Mafia Princess

45. River's in charge

RIVER'S POV

Rue left. He left me here with all of them. I thought we were on another level. I didn't want to be left here with these kids! Granted none of us are technically kids anymore. Except Sage and Aries.

I turn around and see Emeris walk up to me, "where did Rue go?" He asks

"Um he'll be back." I say not knowing what to do. I've honestly never been left alone with everyone. Rue has always been here. I don't have a right hand man like Rue has me. Ever used to be but he's out of commission right now and to be honest he's pissing me off with this whole fighting the family business thing. Joziah and I argue too much. Emeris has Aries and Sage is Sage. I just hope everything stays chill until Rue comes back.

I go into the kitchen to grab some food, I order a pasta with the staff. Sage follows me into the kitchen, " can I stay over jules' house tonight? " she asks.

"Yea." I say not sure if Rue would have let her.

"Cool! Thanks." Sage says leaving the kitchen. I guess its better to just let her go because all she does is cry about how we never let her do anything and she can't be a normal teenage girl and I don't want to hear it.

I check my phone to see if Rue texted and he hasn't. What the fuck is he doing?! I text Pete and wait for him to text me. I feel so lost without Rue being here but maybe I should relax. Rue's not here. This is the one chance I get to relax in my room and chill. Do what I want. I ask the staff to bring my food up to my room when it's done and I walk up to my room.

"Where are you going?" Emeris says asking

"My room. Just text me if you need me." I say walking up the stairs.

I know exactly what I'm going to do when I get to my room. I'm going to smoke a fat ass blunt! I haven't smoked in so long and for once. I think I'll be able to smoke uninterrupted. Rue hates that I smoke even though I know he does too. A bit hypocritical if you ask me. But to be fair I know it's been about a year since Rue has smoked. I haven't smoked in like 2-3 months. I start to grin just thinking about the fact that I'm about to smoke.

I walk to the west wing to grab some weed out of Rue's stash. And I take a rillo out of Emeris' room and go to my room to roll.

Once I finish rolling I throw on a random show on Netflix and spark my blunt. I haven't been able to watch tv in a while. We work so much that once I go to bed, I fall straight to sleep. Rue and I have been dealing with our family shit during the day and business shit at night. We get like 4 hours of sleep, aka not a good amount of sleep. I'm exhausted and I'll probably fall asleep after smoking. So I hope no one needs me. And I hope Rue isn't gone too long.

I opened my window and sat in my chair. I took a puff of my blunt and inhaled. And exhaled. Holy shit. It's been a while. I felt so much stress and anxiety lift off me within secs. My body instantly relaxes. Then there's a knock on my door.

"Fuck! Who is it?" I yell slightly and then take another puff.

"Jo." Joziah says.

"What do you want Jo?" I say taking another puff.

"Just want to talk." He says.

"Come in." I say. He slowly walks and smiles as soon as he sees me hitting the blunt.

"Riv. I didn't know you smoked." He says.

"Not often but I needed it."I say hitting it and then offering it to him. He takes it and looks at me wondering if ima say anything. And then he hits it.

We don't even talk. I'm convinced he came up here to smoke with me. But I don't mind it. It was peaceful. We are usually at each other's heads all the time. Dad compared us a lot as we got older and it caused a lot of sibling rivalry between Jo and I. Rue was always breaking up fights. It was annoying that Joziah was better than me at everything dad would teach us. All of my brothers, it came 2nd nature to them but for me I had to practice to be this good. I had to practice fighting and combat in order to be good whereas Jo, Rue, Emeris, Reign, and even Ever were just good at it. I was always in Rue's shadow, expected to live up to the eldest boy's potential. And he was hard to beat. Rue is still the best, the only way to beat him is to kill him.

Dad made it extremely hard because he was verbally abusive and sometimes physically too. Although, words hurt me more than any beatings. He realized that too which made it even worse. He left the beatings to my brothers unless I did something really bad. His yelling was enough to set me straight.

I feel like we all have early good memories of dad but a lot those good memories have been erased and bad memories are taped over them. I still never understood Rue's undoubtedly devotion of obedience to dad but I guess I can't really talk shit about it because we all had some sense of obedience to dad. We were his soldiers. Once you turned 10, your childhood is over in this life.

Except Ever, he's the lucky one.

But now we are trying to get him to understand that he has no other way out. Rue could keep him down his whole life. He'll be fighting until he dies. It's still wild to me how we were raised. I envy Ever because he didn't have to see as much as we did. I killed my first person at the age of 10. Ever got to wait until he was 21. We've seen so much shit that Ever had never gotten to see. And as a big brother, of course I want the best for my baby brother but what I think is best is joining the family business. It keeps him safe, feed, housed, ect. And of course there's extra luxury things.

Once the blunt is gone. I blurt out, "so what you wanna talk about?" Looking at Joziah.

"Um." Jo says looking like he's about to sweat bullets. "I- uh."

"Jo. Wassup?" I say looking concerned.

"So I- uh. You know those dna test you can take? I-I took one." Jo starts.

"Ok. And?" I say confused

"I got the results and-" he pauses.

"Joziah. Speak." I say.

"It also matches you with family members if they take the same test." He pauses again. "It shows there's 4 other kids and they're labeled as my siblings but they aren't any of y'all."

"Excuse me?" I say confused. Jo doesn't say anything. He turns the phone around and shows me the results and shows me the tab with relatives.

And he wasn't wrong, it says they are our siblings. They're names also sorta of match ours. And they are similar ages. What the hell?

"Dad cheated on mom?" Jo asks.

"No dumb ass. It doesn't say half siblings. It's says full on siblings." I say confused as hell. This fucked up my high. What the fuck! We have 4 other siblings.

I pick up my phone and call Rue.

And he doesn't answer. What a surprise.

"Don't tell anyone else." I say sternly and Jo nods.

"What are we going to do? Are we going to meet them? Why weren't they here with us?" Jo asks

"I don't know Joziah." I say still trying to wrap my brain around this. I have no idea how Rue is going to act.

"What if they reach out to me?" Jo asks.

"Tell me immediately! And I mean it Jo! This is serious!" I say. I rub my forehead. "I need another blunt."

"What if it's not that bad tho. What if they know about the business? What if dad and mom sent them to do what we're doing in another city or state? What if they know about us?" He says sounding positive.

"They know about you. Why did you take the dna test anyway?" I ask him.

"I thought it would be interesting." He says.

"Ok." I say not knowing what do to.

I don't want to sit on this until Rue comes back. But I need to smoke another blunt. I point towards the rolling papers and Jo gets up to get them and then I grab the rest of the weed and roll it. We smoke another blunt in silence.

I can't believe we have more siblings.

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