Half of their childhood was ripped from them. Taken at a young age they didn't know anything about the world they were brought into.
But at least they had each other
Nathaniel Walker and Everleigh Taylor were thrust into a dark world before their mi...
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Auriella Everleigh Soleil
I read the file a couple of times in my hands more than a couple of times, wondering if the information on the paper was actually correct or if my dyslexia was deceiving me again; I glanced over to Alexander to see if he had a similar reaction, but with the way, his hands gripped the paper and his eyes trained intensely on every word, I was positive we were reading the same thing.
Feeling my gaze on him, he looked up, his normally calm grey eyes now filled with raging storms but as quick as I had seen them they disappeared as he turned back to the man sitting in front of us with a faux calm expression hiding the torment that I knew would reappear later when it was just the two of us. I followed his lead schooling all my features, even though Phoenix knew us both well, and we were comfortable with him, hiding our reactions were a lot easier.
Emotions were something we could deal with later, but if we had the wrong reaction, then it would always come back to haunt us.
"What is this, Phoenix?" Alexander demanded in a low voice, gazing at the man.
Phoenix sighed, looking at us with the same look we had received from him and so many other people in the past few years, the look we both loathed.
Pity
"No," I speak up, making both men turn to me. "We all know what it is. I want to know how the heck did we not know about this before and why it has come up now?"
"I have no clue." Phoenix shook his head, exhausted. "I know Azariah and Adriano did a thorough job of looking for your families, but it seemed you were well hidden."
He left the unsaid hanging in the air. We weren't meant to find our biological families; they'd been hidden from us from the moment we were taken.
"And now?" Lex pressed. "How did you find them now?"
"It's in the file, Alexander. The file you both have read through from front to back multiple times since you entered my office." He shrank back into his chair at the weight of both of our glares on him. We needed to hear it out loud. "We were doing investigations a couple of towns over from where your biological families live, some small gang leader staying down there, and we just needed to make sure he wasn't causing problems. Anyway, the towns around there are small and a couple of towns share the public high school. The twins had caught someone following a couple of the students a couple of days ago, and we have since identified them as NITE men."
Alexander and I sucked in a breath, even though we already had read it. It makes it so much more realistic to hear it out loud.
"And they were following our biological siblings." I finish and Phoenix nods.
"They haven't stopped looking for you." He passed us each another file and in it was a news report but what caught our attention was the small photographs in the top corner. They were two photos of smaller children, one with floppy black hair and pale grey eyes and another with a mess of curls framing her face and bright blue eyes. It was obvious younger versions of us, all that had changed besides age was my hair darkening to a brown instead of the golden blond in the picture and the vertical cut Alexander had though his eyebrow hadn't been afflicted yet. Other than that, there was no doubt that we were the children in these pictures. "They didn't have much influence, but they have had a private investigator on the case since the police stopped and declared it a cold case. You were both declared dead eight years ago at the age of ten and eleven years old."
He stopped again, he knew this was a lot of information for the two of us to process. We had lived our whole lives believing we had no blood-related family and over time we had accepted that, especially when we were given amazing adoptive fathers and their families who had welcomed the two of us with open arms. Now our world had just done one-eighty, and I was honestly amazed we were both still sitting here rather than having a breakdown or something. The only form of discomfort Xander showed was the bruising grip he had my hand held in, but he didn't even realise it. If he did, he wouldn't be holding me that tight. He had some sort of irrational fear of hurting me in any way. But right now I was thankful for the pain, it was helping keep me grounded from the emotions threatening to spill over.
