his head. “Not you, Captain.”

  “Mallory,” Maddoc guesses.

  Perkins nods. “He set her up in a hotel for a week, but it only took her twelve hours. She knew everything there was to know about this town, the Brayshaws and her bloodline, the Gravens, or at least Mero’s version of the truths, so she knew what he would do with what she’d found out.

  “For the first time Victoria was faced with a moral decision, and she chose right. She waited out her time here and went back to the man who gave her a purpose in life, the man she idolized until that moment, and lied straight to his face. She let him down for the first time in her life, to save a baby she had no ties to.”

  “He knew she lied.”

  Perkins nods again. “And he punished her for it, severely, but she was his future, as he saw it, so he made sure it was nowhere anyone could see.”

  Her scars.

  He cut her up, blended his marks with the marks left by the thorns from the ivy tower she was once locked inside of. A reminder she was not free, though she might have felt so.

  “As I said, Mero saw her as his future, so from the moment he had her, he began making sure she was ready for what that meant.”

  “He taught her how to defend herself,” Raven whispers.

  “Yes,” Perkins says. “She fought back and won.”

  She killed him.

  “Victoria was on my doorstep, bloodied and frail, not twenty-four hours later. I was ready to send her off, thought she was some crazy looking for a payout, when she threatened exposing me as your biological father,” he tells me, a small smile finding his mouth. “Still not sure how she figured that one out.”

  “She’s smart.” My body aches.

  He nods. “I didn’t know what to do with her, so I leased a small place on the edge of town and put her inside it. Mallory disappeared a week later.”

  She didn’t convince Mallory to leave me like Mallory twisted the situation to make me believe.

  She convinced her to keep Zoey, and the only way to get Mallory to agree, was to hide her away. She’d have the baby and walk away like nothing happened, and nobody would ever know.

  “She moved her in.”

  “I didn’t learn that until later, but yes,” he confirms. “During the pregnancy, she made her way to you guys. She convinced me to get her in contact with your dad and went to see him. I was surprised when he so easily gave her a safe place in the girl’s Bray house, and had Maybell help enroll her into school. From that day, she spent every other giving back to your family the only way she knew how.”

  “Finding and giving us secrets.” Maddoc frowns.

  “You said Mero bartered for Victoria.”

  Perkins’ chin lowers the tiniest bit as if he was waiting for me to ask.

  “Why would he do that? Her being Graven blood meant nothing, they didn’t claim her. Why did he want her?”

  I look across my brothers, swiveling around when my dad’s voice interrupts.

  He steps through the doorway, farther out onto the porch.

  “Go on, Perkins.” He gives the man permission to tell what he must have hidden. “He asked you a question. Answer.”

  Slowly, we look back to Perkins.

  “Mero could have taken any girl and turned her into his little revenge machine, but he wanted to add insult to injury.” Perkins glances over our heads once more and then back to us. “He wanted the daughter of the Graven maid, the innocent infant girl your dad tried to save as a noble man would, when he refused the innocent son of a maid of his own, a son of Brayshaw.”

  “What...” Royce draws out.

  Panic and anger knot in my chest.

  Refused a son...

  Perkins locks his eyes on mine.

  “Victoria came here, found out what she needed to know, and went back, lied to Mero,” I repeat what he told us. “How did he know she was lying?”

  Perkins nods his head in confirmation. “She had a shadow.”

  “Who did he have watching her?”

  Our dad makes his way down the porch, stepping around us to stand at Perkins’ side.

  The four of us turn to face him.

  He licks his lips and says, “His son.”

  Victoria

  I swallow the last drop of water from the bottle I’ve been sipping on for the last hour right as the door opens, and in he
walks.

  “I’ve gotta say, I’ve missed your lavender scent, Garden Girl.” His smile is soft, and I don’t doubt his words for a minute. “It’s been three days,” he says gently. “Ready to talk to me yet?”

  “You left those gloves for me, didn’t you?” I ask him. “The ones in the planter’s box at the park?”

  He nods, eyes bright with pride. “You should never have to dig in the dirt like that again.”

  “You built the wall, did you kill Maria, too?”

  He tenses. “Man, straight for it, huh?”

  When I say nothing, he gives a curt nod. “I’m sorry, but I promise she didn’t feel a thing. I needed you to know I was here, that I was waiting for you, but it took you longer than I thought it would to realize.”

  I eye him a long moment, and in the end, I have to look away. “You shouldn’t be here.”

  Confusion drives his voice. “I’m here for you. You said you needed time to save the little girl, I gave it to you. Time is up.”

  “Don’t be a fool.” I shake my head. “I told you I was staying. Get out of here before they find you.”

  His chuckles have me turning toward him. “Nice try. I know you’re on the outs. Don’t forget, I exist to watch over you. From the start, my life was spent protecting you.”

  I push the hair from my scalp, raising a brow as I force him to look at the small gash the fore-end of the gun left, and shame covers his face.

  Suddenly he’s on his knees in front of me, gripping my hands in his fists. “I never wanted to hurt you, but I knew if you yelled, they’d come running, if for no other reason than to know why.”

  “You didn’t want them to spot you.”

  His brows lower in a deep scowl. “I’m not afraid of them.”

  “You should be. They’d cut you into pieces and fry you up for the wolves if they knew who you were.”

  “I heard what he said, what they think of you.” His animosity toward Captain is front and center. “He told you to go. He doesn’t care.”

  “I didn’t say they’d do it for me.”

  He shakes his head. “Another reason for us to take off now.”

  My head tugs back. “I’m not leaving.”

  His forehead tightens and then he nods. “And I’m not leaving without you. Victoria, he didn’t choose you.”