The Broker

32. Need To Know

December 25th, 2019

Roanoke, Virginia

Dennis Residence

"Where have you been?" Aunt Jessie questioned, her expression angered. Amaraya clenched her hands, avoiding her aunt's gaze. "Imagine my surprise, when I walk into your room in the morning, and you're gone!"

Amaraya had spent the night at Kaden's, totally forgetting the fact that she was supposed to get back home before morning. Her aunt was really mad, and Amaraya wasn't sure she could talk her way out of this one. "I have nothing to say." Was the only thing she replied with, and Aunt Jessie veered. James was leaning against a wall behind their aunt, a satisfied smirk on his face.

In the end, Amaraya was grounded, and couldn't look her aunt in the eye for the whole day. James' smug expression never left his face, and Amaraya was sure he was going to reveal everything to Aunt Jessie. But as the sun set behind the windows, and Amaraya felt jumpy because she had been forced to ignore Kaden's texts, James stayed silent. As everyone went to bed, and Aunt Jessie gave Amaraya the meanest glare, she snuck into James' room.

"Come here to kill me?" James asked, and Amaraya rolled her eyes. "What do you want, Mar?"

"Don't call me that." She hissed, and James chuckled. He sat up, turning on a small light on his bedside table. "Why haven't you told her?"

James' eyes flashed in the dark. "Told whom what?"

Amaraya's hands clenched in annoyance. "You know what it is I do and where it is I go. Why haven't you told Aunt Jessie about what you know?" James rolled his neck, letting out a sigh. "Is it because he told you not to?"

James' head snapped in her direction, and his hand clenched the bed sheet. Amaraya took a step back. "Because it would break her heart." Amaraya could have imagined it, but there was a thread of feeling in his voice. He leaned forward, his muscles bunching together. "And if you knew better, you wouldn't lie to her. And you wouldn't talk to me about the Broker, because you were the one who contacted him in the first place."

"The only reason I contacted him is because you told me about him. This never would have happened if you had just kept your drunk mouth shut!" Amaraya exclaimed, and James recoiled. She wasn't sure why, but there was something painful that settled in James' eyes.

"Better the Broker than some inexperienced wannabe who would get you both caught." James hissed back, and her eyes narrowed. "The Broker has been doing this for decades. A family business. He knows what he's doing, unlike you."

Amaraya stayed silent at that. There was nothing she could say. James was right. The Broker did help her find the man who murdered her parents. But he may also have been the one who hired the hit on them. Which is why she couldn't trust the Broker. And she couldn't trust James. "Why did you start working for him, James?"

Her brother closed his eyes, leaning his head back on the wall. "I was young and lost. A child who had just lost his parents. What direction did you expect my life to go in?" Light brown orbs stared at her in the dark. Amaraya lowered herself onto the bed, running her hand over the bedsheets.

"Not in that direction." She muttered. "Where were you, that day when they died? I didn't see you. Frankly, I don't remember you at all before our parents died." Amaraya was being paranoid, she knew that. But James was working for the man who killed her parents. For all she knew, he could have been in on it. James let out a breath, his hands at his sides.

"He'll explain everything to you when he's ready, Amaraya. But until then, I think it's best if you don't stick your nose into the wrong corners." James finally replied, and it marked the end of that conversation. Amaraya stood up to leave, before James said something to make her pause. His tone was mocking. "Oh, and my condolences. Kaden's death must be quite the hole in your minuscule soul." Her hands clenched in anger, but she kept walking. James was a bastard, and she couldn't lose her temper because he just happened to know the right way to push her buttons.