Chapter 66: A serious conversation about the James family

“You don’t seem that impressed.” Aunt Dina said with a smirk, and Brent had to disagree with her on principle.

“I am impressed. You have I think twice the amount of Lieutenants that Rhys has and probably triple what Captain Sakura has. Sergei…hmm, I’m unsure. I know he has several, I’ve just never seen them all in one place.” Brent admitted. Thinking off the top of his head, he’d met 4, 5 of them? He wasn’t sure. He also felt bad about that.

If he was going to be involved with a guy, he should know who he was closest with, right? Well, the good news was that Brent and Sergei had delayed their conversation. Haha.

Yup. That was good news.

Brent felt his eye twitch at the thought but turned his attention back to the group of people around him.

“I’m sure you have a lot of questions for me.” Brent started. “I’ll do my best to answer them, but I can’t make any promises. I’ve been excluded from the family business for a long time. Quite a bit of that at my own doing. I really didn’t want to paint more of a target on my back as a kid.” Brent told them rather seriously and Aunt Dina stared at the younger man for a long moment.

“I can’t blame you for surviving, Brent. I doubt anyone would. As for questions, well, we’re going to ask about tonight, and your brother.” Brent nodded at her soft tone. She was trying to be gentle, but Brent was ready for it.

He knew that at one point he was going to have to answer questions like this. He had just always thought that Kellen would be in the room while it happened. Having his Aunt Dina at his side was a good replacement.

“I’m ready.” Brent said, his eyes scanning the room. Esper Parker looked proud of him when he caught Brent’s eye. It was a rather strange feeling. It wasn’t condescending, it felt more like an older family member cared about him. It was a feeling that Brent was unused to.

The interrogation began.

~

It was a long, grueling conversation. Brent’s shoulders had tensed at one point and hadn’t relaxed since. Jennifer had made sure that they had recorded the whole conversation on two different recording devices not placed next to each other. In case of interference, and Brent was glad for her forward thinking.

It turned out that everyone had questions for him, Even Esper Parker. Aunt Dina manned the conversation with Jennifer maneuvering things if she thought that got caught on a particular topic. Brent’s head hurt for how many things he had to answer and from how much thought he had to put into his answers. He had ignored this part of his life for a long, long time. It was strange to now have to comb through it all.

He also knew that his brother was probably anticipating that this was happening. Brent was a bit horrified to think about what his brother would do in retaliation. Brent made sure to warn the others, but when he even brought up the topic of retaliation for what they had done simply by picking Brent up, it was like he’d touched electricity.

The tension in the room grew, not growing cold, but growing hot. It snapped and fizzled, and Brent wasn’t even sure where it was coming from.

Aunt Dina had placed her hand on Brent’s shoulder, the one missing an arm, and gave it a squeeze.

“You let us worry about that, Brent.” It was a final statement, made by an Esper who had lost someone recently. Brent nodded, swallowed and dropped the topic. He wanted to warn them, tell them what his brother was capable of.

His body was half of the answer to that. He wanted to tell them that he’d been in the hospital for enough days that they had bled into each other, that he’d been locked up in his childhood bedroom, a small room without a window and not fed for several days until he almost died. He wanted to show that they needed to be careful, but he couldn’t open his mouth more to spew the truths.

Not when Aunt Dina looked so…sad. Brent wasn’t a monster, even if his brother was.

So, they spoke about other things. What Brent knew his brother was attached to, what projects, what he meant when he said that he was in charge of everything. Brent told them of his grandfather’s passing and how as a last ’fuck you’ to his brother and the rest of the monstrous family he’d created, he’d left everything to Brent.

Explicitly against Brent’s wishes, but the man was dead now. He didn’t care. He was probably having a lovely time in hell with his grandmother.

Brent didn’t have a full idea of what that meant, but he did know that he had to go to a lawyer or something to find out and sign papers. Brent had every intention before his brother had tried to kill him to hand everything over to him and wash his hands of this city.

He could tell that devastated the group. They had hated to hear that, and had even pushed back against Brent’s idea. They couldn’t understand why Brent would give up so easily, why he would hand everything over to him. Give him exactly what he wanted.

Brent didn’t know how else to explain it to them besides that…he was tired. He had tried to fight for his place amongst the family for over a decade. He’d essentially been fighting for his right to be a part of the James family since before he was born.

No one had accepted him. Not even his grandfather when he was first born. He had been fighting a losing battle since before he was born and when he hit his teens he just…he knew that he couldn’t continue doing this for the rest of his life. Losing his arm before he was ten really put things into perspective for him. No one was going to protect him. He was going to have to do it himself.

He had eventually gotten help from his grandfather after he had pulled his head out of his ass, but that didn’t negate the time that Brent had been alone with no one else to rely on. People would show up that he thought he could trust and it would turn out that they worked for his brother. They would twist their knives into his back, hurt him. Make him bitter and angry.

It was a miracle that Brent was even able to trust people now. He knew that he had Kellen to help with that too.

Brent did not want to go back to that. He valued his peace too much to fight for something that he didn’t consider was worth anything to him. Now, however, his brother had fucked up. They had been ’on the same side’ but who was to say that Brent, who owned everything legally, couldn’t sign everything over to someone else entirely.

Fuck, he could make Kellen the knew leader of the James group and really fuck up his brother’s day. Brent had a few things that he needed to worry about to get to that point. He had to worry about getting to the lawyer’s office after finding out who was the lawyer in charge of the will. He had to prove that he was who he said he was, that he had the authority that he did, and he had to go into hiding where he was until he was ready to reveal it. He also had to protect himself as well.

It was a rather extensive list, but Brent hadn’t made this list. His brother had.

Brent had even taken the beating, thinking that it was the right that he was owed since Brent had run away. He had cut all contact with his family, he had done the whole ’rich kid runs away’ thing.

A beating was…reasonable for their family. Murder? That was pushing it, and his brother knew that he had fucked up.

He had realised that Brent had let him get away with his treatment and that put Brent in a rather dangerous situation. He was uncontrollable now, and that was a dangerous thing to be in his brother’s world. His brother didn’t keep variables around. He used them and threw them out.

When Brent had admitted that his life was very much in danger now, Aunt Dina and the others had stiffened. It was clear that they didn’t like hearing that. Brent knew that telling a group of Espers that a Guide was in danger wasn’t always the right call, but what other choice did Brent have?

He had no money, no I.D. No gun. He was living in a world where being a Guide wasn’t just a blessing right now, it was a curse. He’d seen how the police had done fuck all when it came to the E.A.G. Brent’s blood boiled all over again just thinking about it again, but that was all he could do.

He had no power in this city. Not until he proved who he was and stole everything from his brother. He was on a fucking ticking time bomb, and he didn’t even know what timer was on the damn bomb either.

Of course, in traditional Woods fashion, Aunt Dina told Brent that he was practically blood and there was no fucking way she was going to let his brother hurt him. Brent appreciated it, and then told her that he needed to be kept in an apartment with no windows. Or severely blacked out windows.

He did not want to risk Colby having a visual of him and stealing him from them in the middle of the night. It was clear that they had suspected something like that when it came to his powers, but hearing that he could just steal Brent in the middle of the night from the home of an S Class Esper?

They fucking hated that.

Xavier was on the phone in a heartbeat, as was Esper Parker. Both men were barking out orders to Espers into their phones while Jennifer was combing through something on a little laptop that she had pulled out of thin air.

Brent didn’t speak when he wasn’t spoken to. Partially because speaking about himself had exhausted him, and the other part was he didn’t want to distract anyone.

Esper Zaria and Esper Vance, who were closest to Brent outside of Aunt Dina were focused on him. Brent could feel the familiar warmth of healing powers inside of him when he was having a particularly hard time getting an answer out. Zaria would use her powers to bring over a sweet, a snack, or something else that Nicholas would hold up for Brent.

It was sweet how they worked as a team to take care of him, and Brent had never seen such delicate Wind power usage before. It was rather impressive. He just also knew every time that she used her powers that Kellen would hate working with her. It was a bittersweet thought that floated in his mind even as Brent panicked about what he was going to do.

What he was planning to do.

God, he hated being in the limelight.

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