Atticus begins to open it. “Should we see if this contains something, information wise, that would lead us to something else here?” my brother asks me. As much as I want to deny it, tell him that we should wait until we’re at the house, he makes a good point.
“Yeah, let’s do that,” I reply. We step to the desk and he puts the book down gingerly. Taking a deep breath, I open it and immediately, my senses go on higher alert than they already were. “What the fuck is this?” I ask, quickly skimming the pages. There’s a section for the Rebel Guardians, broken down by each of the brothers and their families, their businesses, known affiliations, and financials. Braxton is going to have a fucking stroke but I’m not relaying this information until we find out why they had it to begin with.
“Is that a section on us?” Atticus inquires when I flip another page. Sure enough, and I have no fucking clue how they got it, there’s a page for each one of us, including our father, and it has a lot more information than anyone should be privy to. “How the fuck did they get this? It was redacted,” Atticus whisper-yells. He’s right; there are pages that detail some of our more covert missions. Just who the fuck are these people? And why do they have this?
“These people are sick as fuck,” I state when I see a section detailing the men and women who have been kidnapped and victimized. “This has been going on for a helluva long time, Brother,” I announce. There are dates alongside key situations. “Wait, does this say what I think it does?”
“Hidden sibling? What the ever-loving fuck?” Atticus grinds out. There, in black and white, in ‘our’ section, is a page detailing my father’s secret family that includes a child we’ve never heard of.
Fucking hell. We have a sister.
“Wait a damn minute, isn’t that Damien’s tutor’s name?” I quietly stumble out the question dancing in my mind.
“We need answers and we need them now,” Atticus demands. “Let’s go.” We leave the way we came, silently and without notice and are soon headed back to the house.
“We need to get Jonas to investigate this sister of ours. Why is she here? Is there an ulterior motive for becoming Damien’s tutor? How did this information slip past him and Raven when they looked into her past? Something's not adding up.” Pulling out my phone, I call Jonas.
“Hello,” he answers.
“Jonas, we’ve got a situation here,” I inform him.
“What’s up?” he requests.
“Athena, Damien’s tutor. What all do you know about her?” I ask him.
“Raven did her background check and interviewed her. Why are you asking?” His suspicious tone lets me know he’s ready to fuck someone up. Damien and Raven are his world, if there’s a threat to them, he’s ready to fight balls to the wall.
“Because according to this ledger we have our hands on, she’s our father’s child,” I state.
“What the fuck? How is that possible?” Jonas hisses. “He was so far up our asses making our lives hell, when did he find the time to impregnate someone else?” I chuckle at his phrase because our father, who was never a dad in any sense of the word, was a sadistic fucker. If he got some other woman pregnant, she was either drunk or high. Hell, our own mother couldn’t hang and left us with him.
“Give me what you’ve got and I’ll start running searches. Just to say, she’s good at what she does and she might not even be aware of the situation,” Jonas cautions. I can hear his fingers already moving on his keyboard and know that by the time we’re home, he’ll have something for us.
“Don’t start defending her honor, Jonas. Not until we have all the information in front of us. Now is not the time,” I seethe.
“Not doing anything of the sort. I’m stumped as to how Raven didn’t locate that information before hiring her. Seems my woman and I need to have a little chat as soon as she’s done putting Damien down for his afternoon nap.” That’s one conversation I have a feeling Raven won’t be walking away from without limping due to her sore, red ass.
“Don’t know, Brother. But I need to know what comes from that conversation. She may have put us all at risk, and that’s not something I can stand behind.”
“I know,” he sadly mumbles out. “But she’d never purposefully do anything to hurt any of us. For Christ’s sake, her son lives here and we all know how protective she is when it comes to him. I don’t see her hiring Athena if she found this.”
“Question is, Brother, did she find it and brush it under the table? If so, why?” I hate that I’m suddenly suspicious of my brother’s woman, but I am. I need answers before I can forgive her for this transgression. She’s smart, I know she found it. I hope Jonas gets answers, because I’d hate to have to take her downstairs and ask myself. I don’t think my brother would forgive me if I had to interrogate her.
“Drive faster,” I say to Atticus.
“Working on it. Do you really wanna get stopped with that loaded gun in your lap?” he fires back, glancing at the ledger in my lap. “There’s a lot more that we need to research, Silas, and you know that. Just sit tight and we’ll be there in a few minutes for fuck’s sake.” I sneer at him but decide to go back through the ledger and see what else I can find. As I scan through page by page, my stomach clenches when I realize what all has been discovered about not just my family, but that of my team members, my employees, my friends… all of my friends since about the age of fifteen, and everything there is to learn about my mother and father’s relationship is written for all the world to see. Things I didn’t even know of or was aware of I’m learning firsthand from someone’s written documentation. Like the fact that my mother didn’t fucking leave us, not willingly, she’s fucking gone. My father caught her with another man, killed them both and buried them in the graveyard... supposedly under a willow tree. I mean what the fuck? “This can’t be true,” I mutter in disbelief.
If half this shit is verified and proven to be actual fact, we’ve all been pawns in a twisted, horrible game. My life is nothing more than that of evil intent which I’ve fed into by doing exactly what they predicted I’d do. If I could put my hand through a wall right now, it wouldn’t ease the tension that’s running through me. My veins feel as if they’re flowing with lava. I’m burning from the inside out. It feels as if I’m going to spontaneously combust. My anger isn’t being contained within me. I feel powerless, like my life is spiraling out of control.
“Silas?” Atticus calls my name out.
“Not now, Atticus. I need a minute.” I lift up my head and stare out onto the open road.
“They’re going down, I swear to fucking God, they’re going down.” He says this not from being told anything, but he’s feeding off my temper and the tension radiating from me and filling the car. I know his rage will equal mine once he sees the entirety of this ledger; hell, I’ve barely broken the tip of the iceberg and I want to cover everything in crimson.
“It’s so much more, Atticus. I can’t even begin to understand how we managed to get on these people’s radar and why they targeted us at such an early age. Whatever it is, there’s a bull’s-eye on every person who is connected to us, no matter how peripherally.” I foresee some sleepless nights while we search for the reason and eradicate it.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck!” he screams, banging his hands on the steering wheel. I hate that he knows just from what little I’ve said that this is bad. Very, very bad. “No way will our family not be safe, especially with Piper about to drop any time now. Not gonna happen, I’ll kill them all,” Atticus states, his voice deadly with intent.
“Just get us home safe, asshole,” I growl out as he swerves around a slower vehicle. I grab the oh-shit handle to keep myself grounded. My body is swaying with each jerk of the steering wheel as Atticus’s grip becomes harder and his whips of the wheel more dangerous as he races to get us home. I know it’s because he wants eyes on Piper, hell I want the same thing with Destiny, but we need to make it there in one piece if we want to be able to protect them. I idly wonder if I sh
ould have driven, then negate that thought because he would have been shooting out the fucking windows at everyone.
“What the fuck, man. Whose Cheerios did we piss in?” He’s anxious and lost in thought; I don’t feel like he’s seeking an answer from me. But I’ll be damned if I don’t insert my own two cents.
“Thinking it was Dad, not us, who screwed the proverbial pooch, Atticus.”
“That bastard still ruins our lives from the grave,” he growls. I watch as his knuckles turn white from how harshly he’s gripping the wheel.
“The sins of the father, I suppose, although we sure as fuck don’t deserve those heaped on us; we’ve got enough of our own.”
“When we find out what it is, I’m digging his ass up and killing him again,” Atticus states.
“That man never deserved a burial, we should have all pissed on his corpse and tied a cinder block to his ankles and buried him in the depths of the ocean. And if what I’m reading is true, Jonas is going to lose his mind. This states that Athena isn’t just a long-lost sister, but Jonas’s long-lost twin. According to this, Dad didn’t want a girl growing up in the same house as us boys, so he pretty much hired a milkmaid to raise her as their own. Fucking piece of shit. From the look of things, her life wasn’t all sunshine and roses either, although I bet it was nothing like the hell we survived.”
“Still gonna do it,” he mutters. “Maybe give the bones to Scooby as a toy.”
“We are not giving that bastard’s bones to the fucking puppy!” Jesus fucking Christ, I am concerned for the mental well-being of my future niece or nephew based on my brother’s current ramblings.
“Fine, fine. You never let me have any fucking fun!” He ends his rant on a yell as someone slams on their brakes in front of us and he barely misses them. “You stupid motherfucking piece of shit! Where’d you learn how to drive!” Road rage, my brother has it in fucking spades.
“You want some fun in your life, Atticus? Hit the fucking circus next time they’re in town. Better yet, join clown school. Our lives aren’t fucking fun. You know this, what is it with you and that damn word?”
“Silas, I know our lives aren’t fun by any stretch of the imagination, but don’t you think we deserve to live a little more than we have? What about Jonas and Raven? You know things are changing for us all and dammit, I think we need it after all we’ve seen and done. Doesn’t mean we’re gonna stop taking the jobs we do, but he and I both have families now and from the looks of things, you’re going to have one with Destiny. Do you want us to keep our women locked down twenty-four seven, because I sure the fuck don’t? I want to do things with my kid, things that we never got the chance to do and fuck you if you don’t think I wouldn’t want my brothers and their women along with us.”
He’s giving me whiplash with how all over the place his remarks are. A random thought here, a doozy of a brain fart there. Damn, I make one fucking statement and he vomits all over me, verbally. I can see his point; up until the women came along, we just existed, we didn’t live. But he’s got a baby on the way with Piper, and Raven brought Damien into our lives, so we have to make some adjustments somewhere. Otherwise we’ll be no better than that prick who fathered us.
“How about we get through this first?” I request.
“You’re a jerk, you know that, Silas?” he retorts.
“Back atcha, motherfucker,” I reply. At least he seems to have calmed down a little, the vehicle isn’t rocking like we’re in a fucking tornado and I am not swaying like I’m on some carnival ride.
When we get back to the house, there’s no sign of life. We go check on our women then head back into the office. I’m sitting at my desk when Atticus walks back into the room. “Was walking past Jonas’s bedroom and heard a knock-down drag-out commencing. Figured I’d leave them to that while we go through this book and try to understand more of the situation before dragging them into it. With tempers flying the way I heard them going at it, I figured they wouldn’t have a cool head for this anyway.”
“Good point. That kind of seems to be the least of our concern anyhow,” I reply, pointing at a page that I’ve been reading. Instead of verbalizing everything I read on the way here, I point to a chair. Once Atticus sits, I hand over the book, then walk over to the bar and pour us both some scotch. The way I’m feeling, I could use a stiff drink, and knowing Atticus, he’ll be joining me in my search for a drunken haze. He starts reading and if the noises coming from him are any indication, my office is about to be trashed. “When you’re done, if you want to hit the bag in the gym, you’ll have a sparring partner in me.”
“In the mood I’m in right now, that wouldn’t be a good idea. Most of the time, I like you and I’d hate to kill you,” he replies, which tells me exactly how he’s feeling.
“So, we kill the bags. We need new ones anyway,” I state, shrugging.
“Who is this fucking bitch, anyhow?” he finally asks after skimming through the first part of the book.
“No fucking clue, but whoever it is, she’s had a hard-on for all of us for too many years.”
“We need to talk to Damien’s tutor,” he states. “But first, we need Jonas in here.” He pulls his phone out and calls him. “Man, get your fucking ass down here. Don’t care what you’ve got going on, this is more important.” He hangs up the phone and motions to the bar. “Better pour another one; he’s gonna need it.”
I get up and walk over to the bar. Pouring a fresh glass for Jonas and refilling ours, Jonas angrily struts into the room. “What the fuck, Bro? I was in the middle of a conversation with my woman. What’s so damn important that I had to stop and immediately rush here?” He flops into the chair, irritation painted clearly on his face. Atticus hands him the ledger and he begins to flip through it. “What the fuck?” He flips another page. “You have got to be kidding me!” He stands up and flings the ledger across the room. “What the fuck is that?” He angrily points at the book where it landed on the floor. “That’s bullshit and you know it!”
“Unfortunately, little brother, we don’t think it is,” Atticus answers him.
“It has to be. I’d know if I had a twin sister, right?” He runs his hands through the top of his hair. By the time he’s done, it’s standing on end.
“Not if he got rid of her after Mom gave birth. Because if they’d have brought her home, either me or Atticus would have remembered,” I state. I mean, we were little ourselves, but another sibling is something that wouldn’t have been forgotten, and we remember the day they brought Jonas home.
“Surely y’all don’t remember that,” Jonas says.
“Abso-fucking-lutely,” Atticus retorts. “You were dressed in some god-awful blue puffy thing and had a fat face with no hair. Kind of like Silas now.”
“I’m not fat, you motherfucker,” I growl out.
“But you have no hair, so I’m mostly right,” he replies. Stupid fucker.
“Can we get back to the whole twin thing now? You two are like a comedy act without the funny jokes,” Jonas sighs.
“I think I’m pretty fucking funny.” Atticus crosses his eyes at Jonas in an attempt to make him laugh.
“Maybe so, but can we wait to laugh until we figure out who has us in their crosshairs and more importantly, why?” Jonas asks. “I mean, I have a twin, we have another sibling. What the fuck is up with that?” I understand how he’s feeling. I’d flip my shit if I found out I had a long-lost twin out there somewhere, being raised by fucking strangers, and having had no contact with each other. Hell, she’s my sister and I’m having a hard time dealing with that issue alone. What the fuck was our father thinking giving away a Nelson like he did? Blood sticks with blood, and he tossed her away like garbage all because she doesn’t have a fucking penis.
“We’ll figure it out,” I reply. “And when we do, fucking heads are gonna roll and blood is gonna flow.”
“Gonna need to start running searches,” Jonas mumbles after picking the ledger back up from where he flung it ear
lier.
“Probably going to need to let at least Braxton know that they’re on someone’s ‘watch list’ too,” I advise. “But first, we need to do more than just a cursory glance because it’s probable that what we’re seeking is within these pages.”
“We should invite Braxton over and give him a chance to put eyes on these pages. It’s the right thing to do, Brother. I’d flip my shit and beat their asses if they had something this enormous and kept it from us,” Atticus proclaims.
“Yeah, let’s do that. Lock it up for now, Jonas,” I command. We have a safe that is opened with a password that changes every twenty-four hours. Jonas has to go in and manually override it with a security code only known to him if one of us wishes to enter it. This was a way to protect our most valuable information and intel. It also keeps the family secrets buried… or so we thought. Our wills, birth certificates, passports and financial ledgers are all in there, along with the fake identifications we have for some of the jobs we’re called on to do. Plus, it holds funds that we didn’t want Uncle Sam questioning how we obtained. It’s all cash… four million dollars, safe and sound from prying hands and eyes. Our safety measure has a safety measure, which helps me breathe easier.
“On it,” Jonas states.
“Let’s keep this between us for now until he gets here,” I say. “That means, no telling the women anything until we know what the fuck is going on.”
Meeting done, I start to leave the office. It’s time to see to my woman and make sure she’s okay and has woken and eaten her dinner. Also, I need to ensure her head’s not fucked up from that asshole taking her last night.
Seeking Our Destiny : Nelson Brothers' Page 8