18.

Ryan

" W hy are we here?"

Both Phoenix and Oscar are annoyed to be sitting in a random hotel room with me, but I can't take any chances that someone might overhear us. Besides, I'm worried.

"I think my office might be bugged."

"Why?" Oscar is the one to speak first. "Does that mean my office is bugged, too? Why the hell would the offices be bugged?"

"Because our dad was a piece of shit," Phoenix sighs. "They're probably bugged. The first sign of a bug is thinking there's a bug. Tell us more."

I'm not going to beat around the bush. They already know I'm upset about something. I need to be straight with my brothers. They'll be straight with me, too. Besides, maybe they can help.

"Have you heard of Project Sunshine?"

They both shake their heads. I'm not surprised.

"During an audit, I came across this project. It's one that Allison manages."

"That bitch," Phoenix says. "I fucking hate her." He does, too. Not that it takes much for Phoenix to hate someone. Out of the three of us, he's the angriest and most jaded. He also hates our dad the most. "I know she was sleeping with him before the divorce. I know it."

"I'm sure she was," I agree.

"What does Allison have to do with this weird project? How does that relate to your office being bugged? And why do you care?" Oscar is the gentle voice of reason, once again. It's got to be a little brother trait. Then again, Phoenix and I are convinced that Oscar really idolized our dad. Maybe it's because we were older when Mom left, but we really have a much more jaded opinion of our father. He was a piece of shit in every way. I don't miss him at all. I know Phoenix doesn't, either.

"I asked her about the project because I couldn't find any information on our servers or in our files about it aside from the fact that we give it a hundred grand every month."

"Wait, every month?" Oscar suddenly seems interested. "That feels high for a project we know nothing about."

"It is high. As far as I can tell, there are no holdings, and no real estate associated with it. No businesses, either. Allison told me it was to support animal shelters in the area."

"Animal shelters?" Phoenix scoffs. "In what world would our father care about animals? Seriously."

"I agree, so I started digging. I talked with Mom. She gave me her password."

"Dad never deactivated it?" Phoenix suddenly seems surprised. It's definitely an oversight on our father's part. The only thing I can think of is that after the divorce, Dad was so enamored with his next wife that he was, well, distracted. Despite being one of the richest bastards in the world, our father was strangely distracted in many ways. You can do that when you have money, though. You just pay other people to deal with your problems.

"He didn't. At first, I struggled to find anything."

"Then you discovered a terrible secret, huh?" Oscar doesn't sound sarcastic – just sad. He plops down onto one of the queen size beds and throws himself back against the pillows. "Lay it on us. Just rip off the bandage."

"Okay," I say. "I think our dad was stealing kids."

I expect hell to break loose, but it doesn't. Instead, Oscar and Phoenix both look at me with confusion on their faces. They definitely heard me, but the words aren't registering.

"What the hell are you talking about?" Phoenix asks. "Stealing kids? Like baby goats?"

"No, asshole. Infants." Oscar sits back up. "How many babies did he steal?"

"You're both wrong," I say. Then I look from one of them to the other. Finally, I close my eyes. This is a habit I developed when I was small. Most of the time, I'm able to be normal when I'm in front of a boardroom or holding some kind of meeting. Today, though, I revert back to that high schooler who didn't understand his parents' divorce or why he had to be sent away to boarding school. "He was taking kids from the foster care system and selling them."

"What the hell does that mean?" Oscar asks. "Like, for nefarious purposes?" He looks like he's going to be sick.

"I don't think so," I say. "I don't know if that's any better. It just seems like he was taking kids and selling them to wealthy people who wanted to adopt a child."

"Actually, what the fuck?" Phoenix turns eight shades of green.

"Here's the info I have." I hand them each a flash drive, plus printouts of the most important things I found. I don't love having a physical paper trail, but flash drives are easy to lose or destroy, and I want them to see what I found. "It looks like 20 years ago, right around the time Mom and Dad split up, Dad had a business partner."

"Jerry Anchorage," Phoenix says. "I remember him. Weird guy."

"Well, apparently, the two of them decided that they had a plan to clean up downtown Siren City. Do you remember the runaway kids who used to hang out around here?"

We all remember. Back then, Jerry and Dad used to complain a lot about the state of the city. They both bitched constantly about "ruffians" destroying downtown. Then one day, it was like everything stopped. It was around the time of the divorce, though, which meant I was at boarding school with Oscar, and Phoenix was sent off to some private college. When we came back to Siren City, things were different, but none of us really thought much about it.

"You're joking," Oscar says.

"No. Jerry and Dad made a plan. They decided they'd round up the kids. Then they'd adopt them out to wealthy families."

"Why would any of the kids agree to this?"

"Most of them were young," Phoenix says. "Like, eight, nine, or ten. This wasn't older teenagers. The kids who hung around here were really little. The foster care system in Siren City is trash."

"He's right," I say. "I don't know where the kids went. I'm guessing across the country. Dad and Jerry had lots of friends in lots of high places."

"And what? They just forged adoption paperwork?"

"As far as I can tell," I sigh. "Yes. That's exactly what they did. They sent the kids to live with wealthy couples who wanted a kid. Not the worst life in the world."

"But it's not legal or moral. It's definitely not ethical," Oscar says. "What if those kids had family members who wanted to take care of them? When a kid goes into the system, there's a period of time where the judge and social workers will try to connect them with their family. These kids didn't get that chance, did they?"

"They never got that chance. Plus, without the oversight of a legal adoption, there was no one to check up on them."

"Meaning?"

"Generally, when a child is adopted through a private adoption agency, or even through foster care, social workers check up on them for a period of time after the adoption takes place," I explain. "In the case of our father's adoption scheme, he didn't do follow-up, which means those kids could have been abused or neglected. No one would ever know."

"Or they could have been subjected to life as the kid of an arrogant bastard," Phoenix adds. He really, really hates our dad. I wonder if the pain of losing a chance to get revenge on our father will ever fade for Phoenix. He's 38 now, nearly middle aged, and he still holds a grudge he can't seem to get rid of.

"So, what are we supposed to do about this now?" Oscar asks. He starts pacing back and forth the way I do when I'm upset. We've got that much in common.

"How many kids did they take?" Phoenix asks. "And is it still going on?"

"My guess is at least two dozen over a decade."

"Shit."

"But the good news, I suppose, is that there hasn't been any information on recent abductions or adoptions."

"At least we've got that going for us," Phoenix says sarcastically. "Shit. I need a fucking drink."

THE INFORMATION SHATTERS my soul, and I have nothing I can do except close my eyes and pretend like the world is different than it is.

I don't really want to be here.

There's a bar a few blocks from the hotel. It's a dive bar, which means nobody who frequents this place is going to know me or my brothers. It's a bunch of regulars - veterans with their hats and LGBTQ community members who just want a place to belong.

At Brewer's Inn, everyone belongs.

This is the type of place where anyone can go and just be.

So that's what I'm doing.

I order a drink and then another. Phoenix and Oscar match me drink-for-drink. We're three in when Oscar places a hand on my shoulder.

"What?" My voice is gruff and annoyed, but I'm not bothered. Not with him. Not really, anyway. There's a part of me that wants him here because Oscar and Phoenix are the only ones who know what I've gone through. They're the only people in the world who understand what it's like to be me. Nobody has dealt with the pain I've dealt with except for them.

For our entire lives, it's been us vs the world.

"He fooled us all, you know."

"I'm aware."

"None of us canchange what he did," Phoenix adds.

"Again, I'm aware. That doesn't change the fact that I hate him for it," I tell them. "He screwed over so many kids. What are we supposed to do now? Really? It's not like there's a guidebook for this. It's not like when your dad dies you just get this list of messes you need to remember to clean up."

"Things would be easier if that was the case," Oscar admits.

"I don't know what we should do now," I whisper. The company is fine as a whole, but Project Sunshine has thrown a weird wrench into things. "I don't know how involved Allison Green is. Maybe she doesn't even know."

"She definitely knows," Oscar says.

"Are you sure?" Phoenix's voice is gentle and understanding. He's the one of us who tends to jump to conclusions the least. That wasn't always the case. Once upon a time, Phoenix was wild and passionate. He was easy to anger and easy to love. Then his wife and kid died, and Phoenix lost everything. Now he's a shell of the brother I used to have, which sounds mean, but it's really just the truth.

"How can you know?" I ask.

"We need to be sure before we jump to conclusions," Phoenix says.

I miss Phoenix. I miss who he used to be, and I definitely miss who he is now.

"We can't just go accusing random people at work of being in cahoots with our dad," he says.

"Cahoots?" Oscar shakes his head. "We aren't undercover spies, my brothers. We're just normal billionaires who happen to have a stupid problem to deal with. This isn't anything that money can't solve."

I cringe at Oscar's words.

"Not everything can be solved with money," I tell him. I think of Alex. I think of how I'm falling for the woman who is so soft and sweet.

"Most things can," he shrugs. Oscar gestures for the bartender and when she arrives, he orders us another round. The drinks come fast. He drops cash on the bar. It's a tip, and she knows it. He's got a tab open and running, but Oscar has learned that in this case, money does solve problems. When you tip heavy and often, you get better service. That's just the way the world works.

"How would money solve this?" I ask. "Money won't get those kids their parents again. It definitely won't get them their reality repaired. They've grown up without their birth parents. Maybe they won't even remember them."

"We'll hunt down the kids," he says. "We'll save them. We'll tell them the truth. We can pay for therapy."

"None of this sounds like a good idea," Phoenix says, and much to my dismay, I'm prone to agree with him.