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twenty-eight

F L O R E N C E

Blood is not thicker than water

"What the hell does that mean?" I ask to no one in particular as I finish reading the last letter in the envelope that I found in the attic. For some odd reason, I decided that after my shower I would go explore the house. But at the same time, avoid every other person in the house as well. That's when I came across the library. I know it as the place Emilio goes to when he's had enough of Dominic and Lucien's bickering.

The library was neatly kept. Books upon books fill up the dark oak shelves. The faint smell of dust and old books hovers in the air, and where the sun shines down from the window, the small particles of dust and fibres float in the air. I walked around for a few minutes, engrossed with the sanctuary I never stumbled across until today.

There was a metal ladder that seemed to have been black at one point but as time went on and the house was lived in, the black faded and rust took its place leaving the ladder an orange-brown colour. When I climbed up the ladder I was smacked in the face with dust, and cold wet air. The attic was smaller than I expected. Junk piled on top of more junk. Clearly this is our houses storage for unnecessary junk that could've been thrown out years ago.

Trunks containing god knows what scatter across the room. Crates full of old papers, files, and binders, stack on top of one another. Old furniture clutters the space. Five baby cribs sit neatly beside one another. Each one different, each one unique. Mine was obvious, it was the last one, it is a pale pink, and the other cribs all have their own soft colour: green, blue, white, and grey.

I found the envelope containing the letters under a pile of kid sized hockey sticks, helmets, and skates. It wasn't addressed to anyone, not our names, not our initials, nothing. It was intriguing though. The envelope was a pale blue, coated in a thin layer of dust. It was different from the other crap in the attic. So I opened it and read.

The thing is, I am not sure what any of it meant. I don't understand my fathers cryptic message, or why he couldn't just tell us the man's name. We have two half brothers that we never heard about. Half brothers that most likely hate our guts.

Half brothers that I need to tell my other brothers about. Right away. So I quickly gather the papers up, keeping them in the order they were written in, and stand up. But when I do, it's like a weight comes crashing down on me and suddenly my legs go numb and heart rate picks up. Falling to the ground I groan as the alarming sound of my continuous glucose monitor connected to my belly starts to beep erratically. I smack the monitor on my belly to get it to stop but instead I rip it off.

"Oh my god," I cry in pain, not realizing how freaking much that would hurt. My heads pounding and as I reach for my phone, that is when I realize that it is being blown up by multiple different people.

"Crap," I mutter as I seen Massimo's face full up my phone screen. It's a photo I took of him when Emilio and I were joking about setting up a Tinder account for him. So I took his self portrait and lets just say he looks anything but impressed. To be fair, Massimo needs to get a life that doesn't revolve around me and Lucien. Mostly me though...

"Massy I—," I say into the speaker but get cut off.

"Florence where the hell are you!" He sounds panicked, his breathing heavy as I heard doors shut in the background. "Your blood sugar is way too low."

"Yeah I'm feeling that right now," I groan as the feeling that I may vomit raises up my throat.

"Tell me where you are, we have the whole fucking house on lockdown, we are all looking," he says.