Resilience

14| I Found Her

And I'm desperately hoping that it was the same reason for her.

The four of us had decided not to tell the younger ones about this incident because they were so excited to have their baby sister home and this information would have broken their hearts in the same way as it has broken ours.

"I'm hoping the trip to the mall will be the start of her warming up to us. It better goes well, and the guys hopefully manage to break her ice even just a little." Elijah spoke up, his voice trailing off at the end as he rubbed a hand over his face.

"I suppose so, but why did she ask if she was allowed to eat? That's been bugging me all day." I said looking at Dad, whose expressions immediately turned cold, making him look sinister.

"If even 1% of what my thoughts are telling me is correct, I'm going to lose my shit." Dad muttered out vehemently, his expressions becoming more dangerous.

I hoped nothing bad had happened, but a nagging feeling in my gut was messing with my nerves and causing a dull ache in my head.

"Not that my opinion will change your decision, but I believe we should conduct our investigation, there's clearly something she is hiding, and based on her behaviour, I don't have a good feeling about it." Elijah spoke up, staring at Dad in nervous apprehension.

"I agree with him." Matthew said from the other side of the room, and my gaze shifted to his tense stature.

Sometimes I forget that he could talk—

"No, this is the first thing my girl has asked of me and there's no way I'm going to betray her trust. And if that means I have to wait, then I will wait for however long it takes, I'll work for it but I am not going to do anything that's going to break her trust in me before it's even built and don't forget I gave her my word." Dad countered, his tone on edge, leaving no room for debate.

I for once agree with my brothers, but I can also see the sentiments behind my father's decision—

"But you don't—"

Elijah asserted, ready to justify his disagreement, but was cut off by the incessant ringing of his phone as he took a look at the caller and quickly put it on speaker.

"What up Max?" Elijah asked and we all shared a look, sitting upright just as we heard the sound of Max's heavy breathing voice and frantic noises from the phone.

"Arabella ran away, we are all looking for her, but we need more backup asap." Max's panic-stricken voice reached our ears and all of us almost instantly jumped to our feet.

"What's that supposed to mean?" I asked while quickly shooting a text to one of our men, to dispatch a search team to look for Arabella throughout the mall and around.

The next few minutes Max explained everything to us as quickly as he could, from how they found one of our moles in the mall pestering around them, to how a couple kids assaulted Arabella in the food court, and how she ran away.

My entire body immediately tensed when he told me that my sister was getting bullied in a goddamn open space and those idiots of my brothers failed to protect her while they were in the same mall as her.

All the brothers were searching around for her, and one of our guards had already checked the mall cameras, which showed Arabella running out of the building. They were now hacking into the street cameras to check her location.

"Why the fuck did you leave her alone." Matthew exclaimed angrily as we all glared down at the phone.

"Kyson was with her, but we quickly alerted him just in case there were more people, and while he got out of court to take the call, he was held hostage by one of the mole's friends, who was holding a gun on Kyson. That fucker took him to a deserted place and Kyson was busy fighting him off. And by the time we got to him, the whole thing had already happened at the court." Max replied, worry etched in his voice.