You Have Us... Always.

Chapter 43- Memory.

Even with her lunch half-eaten in front of her Brynn focused on her surroundings. Aubrey and Penny too.

Penny's hand was half in her packet of crisps, a little shaky because of the below-freezing weather, but she still looked around the school yard with narrowed eyes. She leaned over the table, "he just disappeared? Like that?"

Brynn gulped and nodded. She'd told them about her run in with Carlo, who was around somewhere, watching.

She sniffed, curling her ice-cold hands into one another. "Do..." she started, biting her lip unsurely, "do you guys have bodyguards?"

The girls stopped scanning the area, Penny's hand sliding out her crisp packet slowly. Aubrey's brows furrowed and she frowned, "no."

Then why did Brynn have to have one? It didn't make sense.

"Do you think it's permanent?" she asked.

Aubrey and Penny looked at each other. Aubrey furrowed her eyebrows, swallowing the bite of her sandwich. "Maybe it is only temporary?" she suggested, taking another bite with a look on her face that showed she maybe didn't believe what she was saying.

Brynn twisted her lips, "really?"

Aubrey frowned, "no."

Brynn's lips twitched upwards, fingers twisting into the cool fabric of her school skirt. Then she frowned again, "but why?"

"I don't think it's too odd," Penny shrugged. Aubrey looked at her passively, Brynn looked at her confusedly.

Penny paused reaching in for another crisp, "well, with your brothers' jobs, I mean."

Aubrey nodded, "that makes sense."

Not to Brynn. She shifted in her seat, doing her best to still her chattering jaw. "What do you mean?" She accumulated all that she knew. "They just own a business."

Penny and Aubrey looked at each other again and Penny's eyebrows furrowed. "Your brothers are really well-known. Everyone's known your family name, it's... it's practically famous."

Brynn had started to shake her head, looking from Penny to Aubrey to Penny again. They looked serious. The shaking slowed, and her frown tilted further downwards.

She thought back to Callan's birthday dinner, the flashing lights outside the restaurant. She thought back to the piles of newspaper articles that her friends had shown her, the titles all about her or her brothers. She thought about how it didn't make sense.

"But..." she tried to formulate her denial, "but a lot of people own businesses, and sometimes they're in the papers too. They're still normal."

Aubrey put her sandwich down, "some people think they do more than just own a business."

Brynn's frown remained. They did more than one job?

Penny considered what Aubrey said and started to slowly nod. "They own most of the buildings around here. And I heard my mum and dad talking about how much business they had in other towns, even other countries."

Countries?

"Hotels, bars, entire estates, that's what my mum said," Penny went on. "She said a bunch of other business stuff too but I didn't really understand it."

Brynn listened and she didn't understand either. Her brothers only worked for a business that did really well. They didn't need to be hounded by the papers for that.

She looked at her friends, about to ask more, find out more, understand more, but Aubrey and Penny were looking at something behind her uneasily.

Brynn's face creased up, hair on the back of her neck standing, mostly from the biting cold, but she didn't get a chance to turn around. Her heart jumped into her throat when large, warm hands slid underneath her arms and removed her from the icy bench.