“Let’s get these totes inside.” I say to Emmett.
Once we have them piled in the foyer, I look to each person. “These are our mother’s old diaries and notebooks. I also have a tote of my grandfather’s things. I was hoping we could go through everything with a fine tooth comb because I think we will find more answers than we expect in here.”
“Let’s get to it.” Travis claps and grabs up a tote.
“What exactly are we looking for?” Adri asks as she follows us into the family room.
“My mother was a victim of Robert Greene, we suspect she was raped by him in high school. We went by the storage unit today and found a bunch of her diaries. In one of them I found her venting that her father was sent a VHS tape of the incident and he didn’t believe her, instead he called her a slut. He believed it was consensual.” I explain.
“I also found some disturbing shit in a few of her younger diaries. Things her father was doing to her.” Emmett adds.
“Looks like our grandfather hired my father to help fake his death. A lot of the information on this sheet has been blacked out. But this was about a month before Raphael came to Whitsborough and met our mother.” I start filling them all in. “Raphael did admit to me about killing my grandparents when they refused to have anything to do with our mother and disowned her. But what if he didn’t actually kill them?”
“Could they still be alive?” Adri asks, sounding astonished.
“I don’t know. Maybe they did die that day or maybe they lived out the rest of their days and died naturally. On this paper,” I wave a sheet over my head. “It states that my grandfather wanted to relocate to New York and offered to work for The Rampage or an affiliate.”
There’s a few photos of them in the family albums so I go and pull those out too. I find a wedding photo of them and pull it out of the sleeve. They are young and it’s black and white. I search through until I find one of them with a younger Debra and my mother. This one shows a much larger man, his belly rounded and his hairline receding. The woman has platinum blonde hair and olive skin.
“Here,” I hand them both to Emmett. “Recognize them at all?”
“No,” he shakes his head and pulls the older version closer to his eyes. “Something about the lady looks familiar though. Or maybe it’s because you kind of look like her.”
I take the photo back and take a closer look at her face. I’ve always been told I had my mother’s smile and her eye colour. I can see the eye colour in my grandfather and Emmett is right, my smile is similar to my grandmother’s.
“Maybe.” I mutter.
“I’ve never seen anyone at the compound that looks like that.” Emmett shakes his head. “We should bring them to Carm though.”
“Speaking of,” I look at each of them. “I have a Head meeting this weekend. Carm found out that Wade did give that guy the knife. I will be calling in favour of a fight to the death between us.”
The room is quiet and Vin is the first to talk, “so you will be bringing in your knife too right? Fair is fair.”
“Nah,” I throw both hands in the air. “I like the feeling of killing with my bare hands.”
Adri looks worried and I know it’s because she never really did get over what happened at the fight when I was slashed. She has yet to come and see another fight and would rather just hear the highlights afterward. I don’t push it and I understand what I do isn’t for everyone. But fuck, I sure do love it.
“I want to be at that fight.” Adri says, surprising us all. “I want to see that guy die.”
“Okay.” I nod.
“Will the other Heads agree to that?” Vin asks.
“They won’t have a choice.” I shrug.
“Our mom was really pretty,” Emmett sighs as he looks through the albums. “I’m glad I at least have the chance to see her face. Carm has never known what his mother looks like.”
“He told me Raphael raped her and then after Carm was born he killed her.” I say.
“Close,” Emmett nods. “She was a regular.”
“What’s a regular?” Vin asks as he looks through a diary.
“She would sleep with the guards or whoever was around. I don’t know about her being raped but I can see our father not being kind. After she became pregnant our father waited and had a DNA test performed and obviously Carm was his. He looks a lot like him. Not too long after that his mother disappeared.”
“If she disappeared then why did Carm say for certain that our father killed her?” I ask him.
“Because Raphael admitted to it when he got out of prison. He must’ve been looking for some sort of redemption because he admitted many things. Like the fact that I had a twin sister and he was bringing her to meet me.”
“Kidnapping.” I mutter.
“Yeah,” Emmett rolls his eyes. “Even while looking for redemption he was still deceitful.”
“This diary is creepy.” Vin mutters and we all look at him. “Your grandfather Jack was a weird man. A lot of people still talk about him. My mother said him and Rebecca were close and Debra was always jealous of it. But reading this, I know why.”
“Yeah, that’s the one
