The Four Brothers ~ Completed

Capítulo Vinte e Sete: A História

I know I've been terrible about updating. My dad died three weeks ago and I haven't found the motivation to write lately. I'm just really sad right now and need to focus on keeping up with school. I'm not ending the book, but please be forgiving if I'm updating a little bit slower than usual. 

I'm sorry if I disappointed anyone.

Please don't leave this world by your own hand. Trust me when I say it kills the people who love you. No matter how much you think you're a burden or unlovable, someone will be torn into nothing when you're gone. They're going to blame themselves and they're going to hate themselves. Please don't do it. I'm here to talk If anyone needs it. 

800-273-8255 is a suicide hotline.  Call if you need it. Please.

Gemma's POV: 

The man smiled up at me as I held the gun, my hand steady but my heart racing. I had no idea why I wasn't freaking out. A hand landed on the gun, making me flinch. Damian pulled the gun from my grip gently, giving me a reassuring smile as he did so. 

"You okay?" Sinclair asked me, his gaze still pointed at the intruder. I nodded. 

My tongue felt like cotton, all dry but way too heavy to move. Nodding was all I was capable of at that moment. 

"Who are you working for?" Zion asked. He went straight to business, as always. 

"You read the email." The intruder shrugged, nonchalant about the situation. If he wasn't worried about being shot between the eyes by one of my protective brothers, then maybe we should've been worried. 

"I don't particularly care for people threatening my family," Tobias said, pulling at the cuffs of his suit sleeves. The intruder gulped softly, but if the smirk curling Tobias's lips were any indications, he heard.

"I don't like men who hide behind little girls. Especially if that little girl is my little sister." Damian chuckled, shaking his head at the ground. The intruder looked at me, making me curl even further into Sinclair's side. 

"Little sister?" The intruder laughed gleefully. Zion and Sinclair shared a look, one that Damian and Tobias seemed to understand but was confusing to me. 

"Forget to research your target?" Zion asked, cocking his head with a small smile pulling at the corners of his lips. 

"I didn't forget, which is why I know more about her than you do. Have you told them, sweetheart? Have you told them how they trained you to be their perfect little bitch-" The intruder was cut off from saying by Damian pistol-whipping him across the jaw.

My eyes widened and my breathing sped up. 

"Gemma, what was he talking about?" Tobias asked calmly. If I didn't know him I would've thought he didn't care. But I did know him and I knew that he cared more than anyone could know. 

I pulled away from Sinclair's side, something he let me do easily. I didn't want to explain exactly what training meant, but they wouldn't drop it until I said something. 

Some would ask what the big deal about them finding out that I'd been beaten half to death my entire life was. I wouldn't have an answer, for one of the first times in my life. But I did know that my brothers finding out was the last thing I wanted to know. 

"Nothing," I whispered hoarsely. 

Tobias arched a single eyebrow at me, clearly disbelieving. 

Ah, shit.

"Gem, you gotta stop hiding things from us," Zion said, touching my shoulder briefly. I shook him off. 

"It's fine. I'm fine." I whispered, backing away from my brothers who were starting to crowd me to the point I couldn't breathe. 

Wait, I couldn't breathe.

Why couldn't I breathe?

Panic attack. 

Ah, shit. 

"Gemma, calm down, sweetie." Damian cooed, pushing his gun back into his holster. I shook my head, running my hands through the hair of my scalp. Zion was watching everything with wide eyes, unsure of what to do. Sinclair looked like he wanted to jump into action but didn't know what to do. Tobias's hands were stretched out like he wanted to hug me and comfort me. 

"Breathe," Tobias ordered. His stern voice brought me back to reality, oddly enough. 

"George wasn't calling the shots. He did what someone else said. And if you haven't noticed, I'm not one to take orders well." I said, chuckling dryly at the memories that flew through my mind. Sinclair shrugged. 

"I think it's a genetic thing." Sinclair chuckled, lightening the mood. I smiled a bit, but the smile soon faded at the thought of the full truth coming out. It wasn't that I didn't want someone to know, it was that I didn't want my brothers to love me any less because of my being weak.

"Training me meant getting me to do whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted. I didn't want to do any of it because somehow I knew it was wrong. I started doing what they wanted when I was five because I was tired of them putting out their cigarettes in the bottoms of my feet." I stopped, blinking back the tears at the memories of the agonizing pain. 

The silence echoed through the room. 

No one moved. 

"You said he pushed you around." Zion pointed out, confused. 

"I lied. I think I just didn't want you to hate me for telling the truth." I said, twisting my fingers to the point of pain. 

I cleared my throat when no one said anything. 

"Continue." Tobias's order wasn't something I wanted to listen to, but I was scared of the intensity in his eyes. He was staring at me like nothing I'd ever seen before. I didn't even know if there was a name for the emotion floating around in his irises. 

"Even when I did what George wanted, it was never enough. At first, the screaming at me was a relief because it meant the beatings would stop. And then it became screaming insults and beating me. I could handle the beatings. I couldn't handle, after a couple of months of being basically pain-free, the torture. I was six when they really started to torture me, in every definition of the word. 

      From pulling out my fingernails to taking a crowbar to my knees... George was never satisfied by how much I screamed, so I learned not to scream. Or cry from the pain. And then he figured out different punishments. On my eighth birthday, he poured a pot of boiling water down my back. I couldn't move for weeks. I was nine when he pushed me through a glass table and I almost bled out in my living room from how many glass shards were in my back. I still have so many scars from him whipping me like I was some sort of dog. I was seven, terrified of the dark like a normal kid, and he locked me in a pitch-black closet. For two weeks. I lost my voice from screaming." I stopped, the tears clouding my eyes to the point that I couldn't see anything. 

There wasn't a sound. 

I thought that they had left in the middle of the story of my childhood, but when I wiped at my eyes, they were all in their respective spots. Of course, none of them were moving. I wasn't even sure if they were breathing. 

If only they knew that what I'd told them wasn't even the worst part.