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As Frank pulled through the gate, tears streamed down my face. He watched me in the rearview mirror, his eyes full of concern, but I just turned to look out the window. My heart was breaking into tiny pieces as we left the gated property behind us. My mind knew what I needed to do, but that didn’t stop me from knowing how badly I was hurting them and myself by doing it.
Chapter
Fifteen
Jaxon
My chest had achedall day, and I rubbed my hand across it again. The fight with Brooklyn was all I could replay in my mind all day. The look of fury on her face as she slammed the car door on us was etched in my brain, and I could barely focus on anything else.
Things hadn’t gotten any better once Brooklyn had stormed out. My brothers and I rarely fought, but we were at each other’s throats, laying blame on each other. Now that I had time to reflect, I knew this was a joint fuck up. The four of us had agreed to protecting Brooklyn and keeping her under guard.
What none of us realized was she would grow to resent the situation. Gideon was still pushing against us, believing we were doing what was best to protect her. In my mind, I agreed with him. With Lyle out in the world, we could only assume he was waiting for his perfect chance to get near Brooklyn again. But she was her own person, and she didn’t take kindly to being dictated to.
I stared into the glass of dark liquor I had poured myself. It was entirely too early to be drinking, but my mind was an absolute mess. I normally knew the things to say, the things to do, to workout difficult situations. Calm and dependable Jaxon. I couldn’t seem to tap into any of those strengths now.
There was a time I wasn’t the dependable one. A time when I was high more often than I was sober, when my brothers could only be sure I would show to deal, so I could get my hands on product. It was a time in my life that all I wanted to do was hide from reality and drugs helped me do that.
Looking at my computer screen and the photo I had pulled up, I remembered how influences in my life didn’t show me the right path to go down. I set down the glass and leaned forward to look closer at the most recent photo of Missy I could find. She was staring into the camera with a small smirk on her face.
When Missy had been the woman I thought I loved, we loved the drugs together. She would encourage me to do more and the sex we had would be messy and unfulfilling. At the time, I had no idea what could be, and I tried to hold on to Missy tightly, even as things began to unravel. When she almost fractured mybrothers and me, I finally pushed the veil of drugs out of my vision so I could see what was happening to us.
Missy didn’t look like the addict she had been the last time I laid eyes on her. Gideon had a slim file on her, but she never seemed to be someone we would need to worry about, so time wasn’t wasted on her. Now, she had reappeared into our lives, not only at the club, but we each had received text messages from an unknown number that seemed to be her.
The message that came to my phone had read“Don’t you miss us, Jaxon? Miss the high?”It was sickening to me and I had immediately deleted it. We all had come too far and built something too important together to allow Missy to weasel in and hurt us. We were on the path of building a family we could be happy with, in love with, by adding Brooklyn.
Which brought me to staring at a recent photo of her in a tabloid. Somehow, Missy had created a social media following and now was considered an influencer. When I browsed through her content, it turned out she used her recovery from addiction as a way to pull people in. Kicking addiction was admirable, but Missy used it as a ploy to gain followers.
I clicked on another tab that showed me her net worth. She wasn’t in the big leagues, but she had come far from the girl they had known. Her income streams were mostly advertising through digital sources. She had picked up one or two endorsements and they were big paydays for her. Seemed after those were banked, she started to show up on the paparazzi circuit.
One site actually had Missy connected to us, though it was written as very mysterious. I would hedge my guess that it was actually Missy feeding the information to the tabloids. As far as I was aware, there were no pictures to place us together, even in our past. Taking selfies or memorializing our lives hadn’t been on our list of priorities.
We had been successful in keeping our past from the spotlight, as we rose to power within the city. Now we had friends in politics, law enforcement and even a few judges. Those friends had all been made by legal means, most by supporting the same charitable foundations or being on boards supporting causes we all agreed on.
I opened one tabloid site and stared at the front page again. I would have to bring it to the attention of Gideon, to see if he could find out how it happened. But there was a photo of Missy sitting with Aiden in the VIP section of Club 4. The story didn’t have details about who Missy was, but they tied Aiden back to Brooklyn and the headline was about them being on the outs. I shuddered to think of Brooklyn seeing the story.
The timing of Missy’s appearance sat wrong with the four of us. We had been successful for quite a few years and she hadn’t come out of the woodwork. I couldn’t wrap my mind around why she wouldn’t want to show up until she was also successful on her own. That wouldn’t matter to Missy. The way I saw it, she was always out for what she could get from a situation. If she wanted us back, it was only because we had money now, not because of some unrequited love.
I had no doubts that Brooklyn was also a reason Missy showed up. We paid off enough photographers to keep the stories about her to a minimum in the tabloids. But some photos leaked here and there, linking her to one or multiple of us. Brooklyn just shook her head at the situation and didn’t seem overly concerned about the public’s opinion. However, if Missy saw just a few of the photos, it may have given her more incentive to come and disrupt our lives now.
Shutting my laptop, I finished my drink and sat back, rubbing my chest again. My heart hurt with the way we had left things with Brooklyn. I picked up my phone and felt disappointment when I saw my pleading text message to her hadgone unanswered. It made me feel weak, but I couldn’t have her going an entire day not knowing how important she was to us. And that’s what Brooklyn did to me, exposed me for all of my emotions. Things I could usually keep in check, were right on the surface with her.
The image of her connected to wires with a beep telling us if her heart was still beating was on my mind constantly. It took mere moments for Lyle to get access to her and almost kill her. I wished Gideon had just killed him then. It would have been self defense. But when the story came out, I knew Gideon had to act quickly to help Brooklyn and I couldn’t blame him for that. We were just stuck watching our backs, waiting for Lyle to resurface. None of us believed he had given up on our woman.
I decided that my one drink wasn’t enough to stop me from driving home and left my office. My brothers weren’t around, which was a good thing. I was too lost in my mind and a lot of it contained anger at how we all dealt with the morning conversation. Most of that anger was directed at Aiden for pulling the shit he did with Brooklyn. Making her doubt our feelings for her, even for a moment, was too much for me.
In my car, I rehearsed all the things I wanted to say to Brooklyn when I got home. I wanted to apologize, to explain why we were overreacting. I needed to tell her that the thought of her injured made me sick to my stomach. That I needed her to lean on me, on us, to protect her. I wanted to slay any demons that came for her.
Pulling my car into its spot, I noticed I was the first home. I had no idea where my brothers were, but it gave me hope that I would have time with Brooklyn before they arrived. I walked through the kitchen without acknowledging Chris, who was busy with dinner prep, only glancing around to make sure Brooklyn wasn’t keeping him company again.
As I climbed the stairs, an uncomfortable feeling was settling in my stomach. Somehow, before I even opened Brooklyn’s door, I knew what I would find. Inside, I immediately noticed her closet doors not shut and a number of items missing from hangers. It wasn’t everything, which gave me a small sliver of hope that wherever she had gone wasn’t meant to be permanent.
Turning, I found a slip of paper on her recently made bed. The bed we had specially made so she could have us with her whenever she wanted. I picked up the paper and collapsed on the bed, reading her words over and over, trying to understand what she was trying to tell us.
I had to go. I care for you all, but this is too much. I need my space and need to be sure of what I want. Please don’t follow me. xo - Brooklyn
Pain lanced through me as I began to understand she had left us. The last line explained why she wasn’t responding to any messages. She didn’t want us to contact her. She had been pushed to a breaking point, and she had moved out before any of us could even talk to her.
“What’s going on?”Gideon’s voice came into the room.
