Playing Poker [BEING REWRITTEN]

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Third Person

"Then I look pretty good for a dead bitch." All heads snapped toward the direction of the hushed voice. Rayland was trying to wipe her eyes but she looked like she was in a tremendous amount of pain trying to lift her arm.

Jaylen was the first one out of everybody to react as he ran over to the bed and suffocated her in a hug. She hissed in pain and he was immediately escorted off by Jaxon.

"Hey... How y'all doing?" She asked with a bitter chuckle that she immediately regretted as a huge wave of pain rolled through her body. Paul ran out of the room to get her doctor while the brothers remaining looked at her in shock. How can she joke in a time like this?

"Don't ever scare me like that again." Liam gave her a gentle hug followed by Micheal, Jaylen, and Jaxon. Jayden watched one by one as all of his brothers hugged her, remembering when she first got here, nobody wanted her here. They made her an outsider.

How much they have grown as people and as a family, was all because of her and she didn't even know.

He slowly walked towards the bed, cautious to spark any reaction. He wrapped his arms around her and whispered something in her ear so only she could hear.

"I'm sorry, Ray."

She tried to her shocked face but she couldn't help how her eyes widened in surprise. That was the first time they hugged or the first time her called her Ray. He walked back to his set just in time that the doctor and Paul came into the room.

"Hey Rayland, how are you feeling?" A different doctor asked.

"Like I got run over by a truck." She groaned, the doctor smiled and wrote something down on his notepad.

"I'm going to put some pain medication in your IV which is going to make you a little drowsy, okay?" The doctor asked and that's when she realized the wire running from up her arm.

She nodded ready for her pain to come to an end, physical pain at least.

The medication worked pretty quickly, within ten minutes, she was lightly snoring with drool running down her face.

"May I talk to the guardian outside please?" He asked, Paul got up from his seat and followed the doctor outside of the door.

"Okay, she should be free to go within the next week, depending on how she heals." He confirmed, Paul nodded in relief but he could tell that there was a big 'but' coming.

"But," There it was. "There were some bruises that indicate she was abused anywhere from a few years ago to a few months ago. I understand she was also in a car accident a few years ago but none of the scars are caused by it. Did you know anything about this?" Paul's heart dropped.

Rayland was abused? He couldn't even fathom the fact that his stepdaughter was physically abused. He was praying that Linda wasn't the one that did it, even though he knew she didn't treat Ray very well.

When he met Linda, she was a sweet soul who he thought could never hurt a fly. They met at a restaurant when Linda ran into Paul and made him drop his drink on his white shirt. She apologized and offered to pay for the drink and the shirt but he politely refused.

They kept in contact for a few weeks and that's when he officially asked her on a date. They continued to date for seven months until they got married. That's when she started to change.

She was barely home, started calling her niece names, and would rarely even talk to her husband. Blake eventually came to his dad about the conversations that Linda and Ray had in Spanish that they thought no one but them understood. He wasn't fluent but it was enough for him to identify certain words and they were terrible.