17
Emaline
Brielle is sitting up with color in her cheekswhile eating breakfast. Her tangled blond hair has been brushed, but the bruises and swelling are more pronounced, and a gasp slips from my mouth when I lay eyes on them. The security guard was just outside, which I was pleased to see, and The Bear said he was going down to the café to grab me some breakfast since I hadn’t eaten before we left.
“You look so much better,” I lie because she looks superficially worse, with the bruises blossoming and the swelling around her eye significantly larger. But she’s eating and graces me with a crooked smile when I walk in.
“I’m starving,” her voice muffled by the swelling in her cheek. “I haven’t eaten in what feels like days.”
“Is the food good?” I ask, holding back a cringe at the sight of gooey porridge and stodgy jelly. The toast looks edible, though.
She shakes her head. “It’s terrible, but I’m so hungry, I don’t care.”
I laugh, enjoying my sister and her sense of humor, but a dark cloud hovers over me as I consider what lies beyond that door.
“They’re moving me down to one of the wards tomorrow, so I’ll be coming off all of these,” she points to the machine she’s hooked up to.
This fills me with fear. In the ICU, there are many nurses per patient, and it’s a closed, protected ward that’s locked, so you can’t go in unless a nurse unlocks the door from the inside. But wards are open where anyone can walk in.
“The security guards will be going with you,” I assure her if it crosses her mind.
She nods, giving little away. “I haven’t seen them, but it’s nice that someone is just outside the door.”
“So…have the police spoken to you?” I ask hopefully.
“Not yet, but I expect the Spanish Inquisition sometime soon.” Her answer is annoyingly sarcastic as if she’s trying to lighten the situation, but this is typical of my sister.
“You need to tell me what happened, Bri,” cutting to the chase. This is a demand, not a question driven by fear of them returning. Or perhaps they haven’t gone away in the first place and are nearby watching…waiting. “From the beginning.”
She takes a bite of strawberry jelly-covered toast and throws the rest on her plate, sighing as she chews. When she meets my gaze, her eyes narrowed by the swelling, cheeks swollen, so her classic Brielle Applegate frighteningly sharp glare has been disarmed and muted.
“You’ve changed,” she says, wiping her mouth with a paper napkin before sipping black coffee.
“I never envisioned you as a black coffee consumer,” I think aloud. “You always poured copious amounts of milk in your coffee to the point where it bears little resemblance to real coffee.”
“I haven’t drunk milky coffee for years,” she replies, and it strikes me once again how little I know of my sister.
“We were close once,” I say quietly.
“Yeah,” her eyebrows lower as those narrowed sky blues drop eye contact with me, “it’s called growing up, Emaline. You should try it sometime.”
I swallow back the sting of her comment toward me, the oldest daughter still living with our grandparents, never had a proper boyfriend, always too afraid to leave the comforts of my home, preferring to stay with what and who I know rather than venture out and meet new people and see new places. I push my glasses back on my nose and take a deep breath to ease away the pain, frustrated that she still manages to do that to me after all this time. Damn her.
“I’ve got that wrong, haven’t I?” she says as I compose myself to repeat the question she avoids answering.
I clear my throat. “What do you mean?”
“That’s what I see that’s different about you,” she mumbles, playing with her toast. “You’ve changed. You’ve grown up. You’ve experienced life outside of your bookish bubble. I was wrong.”
“The story was never as great as you claimed it to be,” is my comeback. “I still prefer it with people genuinely caring for me in my bookish bubble. There is nothing wrong with that.” I straighten my back and lift my chin in pride. “You sold us a lie, so you owe us the truth.”
She smiles, and this time, it’s genuine. “What the deal between you and the Leroux boys?”
“Stop changing the subject,” I growl impatiently. “Why are you so reluctant to tell us what happened?”
A deep sigh escapes her cracked lips. “You’re right, and I pretended to be happy when I was miserable and pretended to go on holiday when I was in hiding. I admit I owe you the truth, but it will not be easy to listen to.”
Time is ticking. Soon, it won’t be long before the nurse asks me to leave, so I need to hurry her along. “I can handle it, and I’m tougher than you give me credit for. And…there’s more than just you who’s involved here.”
“Let’s play a game-”
“No games, Brielle. I’m sick of this,” I inadvertently raise my voice, then cringe when people glance up.
Ignoring me, “Are you dating one of the Leroux boys?”
I groan. “Stop changing the subject. And aren’t supposed to be broken and bruised, close to death,” I dig sarcastically, making her chuckle, even though I wasn’t deliberately trying to be funny.
“Answer my question, and then I’ll answer one of yours,” she insists.
“I hope you’re not like this when the police come to question you. Being difficult has always been a large aspect of your character and the main reason our grandparents went grey early,” I rattle off.
“Oh wow, the truth is coming out now. I’m enjoying seeing this side of you, Em,” she chuckles. “Now, answer my question. Are you dating one of the Leroux brothers?”
“Um…” I pause to consider how to answer this because I’m not dating one, but two. Am I dating Aaron? I’m so inexperienced with these sorts of things. At what point does hanging out with someone become dating? “Yes.”
“Which one? Oh, let me guess…Xavier,” Bri asserts joyously like she’s genuinely happy that I’m dating a Leroux, but that might be because of her selfish interest in rising the social ladder.
“No. That’s not the deal, Brielle. Start from the beginning of what happened and why you hid. Go!” I say bossily, refusing to budge until she opens up.
“Confession time,” she states as my mind shuffles through a million and one scenarios of what she’ll come up with that will let me down. She might even admit that she strategized the entire gig for attention. I know I’m exaggerating, but anything is possible with my sister. “I’ve always been envious of you.”
I roll my eyes as my impatience grows. “How did this begin, Brielle? Stop deflecting the question. Start from the beginning. What did you discover to make you go into hiding?”
“Don’t hate me,” she starts. Of course, I’m thinking the worst now. My body tenses, expecting her to say that she made the whole thing up and that the men in suits are her paid goons. But wait…where would she get the money from? “I started snooping around our parents’ stuff to find…” she swallows, and I wait to be smacked in the face by something awful, sinking lower than low. “Money.”
Yep, it always begins and ends with money with my sister. “Money? Our inheritance?” I asked for clarification; even though she’d tried to do this before with my grandparents by asking for more information on what happened to our parents’ money, I didn’t care. “Our grandparents already told you they didn’t have any money.”
“How was that possible? They were well-paid accountants. They owned their own home,” she spurts a weird, muffled shrill that would hurt my ears if she didn’t have a swollen face.
“The lawyer overseeing the will found that the house was heavily mortgaged, the sale of the house paid off the debt, and they had very little money in their savings account. And that went to us, and in case you’ve forgotten, you spent your share as soon as you were of age,” I remind her.
“I wasn’t satisfied with that, so I did a little digging of my own,” she says proudly, “and requested their bank statements from up to two years before they disappeared.”
“The police have already gone over all of that,” I sigh, checking the time on my phone and glancing at the nurse, expecting her to ask me to leave any time now.
“No, they didn’t. I mean, they went over the bank statements, but they missed something. They are paying for a storage unit,” she says proudly. “Did you know that?”
“No, but I was a kid, so… What did they have in it?” I ask as my heartbeat increases and my hands tremble in trepidation.
She tilts her head to the side, giving me a sharp look behind puffy eyes, “And you think you’re the smarter sister?”
I’m mystified. “Come on, Bri, you know I don’t understand cryptic Brielle Applegate language that only your cheerleading friends understand,” I spit back at her, hating that she could see something I couldn’t in her statement. “That doesn’t make you smarter than me.”
“I use present tense language,” she says, pointing her finger at me, “and you didn’t notice.”
“Brielle, please,” I say exhaustedly. “I’m losing my patience here…Wait. Present tense language? So, they ARE paying for a storage unit?”
Bri explains, “According to Storage King”s manager, someone is still paying for that storage unit. Naturally, I assumed there must be something valuable in there if someone is still paying for it.”
“Who?”
“I’ll give you two guesses.”
“The only people I can think of are our grandparents,” I answer doubtfully because they’d tell us about it unless they forgot.
“Bingo. My guess is they’re unable to part with the junk in there,” she assumes, stroking her hair and gazing off to the side. “Like our old toys, that inflatable paddling pool, and that plastic ride-on horse with wheels.”
I smile thinking about the horse I adored as a kid until my annoying sister took an interest in it and squealed whenever she wanted a go. Little sisters are the bane of society. “So, there was only junk in the storage unit? Jeez, Bri, you sure know how to reel someone in and then spit them out,” I snap at her. You’re doing nothing but waste my time.”
“So, visiting your injured – close to death sister is a waste of time?” she asks, seemingly hurt by my words, and immediately I feel bad.
“No, of course not. I’m sorry. It’s just there’s been…” I backtrack. “Someone annihilated Aaron’s SUV, and then there were two strange men following men earlier-”
“Here? In the hospital?” she asks fearfully.
“No,” I lie to protect her. “Not here. Besides, security is right outside, don’t forget. Anyway, continue your story.”
“First, tell me which brother you’re dating. I imagine that it’s Xavier because you peer-tutored him. So…is it him?” her tone is hopeful. She is likely envisioning herself sliming her way into the Leroux circle, maybe trying to charm one of the other brothers. The thought of them dating my sister fills me with dismay. She can’t have any of them, including Austin. What am I thinking? As if I control what those boys do.
“Yes and no,” I reply, struggling once again with the definition of dating. “Xavier and I are seeing each other, but also Aaron…” I am unsure how to finish the sentence as my sister’s mouth drops open.
“Both? No. Surely not,” she’s aghast.
“Your turn. What happened next after you discovered the storage unit?” trying to keep her focused on the important stuff.
“Have you slept with him…them?” Damn, she’s more interested in my love life than getting to the bottom of this mystery. Gosh, she’s infuriating.
“Yes, and we’re going to stop talking about this so you can finish the story,” I say bashfully, eager to change the subject.
“Was it good?” she gushes.
“Bri!” I snap.
“Okay, okay. I found a cardboard box in there that, at first glance, contained paperwork and accountancy stuff, but it was nothing interesting. I picked up a spiralbound book with Viche”s French surname on the cover. It caught my eye because Harley worked in a strip club for a few months, owned by the wealthy Viche family of Illinois. When I opened the book, it was an easy-to-read summary of their income, outgoing assets, several millions of dollars floating about, how much tax they owe, etcetera. You know I’m not an expert on numbers, but it seemed above board.
“Anyway, a USB stick was tucked inside the pages labeled Vacation Pics, so I assumed they were our family pictures and somehow got mixed up with our parents’ accounting stuff. I took the spiralbound Viche accounts for Harley to drool over while I’m interested in the vacation pictures.
She sighs. “That was the plan, naturally, that’s not quite how it went.”
A hand gently touches my shoulder, and I leap in fright. “Sorry to scare you,” the nurse says as my heart drops. “But that’s enough for now. Brielle needs her rest.”
Begrudgingly, I hug my sister, utterly irritated that she couldn’t complete the story. As I turn to walk away, her muffled voice croaks, “Viche, Em, Viche.”
“Okay,” I answer quietly as my stomach turns at the reality of what is happening here. I hadn’t heard of the name Viche before, but I hadn’t heard of the Leroux brothers until Rosie pointed them out. Then we’d make fun of them from a distance – boofhead jocks etc., until I was offered good money to peer-tutor Xavier, and my opinion of him changed slowly.
The first person I see when I step out into the corridor is The Bear, and his smile fades when he reads my expression. “Viche,” I breathe. “Have you heard of them?”
His nostrils flare as an ominous cloud cast across his face. “Yeah,” he nods. “I’ve heard of them.”