Lost for You (Lost 2)

We’re lounging around on the couch when my phone starts ringing from the kitchen. I grab it, look at the caller ID, and wonder why the hell Sylvia would be calling me. We may have cleared the air, but I wouldn’t say we’re at the ‘call each other to say hi’ stage, that’s for f**king sure.

“Hello,” I answer gruffly.

“Brax! Oh my goodness, please tell me Elle’s okay? Do you need anything? Have they asked for a ransom?” she shrieks down the phone.

“Calm down, Sylvia. She’s fine, we rescued her late last night. What I wanna know is how the hell do you know about it because I sure as shit didn’t ring you?” I ask suspiciously.

“Don’t be mad, but Victor called me. He thought I should know.” I’m suddenly frozen on the spot. How the f**k does Victor know my birth mother?

“Sylvia, why would my boss be calling you about Elle being kidnapped?” I ask, angry at yet another secret being kept from me.

“It’s not something we should discuss over the phone, Brax,” she says, brushing it off.

I’m seething now. “Sylvia, unless you want there to be more problems between us, you’ll start talking. Right now!”

“Brax, I think we should do this face to face. There’s a lot of stuff from the past we still haven’t talked about yet,” she replies shakily.

“What aren’t you telling me?” I say through gritted teeth. I feel Elle wrap her hands around my waist, and I look down to see her frowning.

“I changed my name when I left home. My family had a sketchy reputation, to say the least, and I didn’t want to be tarred by their dirty brush. So I started using my mother’s maiden name, Robinson.”

“That’s the name on my birth certificate,” I spit out. She’s not telling me anything I don’t already know.

“Yes, but my family name is Bertorelli.”

And all of a sudden everything makes sense. It’s like the final puzzle piece of my life has finally clicked into place.

“Victor…” I breathe out.

“Is my brother, yes. Your uncle. He’s been watching out for you for a while now,” she continues to explain.

“Why the f**k didn’t he tell me? He knew I tried to find you after Roger died!” I shout. Elle is rubbing my back now, trying to calm my rigid body.

“I asked him not to tell you. He told me that he recruited you, and to be honest, I hated him for it. I didn’t want you involved in his kind of business,” I hear her sigh.

I try to take a deep breath, but this betrayal of sorts is too much to deal with. “Here’s Elle,” I say as I hand the phone over to her and walk away into the bedroom. I need to clear my head. This must be how Elle felt when I told her everything about the job and the company.

It’s a cluster f**k of epic proportions.

When Elle comes into the room a few minutes later, I’m sitting on the edge of the bed, my head in my hands as I try to come to grips with this new information. My boss is my uncle. I’m related by blood to one of the most prolific crime families in the South. Fuck! If it wasn’t enough to be related to Evans, now I have a criminal history on both sides.

“Babe, are you okay? Aunt Sylvie explained everything to me,” she says as she sits beside me on the bed.

“Not really,” I say into my hands. “It fits, though. Everything Victor’s done for me, always looking out for me, and now you. It all makes sense.”

I feel her lean into my side, resting her cheek on my arm. “It’ll be okay, Brax. What are you going to do now?”

Lifting my head up, I look over at my beautiful girl. She’s always looking for the positives in any situation. “What I have to. They’ve left me no choice now. Do you have my phone?” I ask, standing up.

She hands my phone to me but still looks worried. She’s got nothing to worry about now. Brimstone has been charged and is going to be put away for a long time, and Gibbons has been dealt with. I can’t tell her that, though.

There is no doubt in my mind what happened once Devon and I left that run down shack. The two gun shots that boomed out into that night air behind us as we ran away were the final nail in Gibbons’ coffin. You never cross Michael Evans, especially when it comes to blood. And for all his faults, Evans holds his family, especially his two sons, above everything else. I need to find out what happened, but that call will have to wait. There is another family member I need to speak to first.

I bring up his number and push send, my hand shaking as I bring the phone up to my ear.

“Brax,” he says when the call connects.

“Vic, or should that be Uncle Vic?” I say deadpan.

“She told you,” he says with a sigh of relief. The man has the audacity to be relieved?

“You should’ve told me years ago, instead of letting me search for her and continually come up empty handed. You knew all along who and where she was.” I can’t hide the venom in my voice now.

“Yes, I did, but she asked me not to tell you. She just wanted to know that you were safe and happy.”

“I was never happy. Not until I met Elle. You know that.”

“And she knows that too,” he adds.

I’ve made my decision. Now, to tell him. It’s something I’ve considered, given recent developments, but this final piece of information has cemented my future. “Well, you know what this means.”

“What, Brax?”

“I can’t work for you anymore. I can’t have anything to do with your business, legal or otherwise,” I say spitefully.

“I had assumed that would be the case, given that you’re not living down here anymore. What about Shay?” he asks, apparently not surprised with my decision.

“That’s his call. I’m not gonna tell him what to do.” And it’s true. He may be my best friend, and someone I regard as a brother, but I’m not going to hold it against him if he chooses to continue working for Victor.

“Okay. Well, I’ll settle everything at this end. Do you want me to sell the house?” he asks. Roger and Leah’s house; the house I’ve lived in for most of my life. The house Victor helped me save when the bank was about to foreclose.

“No, I’ll deal with it. And Vic?”

“Yes?”

“Gibbons is dead. Evans shot him,” I reply stoically.

He scoffs down the phone. “I know. Have you not seen the news this morning?”