3. Brian

"Iknew we shouldn't have left her alone."

"We know Bri, you've told us a million times, now drive, hurry." The women were in the car behind us, driving like a bat outta hell. We'd barely made it back to my place to conference when Dad called, sounding like he was halfway to dead.

All I could hear was the screaming in the background and something about Alyssa, and I just knew. My little sister has two modes: stop and go. When she does that calm, quiet shit, it's never good. I knew this and still let her talk me into leaving her alone.

I'd failed as her eldest brother. She was gone by the time we got there, and as much as I needed to assess the situation here, I was more interested in going after my sister. But I knew I had to control whatever was going on in that house, or shit would go sideways fast. At least they were still breathing.

We hopped out of the car and walked into the house where Dad and his wife of fifteen years were sitting on the couch with ice packs. "What happened?"

"Your sister has lost her damn mind is what."

"Dad?" I haven't spoken to his side-piece turned wife in all the years I've known her, and I wasn't about to start now.

"Alyssa attacked us. What the hell is going on?"

"She caught Denny cheating; you know how she feels about cheating and cheaters." Dad looked hurt, but what the fuck did he expect?

"Does anyone need medical assistance?" My wife asked.

"We need the police." Helen chimed in again.

"Dad, you gonna call the cops on my sister? Think long and hard before you answer." First of all, this was the first time we'd been in his house in years. Once Alyssa turned eighteen and the courts no longer had a say, we stopped and that was a good five years now.

Us brothers kept coming even when we were older because there was no way we were going to leave her here with that woman and his daughter, who was just as bad as she was even as a kid. Helen hated it, especially when we got older and didn't need to be here, because we never spoke a word to her, never ate anything she made, and made sure Alyssa got to spend one-on-one time with Dad.

Something we knew wouldn't have happened without us here because Helen and her daughter are jealous hags who didn't want to share Dad with any of us, but especially Alyssa, who had always been his little Princess. They both have a grudge against us because we never accepted either of them and refused when Helen insisted we treat her kid the way we treated our sister.

Since she was the youngest when this all happened, we did our best to shield her as much as we could and picked up the slack where Dad was supposed to be, for both her and Mom. I was already in my first year of college when all hell broke loose, but Mom had insisted I stay, and it was the longest four months of my life.

I lost all respect for my Dad that day. He knows it, and so does everyone else. My siblings follow my lead as the oldest, so you can imagine how that went. But little Alyssa, along with Mom, took it the hardest. That little girl cried herself to sleep every night for a whole year, and poor Mom didn't have time to grieve since she had three kids at home to raise.

Mom was the one who begged us not to cut our Dad off completely, but we couldn't stomach him, and his wife doesn't let him go anywhere without her, so that kind of took care of that for us. "Well, Dad! Are you going to call the cops?"

"No, of course not."

"Corbin."

"Daddy!" The two of them started their shit until I gave them each a look that had them sitting back in their seats. "Just go take care of your sister." At least he still had a conscience.

ALYSSA

"Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens…." Who the hell is calling me? I reached for the dash to answer my phone. "What up? Who dis?"

"Alyssa?"

"Sherry?"

"I heard."

"Heard what?"

"About Lacey, I'm so sorry. She said you were acting crazy. I want you to calm down and don't do anything stupid. They just made a mistake is…." Click! Now that's sad. That's my new ex-best friend.

We've been friends since we were in diapers, but it looks like she's an adultery sympathizer. I don't have time for that shit. Granted, Lacey is her little sister, so her loyalty should be with her blood, and it would've been unfair to make her choose sides, so I'm doing it for her.

She tried calling back, but I just went ahead and blocked her now to get it over with. I parked haphazardly in my driveway and went on inside because it was late as hell. I made my way to the guestroom after grabbing my laptop case. I have a lot of work to do.

Before I could make it to the door, I heard tires screeching again, and I knew somehow my brothers were back. I wonder if they knew that my neighbors were probably sleeping. The seventy-something couple that lived next door goes to bed at around seven or eight in the evening, and the other neighbors on the other side have young kids.

My neighborhood is a hodgepodge of ages, from the very young to the very old. I walked over and unlocked the door. It was my sisters-in-law. "Where are the guys?"

"They went to the twenty-four-hour store?"

"For what this time of night?"

They just shrugged their shoulders and made their way inside to the living room. Oh well, I didn't have work tomorrow since I wasn't supposed to be back for another couple of days, and if I was needed I could just work from home anyway.

I grabbed those bottles of wine from the dining room table, along with fresh glasses, and went to join them. Jilly popped the cork and poured us all a hefty sip before taking her seat between the other two, leaving the big, easy chair that I loved to sit in for me.

"So, what brings you lot back here?"

"We just came from your Dad's."

"Oh? This late?" They looked at each other and back at me.

"You know Helen wants to call the cops?"

"Helen has six days and a few hours to get her ass outta dodge before I beat her ass again. I'm not worried."

"Alyssa, why?"

"What do you mean? It's the day of reckoning. I've decided that I'm not going to let anyone mistreat me or my family anymore."

"But, your Dad?"

"Why not him? My mother used to be a vibrant, lovely woman; now she's a shell of herself on account of him and that wailing hyena."

"Your Mom is still lovely. She was just waiting for you to finish school to start going out again."

"She shouldn't have to. A promise should mean something. Don't gangsters break people's kneecaps for not paying up?"

"You're lucky Bri talked them out of calling the cops."

"That's where you're wrong, Daisy; my Dad would never call the cops on me. He owes me, and he knows it. This will just be one more thing for Helen to bitch about and not get her way, which is going to drive her crazy because I am, and will always be, the most important female in my Dad's life."

I knew that shit when I went there, not that I cared. I have savings put away for a rainy day, so even if I lose my job behind this, I can float for at least six months. That's something Mom taught me when that bitch her husband left her for tried to stop him from paying her alimony or child support in the divorce.

She didn't want him to pay for college either for any of us, but she didn't have that problem when it came to her own daughter. Thankfully Dad hadn't lost his damn mind because he was terrified of being cut off by all of us when we came of age, which we all threatened to do at one point or another over time.

My brothers are even more protective of Mom than they are of me, and they were ready to go to town on his stupid ass. These days, none of us go over to his house, and for years, she'd tried to stop him from seeing us anywhere else or made sure she tagged along whenever we were meeting, which none of us liked, so our meetings were far and in between.

I essentially lost my father at the age of eight, and when he left me to raise Mitzie, who was just a few months older than me. That little bitch tormented me every chance she got until my brothers caught on and started going over there even when they didn't want to. I hated knowing that they were suffering through that for me, but I don't think I would've made it all those years if they hadn't been there.

When they all went away to college, leaving me behind to spend every weekend at that house, it was almost hell. But Bri had warned Dad of the consequences if he didn't protect me, and things calmed down a lot.

I was too young in the beginning to know or understand what was going on. But I know when some little snake is slithering into my garden. Mitzie's Dad had left her and disappeared after the divorce, and the two of them decided that she was going to steal mine.

Now I'm thinking I let that shit go on for too long. The doorbell rang, and Penny got up to let the guys in. "What's all this?" I asked as they came in with bags of stuff.

"Security cameras for inside and out." They go to work setting up that shit like I want recordings of the shit I'm fixin' to do.