Iris

22 | hoodie

     NAUSEA SURGED from my stomach the further I stared at the food resting on the plate before my gaze, and the pounding within my head grew wilder as my brothers' muffled voices sank into my ears. 

I aimlessly continued to swirl the food around, moving it from a corner to the other and refusing to eat the smallest portions from it. My leg resumed to bounce up and down beneath the table, and my stomach twisted in discomforting knots. My hands shivered the slightest; my eyelids kept on fluttering as they sought the peaceful sleep I had been pleading to experience for too long. 

My thoughts had turned into a jumbled chaos. They so rapidly bounced from an idea to the other, occupying my exhausted mind when all it needed was a short break from their racing terrors—when all it needed was a fleeting moment of the comforting silence and a brief glimpse of the reassuring darkness. 

My exhausted mind continued to drift back to the conversation I had had with Marcus yesterday afternoon, and it lingered on the words he had told me. It replayed them over and over again at the back of it, eventually making me wonder if they had held a deeper meaning to them; one concealed away from my senses and understanding.  

"Roman thought that we'd get more hurt if we tried to find the men on our own."

I wondered if the hurt my brother had meant was physical or emotional or both combined, and I dared to let my mind wander to the extent such people would take to hurt others and to the reasons that would push them into doing so.

"He and Eli suspected that they were related to Diego."

Diego.

The more I repeated the name within my mind, the more familiar it sounded, and the more frustrated I felt. He was still a mystery to my senses, a memory locked at the back of my mind along with the dark ones, fearing to break loose because that would lead to all other memories breaking loose along with it.

Diego Morris.

His name was another missing piece of the puzzle my mind had created until it wasn't. A second was all it took for my mind to find the missing piece. Another second was all it took for my mind to process the thought that had crossed it.

I blinked. The thought vanished. My leg subconsciously bounced faster beneath the table. My head pounded further. A sob of frustration grew more powerful within my throat, but I held it back.

That man ruined our family. That was what Elliott had told Roman about him.

I breathed in and out. My blurred gaze scanned over my brothers before it dropped back to the untouched food in front of me. I stopped swirling my food around, and I gave my mind a few moments to think, to resume its futile attempts of grasping the missing piece that revealed Diego's identity once more.