Chapter 5: A warm family welcome

Brent kind of knew that no matter what he said, what kind of a warm welcome he was going to get in response for any sass he gave them.

His lip stung, his left eye swelling closed as he spat blood on their fancy pants cream carpet. He was sure it was from some luxury company. It made the fact that all of their faces scrunched up all the better. He would have wiped at his mouth with his hand if his hand wasn’t tied behind his back. It was actually impressive how they had managed to do it.

The shackles must have been custom made for him. How sweet.

“Then don’t beat me in your fancy rooms on your fancy carpets if you don’t want them ruined.” Brent spat, laughing breathlessly. He hated the tight feeling in his chest. The way that it felt like the walls were closing in on him.

It was so damn annoying that no matter how much he fought, he always ended up fucking here.

Colby certainly hadn’t held back. He never did when it came to Brent. He wasn’t sure if it was just a Brent thing, or if he was like this with everyone. Brent wasn’t exactly eager to find out if the man was beating other people up the same way that he was beating Brent up.

He had a suspicious feeling that if Brent was around while the man was beating others up, he would turn his attention to Brent. He seemed to favour causing Brent as much pain as possible.

Colby’s hands dripped blood but it wasn’t Brent’s. Brent had managed to get him a few times, or the skin on his hands had broken while he was beating Brent. He also made sure to wipe his hands up quickly, collecting the pooling liquid so he didn’t make a mess of his precious ’Master’s’ room. Unlike Brent.

Brent was disgusted at the level of devotion his brother inspired in others.

“Noted.” The crisp, cool tone that filled the air made Brent’s shoulders tense. Fuck, he hated his family.

His guts hurt, he was sure he’d broken a few bones, his face was swollen and ached, and he was pretty sure he had a head injury. Hey, everyone loved meeting their family again, right?

What a warm fucking welcome.

Brent looked around the room he was in. Even if his family was trash, they were pretty, wealthy trash. This was one of the many, many identical rooms in the mansion that his family lived in. Well, the family members that shared the same ideals.

The mansion itself was an old historic building. What that really meant is that they had floor plans of old historic buildings before the world went to shit and his grandfather/great-grandfather had taken the time to rebuild the home because of what it symbolized for the family.

It had been completed with gate materials, about as sturdy as any other Guild headquarters, and had been around longer than any other headquarters that Brent knew of.

Brent knew the house like the back of his hand. He especially knew of all the places that he could hide. Well, at least as a child. He wasn’t quite the same size he had been when he’d been finding all of the places that he could tuck himself into to hide from his siblings and cousins.

This room had to be on the first or second floor. The third floor was exclusively for family members, and Brent had been denied access to that floor for over 15 years now. Ever since he lost the lower half of his arm, he had lost the right to go to the upper levels in most of his family’s eyes.

Even though it wasn’t Brent’s fault. He’d done nothing wrong. If anything, it was the man in front of hims fault. Brent had been a fucking kid at the time. The man in front of him had been practically full grown. Finished High School, awakened as an Esper. Brent was barely 6, and even if he wasn’t fully blood related, that was no way to treat a fucking child.

Brent’s old, simmering anger boiled to life as he glanced around the lifeless room. They had been doing this to the mansion ever since his grandfather left them alone in this place. His grandfather refused to step foot on this estate as soon as his wife had passed and the mansion transitioned hands.

His wife, Brent’s grandmother, had acted as a kind of balm for the relationships that were already threadbare at the time. That relationship completely dissolved at her funeral when Brent’s grandfather told his own kids that he was disgusted by them and their treatment of the ’weaker’ members of the family.

He was talking about Brent at the time. Brent had just had an unfortunate ’accident’ that had resulted in him hobbling around with a set of crutches because the healers of the Guild were ’too busy to deal with something so minor’.

That was what they told Brent’s grandfather when he asked, and then they had made sure that there was actually something major that made the excuse make sense. Brent had no fucking doubt that every time that his grandfather had shown concern for Brent, his family had retaliated on the city.

There was a reason that his grandfather stopped asking at one point and just got involved with Brent directly. Or rather, in a far more direct way for Brent, but indirect for the rest of his family. He never lived with his grandfather. That would have been a death sentence for Brent.

Brent had no support in the family outside of his grandfather. While he was a big force in the family, he was outnumbered. He was a civilian, with several loyal Espers on his side, but still a civilian. The only flaw that the rest of the world thought that Brent’s grandfather had.

All of this was to say that Brent had to be fucking careful. He could poke, he could push, he could get beat up, but he had to know his limits. Getting a beat down from Colby was one thing, it was another thing to find himself tied at the ankles dangling over a pit of vicious monsters.

No, Brent wasn’t speaking from personal experience, but he did know that was a favoured method of dealing with ’problems’ of one of his sisters. She was a damn freak and Brent tried to avoid her even more than he tried to avoid his brother.

While his brother was a freak, he could be reasoned with. That particular sister was not one that could be. Something had gone wrong when she’d been awoken as an Esper. Brent had a feeling that she was one of the ’failed’ projects, which probably explained why she was so upset about Brent.

That was all to say that his family could easily kill someone to get what they want. They just also knew, somehow, that they should be wary of the older. civilian man. Brent agreed, his grandfather was the kind of man that reveled in the fact that others underestimated him. Which was why he was hoping, praying that they hadn’t killed him.

If they had? Brent didn’t even know what he would do. What he could do. He had been powerless before he’d run away with his grandfather’s help, and he was even more powerless now that he was here.

He didn’t have access to the people that he cared about and who cared about him. Of course he didn’t travel with a phone with him on the front lines. They didn’t fucking work out there. They’d also searched him before they’d beaten him up anyways, so there was no way that he would have been able to keep it in the first place.

Brent wanted to shout. Yell. Maybe even cry. He hated feeling helpless like this. He hated not being able to do what he wanted. He hated knowing that in the back of his mind he always knew he’d end up back here. He would never be able to escape this moment.

As long as his grandfather could die, Brent would always find himself like this.

Which was why Brent was wondering why he was even picked up in the first place. If they knew that his grandfather had died, why the fuck were they even keeping him alive? They could have just dropped him over the ocean like Colby suggested. There was very little that prevented them from doing so.

Unless…his grandfather had been rather specific about his will, and if that was the case?

Brent was even more scared of what was going to be his fate. Would he be made an example of? Would they drag it out? What the fuck did they want from him?

Brent wanted nothing to do with the company. Not a damn fucking thing. He would readily sign everything over, get the fuck out of dodge, with maybe one stipulation that they pretend to not fucking know each other if they ever ran into each other again.

Brent would cut off all his ties, sign whatever things that they wanted him to sign if it meant that he never had to see their fucking faces again. He’d never come to this region of the world again either.

Kellen would understand. The man had good parents, but he knew what it meant to hate people to their core. He was sure that Kellen’s hit list was at least several pages long, with the head of the E.A.G. at the top.

Was Brent now thinking about the fact that some of his family members might be on that list? No, not at all. They themselves had told Brent that he wasn’t part of their family, so Brent didn’t know them either.

Did he feel bad about the fact that he probably knew more about what was going on with the E.A.G. and everything that was going on back in the city? A little, bit then again, he probably only knew stuff that was pertinent to the E.A.G. branch near his family, if any of the information he had was still viable.

He’d been gone for years. He fucking hoped things had changed, for their wellbeing.

“Why am I even here?” Brent asked, staring at the man who looked like an older, duller version of Brent. If Brent was in vibrant tones, his eldest brother was more muted. He was still attractive, because that was one trait that was not able to be bred out of the family. He wore expensive suits, knew how to smile softly, and tended to blend into the background if people didn’t know him.

He was very good at hiding in plain sight. It was another reason why Brent hated the fucker.

At the moment, he gave Brent that small, terrifying smile that Brent had seen when he was a child before a severe level of pain would be inflicted on his body.

“Is it so wrong that I wanted to welcome my dear, youngest brother?” He asked and Brent would have believed him if he didn’t know him so well. He sounded so sincere, like he truly cared. Unfortunately for him, Brent had met people who actually cared for him.

“Well, I wouldn’t exactly say that this is the normal fucking welcome.” Brent grunted and another family member, an aunt, laughed. That’s right, this was a public beating, with other witnesses. Brent really loved his family sooo much.

“This is the only way we know how to welcome you, my dear nephew. You’ve just always been so…punchable.” Several people murmured agreements. Brent thought that this was fucking ridiculous. This was such an obvious power play, and yet Brent had to grin and bear it.

He had already paid his dues in blood. What more could they fucking want from him?

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