The Four Brothers ~ Completed

Capítulo Quatorze: A Localização

I've been running off of two hours of sleep and a sixteen ounce Red Bull for the past two days. I think I need to see a doctor or something because I've heard that sleep is important to human life.

I've also got a massive infection in my finger. Like, my middle finger on my dominate hand is slowly turning green and is swollen three times the size it should be. I'm going to the hospital tomorrow, wish me luck!

Gemma's POV:

Okay.

Wow.

So much just happened.

I sat on the floor of the fancy room Victoria had escorted me back to after Daniel had started cursing up a storm in a language I wasn't familiar with. My mother had stayed to console him, which was preferable to the betrayed looks she'd sent me after my confession.

I wasn't sure what the woman had expected from me, but I sure as hell wasn't going to play into her happy family delusion unless my life was at stake. 

With so much information whirling around in my brain, I'd plopped down on the floor beside the massive bed in the rather tacky room I'd been given.

The room must've been designed with some other twelve year old girl in mind because there was no way anyone who knew me would think I wanted an entirely pink room. I had nothing against the color, but it certainly wasn't what I wanted my walls painted and my curtains and bed covered in. Even the carpeted floor was a dusty shade of pink. It was enough to burn my eyes.

I did take notice of the way Victoria locked my door behind her. I hadn't tried to door knob, knowing it would be a failure. I wanted to take stock of all the information I had at my disposal before I came up with an escape plan.

My mother was alive and well and working to destroy her sons. She had worked with her lover, the man I'd stolen several million dollars from, to murder my biological father. She then, instead of leaving with her children and being a decent parent, decided to leave her sons to the mercy of the American foster system and then the streets, once they aged out of the system. She also left her only daughter with a friend from... Had she said high school?

Good Lord. Where on earth did my brothers and I get our brains from? It couldn't have been from my mother, because the more I learned about her the more of an idiot I realized she was. And the more I wished she'd stayed dead.

Moving on from the upcoming existential crisis of wishing my biological mother dead only moments after meeting her for the first time since I was like six months old; she'd left me with her old friend who beat me half to death, supposedly under the orders of his boss, who I knew for a fact was one Daniel Garcia.

This implied that my mother not only knew of the border-line torture I was being put through as a child, but condoned it in an effort to get what she wanted.

But none of that information would do me any good at the moment. Garcia knew I was the one who'd scammed him out of an obscene amount of money. With no way to get that money back, I was screwed until my brother's arrived with the calvary. I shook the image of my brothers on horseback from my mind and focused back on my problem at hand.

I stood up and took another look around the room. None of the walls were hollow, so no Nancy Drew secret passageways. There wasn't a window either, even though I was pretty sure I was a floor or two above ground level. There was a bathroom, but the vent wasn't big enough for me to climb through, and even if it was, I didn't have a screwdriver to unscrewed the vent cover.

I closed the bathroom door before sitting on the toilet lid. I tapped my chin, still looking around the bathroom. There wasn't even soap in the shower so I couldn't make the floor in front of my bathroom door slippery in case of an unwanted intruder. There certainly wasn't a razor I could use for self defense.

I didn't have my shoes, didn't have any of my jewelry, didn't have any makeshift weapon of any kind. I was literally a sitting duck.

I hated it.

My bedroom door opened once more, Victoria calling out my name. I exited my bathroom, dropping the innocent, timid routine entirely. That cover was blown so what was the point in continuing to act like it wasn't?

"Dinner is served. Your mother was planning on eating with you tonight, but there was a situation she had to take care of." Victoria explained unnecessarily. She set the silver platter bearing a plate of steak and mashed potatoes, with what looked to be a crystal glass of apple juice beside it.

They were breaking out the nice dinnerware for me. At least they had some manners.

"Let me guess, it was either calming Daniel down or attempting to stop my brothers from burning the world down to find me?" I arched an eyebrow as I sat on the too soft bed, picking up my fork and knife and cutting through my steak. It was cooked well done.

At least my theory of them only having one spy in Tobias's house had been proved correct. All the things my mother and Daniel didn't know about me proved they didn't have someone keeping an eye on me at all times, which wasn't all that hard considering I never left the house.

Victoria scoffed, sneering down at me.

"Not afraid we'll drug you?" She asked, hands perched on her hips. I noticed how she didn't answer my question, but let it go as I hadn't really been expecting an answer in the first place.

That's the beauty of knowing you're right. You don't need someone to confirm or deny.

"If you haven't noticed, I'm a tiny twelve year old. All of you are fully grown adults. If you wanted me drugged, you'd pin me down and stick me with a needle. You wouldn't go through the trouble of cooking me dinner." I said with a shrug, scooping more runny mashed potatoes onto my fork. My nose scrunched up in disgust when the potatoes dripped between the prongs of my fork.

Potatoes weren't supposed to do that.

Maybe they weren't trying to drug me, but if I continued eating what their chef cooked, I was sure to end up with food poising.

If I was being forced to play damsel in distress hostage, they were at least going to feed me decent food.

"Your brothers are persistent but they'll never find us all the way out here." Victoria's smile was smug, as if she'd won some prize. Apparently, she was proud she'd won an argument with a twelve year old. Very mature for the woman, like, ten times my age.

And she hadn't won. If anything, she'd given me information.

"So we're at one of Garcia's country houses? You said out here, so I'm assuming there's a lot of land and little service, that way Zion wouldn't be able to track us down. I did the books so I know what houses he paid taxes on, but I also know that he was forced to sell most of said houses to pay off the debts I left him with. I'm guessing we're in his house right on the Maine, New York State border." I theorized.

Victoria's pale face and wide eyes were all I needed to see to know I was right on the money with my assumption. She snatched the empty plate away from me, storming from the room and slamming the door behind her, the lock thudding into place. But, that was what I was hoping she would do.

In her haste to let Garcia and my mother know I'd easily guessed our location, she'd forgotten something very important. She'd forgotten that along with a fork, the person who'd made up my plate had also given me a steak knife.

A steak knife that Victoria oh so conveniently forgot was still in my hand.

I refused to be a sitting duck any longer. It was past time to leave.