28. Brooklyn
CHAPTER 28
brooklyn
I was standing in my kitchen, mechanically stirring cream into my third cup of coffee, when the call came. The spoon clinked against the ceramic in the morning quiet. When my phone lit up with the prison area code, something inside me already knew—the same way I'd known something was wrong the day Mom left. "I'm sorry to call you with this news, but could you please come to the Central Texas Detention Facility.”
The spoon slipped from my fingers and clattered against the granite countertop. Coffee sloshed over the rim of my mug, but I barely noticed the burn of the hot liquid on my skin.
"I can't just come to the prison, what's going on?" My voice came out raw, scraping against my throat. The fact that Sebastian told Maxine about what he’d overheard before telling me still felt like I’d swallowed ground glass—how he couldn’t look me in the eye when he admitted he'd told Maxine first, and not me. The betrayal sat heavy in my stomach, like a lead weight I couldn't digest.
"Your father passed away. We found him in the showers, but not in time to save him; he bled to death." The warden's voice was flat, practiced like he was reading off a script. Each word fell like a stone into the pool of silence around me. My legs gave out, and I sank onto one of the kitchen chairs, the wood cold against my palms as I gripped the edge of the seat. "Oh my god. Are you serious?" The words came out in a whisper before building to a scream that tore from somewhere deep inside me. "So, now I'm an orphan? My mom is gone and now my dad?" The sound of my voice echoed off the kitchen walls, bouncing back to me like a stranger's voice. I thought of the family photos still hanging in the hallway—Mom's smile that never quite reached her eyes, Dad's hand heavy on my shoulder, Sebastian looking young and unburdened. All lies captured in silver frames.
The warden was silent for a moment—just long enough to make my heart skip before he spoke again.
“I’m sorry to call and tell you this, but you were the first contact listed. We need to set up arrangements, so he can have a proper funeral if decided.
My father was dead.
My brother was getting married.
I was left to pick up the pieces by myself all alone.
I struggled with the happiness I knew I deserved, but something ached inside me. What was the point of going on knowing anyone and everyone I trusted had lied to me. I knew this was just the beginning. I decided to take a week of PTO and gather information, then decide how to move forward. We already had everything in the palms of our hands. We had the properties; our businesses were booming. I took over as the Chief Compliance Officer; we had it made.
Now, with my father out of the picture, I was able to access my mother’s will and see what she left me. I anticipated this call would come from the lawyer, but I knew I might have to wait instead.
That was okay. One moment at a time.
When I called Sebastian, I could hear Maxine's laughter in the background—the soft domestic sounds of their morning together. The kind of normal I'd never have again. My brother was breathless when he answered, happiness evident in his voice, and I hated that I was about to shatter it.
"What's up, sis?"
I pressed my forehead against the cool window glass and watched my breath fog the pane. How many times had Dad called me with that same casual tone while building his house of lies?
"I don't know how to tell you this," I started, then stopped. My reflection stared back at me, pale and hollow-eyed. The truth sat like ash on my tongue. "Father is no longer among the living. He's dead." The words came out clinical, detached, as if I was talking about a stranger.
The laughter in the background cut off abruptly. I heard rustling, movement, and Sebastian's sharp intake of breath. When he spoke again, his voice had that same serious tone it had carried when he told me about Mom. Like he was trying to be the responsible older brother, even now.
"Are you serious, Bee?" The childhood nickname nearly broke me. I heard him whispering to Max and the phone rustling against fabric.
“Serious as a heart attack. He was found in the showers, bleeding out. They didn’t give me any more information.”
“Wow,” Sebastian said. “You’re on speaker phone by the way.”
Could this be a setup? Was there more that we didn’t know? I knew there were others who father betrayed and screwed over. It was only a matter of time before the truth came out about all the fuckups he committed.
I was pissed. I was livid. How could they betray me like this? Instead of planning a wedding and bachelorette party of a lifetime, I had to plan a fucking funeral for my father who I wasn’t even sure deserved a funeral.
D ays later, Max and I finally traveled to the prison. We weren’t ready for whatever they were about to tell us, but I figured supporting each other was better than nothing.
With my father, everything was recorded. It had all been caught on camera. Max and I sat beside each other, holding hands. I gave the report to Maxine because I couldn’t bear to read it or watch the video; that was just too much for me. Maxine read it, and her face was pure white by the time she was finished, so I knew it wasn’t something I wanted to watch or read.
Father and three other men entered the shower. Father had already been in a few fights. I guess even a life sentence wouldn’t shut that evil man up. And they didn’t even know half of what I knew. Tall guy number one, we’ll call him Big Bear, shoved Father down, slapped him, then Grizzly Bear two came in and kicked father. Guy number three, Black Bear, came in, forced Father to his knees, and shoved his cock into his throat. Grizzly and Big Bear kicked and beat him, forcing his head over Black Bear’s cock. Father did something, and they punched him so hard he passed out.
By the time it was over, they had kicked, punched, and violated him in every way possible, even taking a shank and slicing his cock to the base. I wasn’t sure at which point he lost consciousness, but it was obvious he pissed the three bears off, and Goldilocks was not what they wanted him to be. I could picture my brother saying he was Goldy knocked the fuck out. I shouldn’t think that way. My father was brutally beaten and tortured.
Apparently, the three big bad bears were part of an organization that had been wrongfully framed for something that my father set up, and rumor had it, he slept with the daughter of one of the organization’s head people and left her child fatherless. Who knew what was true or not.
W e did the final paperwork to release his body to the coroner for cremation. I would spread his ashes at his favorite place on the ranch, not that he even deserved that. He could burn in hell for all the things he did, some we probably didn’t know about yet. It had been time for his end to come.
Three weeks and three days later, I was staring at the kitchen wall, trying to process the warden's words about my father while also thinking about planning Max and Bash’s wedding. My phone rang, and Max's name lit up the screen. My hand shook as I answered. The universe, it seemed, wasn't done with its cruelties.
"Brookie?" Max's voice cracked, and I knew. The same way I'd known when the prison called about Dad. That sixth sense of tragedy we'd all developed growing up in our family’s web of secrets.
"I'm here." The words felt inadequate, but my throat had closed, and I couldn’t come up with anything more meaningful. In the background, I heard Sebastian murmuring something, probably trying to comfort her.
"My mom..." Max's breath hitched, and I heard the rustle of fabric. I imagined her curling into my brother's side the way she used to curl into mine during thunderstorms when we were kids. "They found her this morning. In her cell."
The coffee mug I'd been clutching slipped from my nerveless fingers and shattered against the tile. Dark liquid spread like blood across my kitchen floor, but I couldn't move to clean it up.
"What happened?" I asked, though part of me already knew. Ciara had always been dramatic, always needed to have the last word. Of course, she'd choose to write her own ending.
"They said..." Max's voice broke, and I heard Sebastian take the phone.
"Hey, sis," he said softly. "Ciara hung herself. Left a note about 'the ultimate betrayal' or some bullshit. Max is..." he trailed off, but I could fill in the blanks. Max was devastated, angry, relieved, guilty—all the complicated emotions that came with losing a parent who'd hurt you.
"I'm coming over," I said, already grabbing my keys. My own grief would have to wait. "Did they say anything else about the note?"
"Just that there's more than one. She had a lot to say at the end apparently." Sebastian's voice turned bitter. "Though where was all that honesty when we were kids?"
I stepped over the broken mug, the spilled coffee soaking into my socks. Two prison deaths in one month. It felt like the universe was closing a chapter, but the cost was too high. Through the phone, I could hear Max's quiet sobs.
"Tell her to hold on. I'll be there in fifteen minutes." I was already halfway to my car. The morning sunshine felt obscenely bright for such a dark day. "And Seb? Don't let her be alone."
"Never," he promised, and I heard the steel in his voice—the same protective instincts that had kept us alive through our twisted childhoods.
As I drove, my mind kept circling back to the warden's words about Dad, then to Max's broken voice. Two parents, two prisons, two deaths. It felt too neat, too coincidental. Dad was beaten to death in the showers, and Ciara chose to end it all... My detective instincts were screaming that there was more to this story.
My phone sat heavy in my pocket, still warm from the call that shattered our world. By the time I pulled into Sebastian and Max's driveway, my hands had stopped shaking, but my mind was racing. We were dealing with more than just grief—it was the beginning of something bigger. I could feel it in my bones, the same way I'd felt it when this mess started years ago.
The front door opened before I could knock, and Max flew into my arms, her tears soaking into my coffee-stained shirt. Over her head, I met Sebastian's eyes and saw my suspicions mirrored there. We'd grown up learning to read between the lines, to look for the stories behind the public stories. And these convenient, tragic deaths felt like a message. From whom? I wasn't sure just yet or what message they were trying to send.
The trip to the Women’s Correctional Center was quiet. Max and I didn’t talk about my father’s death or the cause of his death.
We arrived at the center, walking inside hand in hand. We knew Ciara’s cause of death was suicide. We also knew she left a note. The only belongings she had were the ones she came in with. Nothing more, nothing less.
We got through security and made it to the warden’s office. He brought Max Ciara’s clothes and handed her the letters.
“This is all I have left of my mom. The one person I should care nothing about after her betrayal. However, here we are, and I don’t even want to read it. Could you read it to me?” She handed me the letters as tears formed in her eyes.
“I’ll read them to you; there’s more than one letter here. Are you sure you want me to read them?” I asked, looking over the letters.
“Sure. Or burn them. I could care less,” she said. “Whatever we choose, let’s get the fuck out of this criminal den. Get her cremated and move on with our lives.
We finalized the paperwork, signed what we had to sign, and left. Once we made it to the car and sat down, I pulled the letters out and almost immediately burst into tears. She wrote all of us children and David a letter. The most shocking was she wrote one to Carlos too.