the spade brothers' little sister

nine

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After getting home from work with Larson, I went right up to my room. I felt like the little bag of cocaine was burning a whole in my pocket and the only thing I knew was that I had to get it out of there as soon as possible. I took the baggie out and shoved it in between my mattress and bed frame, shoving it as far down as I could so that it was barely visible. 

"Brenna?" 

I jumped at the voice that came from outside my bedroom door. I stood up right when Jace entered my room, still dressed in his work clothes. 

"Yeah?" I responded as casually as possible.

"What's up?" he asked, stepping towards me and pulling me in for a hug. "How was your day with Larson? I missed ya."

I wrinkled my nose and pushed him off of me. "Super boring," I groaned, rolling my head back. "I don't wanna have to go with him again."

"Okay buddy, I'm sorry." He loosened the tie around his neck and began to take it off. "Tomorrow you can switch with Brady and come with me." I nodded happily. "It will be really boring though, you know. Just meetings and sitting at my desk all day."

I let out a big sigh. "Why can't I just stay home with Brady? Everything will be okay!" I tried to justify why letting me stay home would be a good idea. "And Larson gets off earlier than you, so we'll only be here alone for a few hours!"

Jace just shook his head at me. "Brady isn't the best babysitter, Brenna. As we know from last time."

"Jace!" I groaned. "I'm twelve and I don't need a babysitter. I can take care of myself!"

Laughter came from the hallway outside of my bedroom. Brady popped his head in and spoke. "You still play with dolls, Brenna. You can't take care of yourself. You're just a baby."

I screeched and threw a pillow from my bed at Brady standing in the door frame. "I'm not a baby!" I began to run towards the door to chase him down and hopefully hit him, but Jace grabbed my shoulder, not letting me leave my room. 

"Leave it, B," Jace commanded. "It's not worth it." 

"He's just so mean to me," I complained, stomping my feet, which definitely didn't help with my argument.

"I see that," he replied. "That's just another reason why I don't want to leave you home alone with him." I rolled my eyes in reply. "Come on, let's go make something for dinner."

Jace changed out of his work clothes as I went downstairs to see what we had in the refrigerator to make for dinner. Charlie wasn't home yet, Larson was showering, and Brady was playing video games downstairs, so I was standing in the kitchen singing to myself while looking through the food we had. 

As I was singing, a buzzing noise distracted me from my thoughts. I turned behind me and saw that Jace had left his phone on the kitchen counter. I glanced around the kitchen to make sure no one else was in there before I slid over to where Jace's phone sat, lit up. I wasn't able to see what the message read that popped up on the screen, but as soon as I saw who the message was from, I froze. Spencer Spade. 

Why was dad texting Jace? Didn't my brothers just tell me the other day that he wasn't my real father and that I should not think about him? I couldn't understand why Jace was texting our dad, but I had to know what our dad had said. 

As quickly as I could, I typed in as many four number passcodes as I could think of. I started with my birthday because I was hopeful that it was his passcode, but that wasn't it. Then I tried all of my brothers' birthdays, our house number, and Jace's lucky numbers. His phone buzzed and an alert popped up on the screen saying that it was disabled for 30 minutes. I sighed and smacked my hand against my forehead, cursing myself for guessing too many incorrect passcodes.