𝙲𝚘𝚕𝚕𝚊𝚙𝚜𝚎 | 𝙱𝚘𝚘𝚔 𝟸

𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚙𝚝𝚎𝚛 𝙴𝚒𝚐𝚑𝚝𝚎𝚎𝚗

𝙼𝚒𝚌𝚔𝚎𝚢

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It felt like Elena and I were standing in the middle of a horror movie.

The tiny shed that George Barnes had purchased and hidden in the depths of his property sat less than thirty feet ahead of us, the gray of the fog rolled around our ankles, swallowing any sort of panic we could have as we slowly approached. This was insane, Elena and I had millions of dollars at our fingertips, we were just as powerful as our friends now, yet here we were, walking through mud to find a glimpse of whatever the hell George Barnes was hiding.

Elena held tightly to my hand as we stopped in front of the pathetic excuse of a shack.

I wanted to throw her over my shoulder and run as soon as we approached the shack, the air was so heavy it was nearly suffocating. Yet, Elena let go of my hand, stepped up to the door, and pulled a safety pin from her pocket, kneeling in front of the door. I watched in awe as she wiggled the tiny pin around, the lock slowly giving way, and the hinge in the door screamed as it popped open. Elena slowly backed into me, the ominous feeling surrounding us like a cruel hug, unwilling to let go. Whatever George had in here felt dangerous, and we knew it was.

Elena looked up at me, and I nodded, taking her hand as I stepped in.

The shed was nothing special, old files sat scattered about as we stepped over thrown boxes. It looked like an abandoned records department. But I knew George Barnes; I had grown up with his son and saw him as another father when mine was so distant. This was purposeful, the chaos of it. He wanted to ensure that if anyone broke in, like Elena and I, they would see a mess, think it was abandoned or a forgotten storage shed, and leave. Hell, I wanted to leave. I missed the days when I didn't have a fortune on my shoulders, a legacy to start, and a woman I thought I was falling in love with who hated me to protect.

We stepped over mountains of paperwork, and half-destroyed computers sat around the room. Elena moved like water through the space, never stepping on a paper on the ground. "How often do you and Sofia break into places? You move like you've been in here before?"

"Not here," Elena spoke softly as she stepped behind the desk, starting to sift through papers while I looked through the file cabinets, "But the Barnes Manor plenty of times, we did it earlier this year."

"For what?"

Elena looked at me in that inquisitive way she does. With her arched eyebrow and pursed lips. Like she's trying to learn every thought that I have locked behind my eyes. But she just smiled, tilting her chin down to continue reading through papers. "Because why the Phantoms have been playing chess all these years," Elena explained softly, pausing over a certain paper, "Sofia and I have been checkers. We were raised to search for the weaknesses in our rivals. George Barnes was the largest one we had to study."

I paused by a picture of the Phantoms when we were kids, no older than eleven. It was Bucky's birthday, and my heart cracked because it was so simple back then: I didn't hate my best friend for what he did to my sister, to me, to Elena or Sofia. We were so young and naive and just trying to navigate a world with so much power in our hands. Money and control were what we knew. Back then, it was so simple and so lax compared to now, where every single move is watched and met with scrutiny. It made me miss Bucky, miss the stoic yet sarcastic boy I've known my entire life.

And hearing Elena talk about how she and Sofia were raised to be perfect heirs to their family's legacies. I was out of my depth. So was Steve and Curtis. Hell, even Julianna was raised to be my grandfather's prodigy. The phantoms and I were never punished, and we never felt the need to protect a legacy that was handed to us, but Elena was a princess; she was raised to be the perfect heir, and I needed to take her lead.

"Oh my god." Elena's gasp brought me out of my thoughts and I raced to her side, one hand on her lower back.

I felt the color drain from my face because on the paper in front of me were pictures of Elena and me, of Sofia and Steve, of our business deals, and worst of all, our intimacy. I looked down at Elena as she trailed her finger over the picture of us in our bedroom, her eyes wide. "I'll call Steve's lawyer," I promised her, kissing her forehead when she tucked herself into my chest, "I'll have him on standby, I promise baby, it's not going to get out, I won't let it."

"Bucky's still around..."

My blood ran cold as I held my wife to my chest. Because this was pure confirmation. We had thought that Bucky may still be around, but the photos, taken from passageways in the building that only we knew about, meant that he was still very close by, and he was buying himself time. Plotting like he always does for the best moment to attack, trying to find the way to hurt the most amount of people quickly and easily.

If he targets Elena, he hurts Sofia, me and Steve.

I opened my mouth to respond to her when we heard voices and twigs breaking. Elena grabbed the file as I pulled her back into the dark corner of the shed, my arms tightly around her. It only took seconds for George Barnes to appear in the doorway, his son right behind him with a lit cigarette. My stomach bottomed out, holding Elena to me tightly as they stepped in.

"I'm telling you, George," Bucky blew out a long cloud of smoke. "I know what Mickey looks like when he's faking his emotions, just like I knew when Steve was finally a lost cause, these are my friends.."

"Are they?" George snapped so hard that both Elena and I flinched, "If they were your friends, they wouldn't have ditched you when a pretty face showed around, son. Friends don't exist, you have pawns, and you have rivals. There is no in-between."

"They could exist, you just refuse to let them."

Elena's nails dug into my arms as I held her to me, the tension in the room becoming suffocating as father and son stared at each other. Bucky eventually relented, flicking his cigarette to the ground before stomping on it, "Here," he tossed a drive to George, "I got it from the mayor's office, Julianna wasn't hard to scare."

My stomach dropped, my baby sister was trapped with my monster of a friend.

"And Curtis?"

Bucky rolled his eyes, "Wasn't home at the time, I'm sure you'll have to deal with the Everett Kingdom raining hell, but I've done my end of the deal."

Elena slid against the wall, and I slowly followed her, one of her hands in mine as we walked along the shadows, stopping at the door until George turned around. As soon as we knew we could run, we did. With the file tight in her hand, Elena sprinted towards my raptor, throwing open the passenger seat. I climbed into the drivers side, shoving the key into the ignition, and took off before either of us could properly shut the doors. I sped down the winding roads that lead to the Barnes Manor, my heart in my throat as we raced towards Sunbury.

"He has all of our plans, all of Steve and Sofia's building permits," Elena whispered, flipping through the file, her fingers trembling, "Everything. He has everything."

"We're so fucked," I sighed, my tires screeching as I pulled onto the highway. "To Steve and Sofia's?"

Elena nodded. "Yeah, we need their help."

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