The Dixons

Chapter 2

Stumbling into the home I shared with my four older brothers I could not stop laughing. Just remembering Penn's face as he was sitting across from the woman who hitched a ride on the ark with Noah was enough to leave Blaise and I in stitches.

"Dude, your face!" Blaise snorted out while laughing, throwing himself down on the sofa beside our second eldest brother, Kai.

"Freaking legend," I agreed. Kai looked up at us from behind his golden bangs, green eyes sparkling in slight amusement.

"What did you and Blaise do now, Dex?" Kai asked, looking over at Penn as he grumbled and grabbed beers from the fridge.

"We did a good thing this time, I swear," I piped up, smiling innocently to which Blaise nodded while he caught the beer Penn tossed him.

"Sure, sure," Kai nodded, clearly not believing me before he turned back to the papers in front of him.

Penn plopped down beside me and handed me a bottle of ice tea while cracking open his own bottle of beer and taking a swig. The only one missing from our little family now was our eldest brother, Nix.

I could only guess what he was getting up to right now.

"Nix in the lab again?" Penn asked before I could bring it up. Kai nodded, not looking up from whatever he was working on.

"Yeah, been in there all morning, as usual,"

"What's he working on?"

Kai shrugged, looking up at Penn,

"Don't know, he didn't mention anything when he went down this morning. Dex, come proof read these for me real quick?"

I hopped up from my seat and pushed Blaise to the edge of the couch; despite there being more than enough space for me to sit down in, and eased down between my brothers. Kai handed me a stack of papers and a pen and I got to work, reading through his proposals like I always do.

You see, in the Dixon family everyone has a role.

First, there's the eldest, Nix. Nix is 26 and has been our guardian ever since our parents died in a car crash when he was 18. He was only ever in two places. The first being his laboratory in the downstairs basement, the second being the racing tracks where all of us spent most of our time. He was responsible for inventing gadgets and doohickies that he sold to the FBI and other secret services. Obviously the rest of us weren't supposed to know who he sold his inventions to, but we all had a part in each other's lives so we were all clued in on everything. Nix was a sweet guy when you were on his good side, but when you ticked him off he would gladly rip your heart out of your chest and feed it to you. He's also the brother who is best dressed, even when we head out to do family activities like going to the shooting range, or when we go out for some graffiti painting, or when we head to the tracks.

Second, we have Kai. He and Nix basically carry the entire family financially. Kai is 24 and he is our financial guru, he knows everything about the economic markets and he works as an accountant to the biggest names in the finance world. I, of course, have no idea who any of these people are, but I do know that they sponsored all my cars and bikes, so more power to them! Kai is also a great cook and the gentlest out of all of us, despite all the illegal things we do, Kai could never hurt a fly, he made us all look bad that way.

Third is Penn. At 22, he's the youngest lawyer to have ever amassed his own firm and been successful in it, his scorpion neck tattoo usually made people underestimate him, to his delight. He had been studying the laws of various countries from the time he could pick up a book and understand what the words meant. He loves a good debate and has yet to meet his match when it comes to the law. No one has ever won a case against Penn, I highly doubt anyone ever could. Unfortunately, this brother of mine is negative about everything, and I mean everything. I believe it would actually kill him to be positive for once.

The brother just before me is, Blaise. He's eighteen, and we could have been twins if not for the one year difference between us. Blaise is my partner in crime in all things illegal. He's also fascinated by genetics and science. He's usually responsible for scoping out and getting rid of any evidence we may leave behind when it comes to crime scenes. It's not that we murder people or anything like that, but it's easy to get caught for the smallest things if you don't cover your tracks. That's something Nix taught us. Blaise, like all my brothers, is a complete manwhore. It's only Kai who doesn't use women, but that's just because he makes it pretty clear to them that he has no intention of being serious whatsoever, no matter what. So, he's still an asshole, but an honest asshole. Blaise is my confidante, my other half. He's sarcastic, rude, mean and not a big lover of people overall. He's way too honest for his own good and has no problem with letting you know exactly what he thinks of you. I love him that way though.

Finally, there's me. I'm 17 and the brains behind any adventure we tend to go on. My brothers have taught me everything I know about anything, aside from the interest I have in languages and editing. I speak six languages fluently, and all my brothers frequently ask for my help when something needs to be written or proof read. It's not much, but it's my passion and I intend to make the most of it.

If you put all our varying interests aside, there is one thing that glues our little dysfunctional family together, and that is street racing. We basically own the circuit in our town, and thanks to my brothers, I've been dubbed "King" of the tracks since I was 15. There is not a car or bike or any kind of transport that we can't master, believe me, we've tried them all.

Incidentally, my skill is what landed Penn up in his mess with the old lady. He didn't think that Rowan, my arch nemesis in racing, would bet that I would win the race that night landing Penn on a date with the woman who discovered fire.

An explosion from downstairs brought me out of my reverie. My head whipped up at the sound and soon after Nix came stumbling out, covered in soot. His black hair stuck up in different directions, and only his blue eyes were distinguishable from the black smears that covered his face. It was deathly silent for half a second before we all burst out laughing.

Nix glared at us and stomped upstairs, leaving black tracks on the wooden floors in his wake. Blaise shook his head as he watched Nix go upstairs before turning back to look at me.

"You know, I feel like we forgot something,"

"Like what?" I scrunched my eyebrows, trying to think of something that we could have forgotten about on our mission,

Blaise thought for a minute before shrugging and chugging on his drink again,

"Whatever, probably wasn't important anyway,"

I nodded in agreement and went back to reading the proposal Kai was working on,

"Oh wait!" Blaise yelled out and grabbed his phone, texting someone, "We forgot to tell Lenny he could stand down,"

"Oh right!" I only just remembered that we had asked Lenny to be on standby when we found Penn.

"What was he on standby for?" Kai asked, still writing down things on the forms in front of him.

"He was supposed to untie Annie when we found Penn," I responded nonchalantly before continuing my reading.

We were silent after that, Kai and I were working, Penn was watching the news and Blaise was busy on his phone.

"Dex, did we ever tell Lenny to untie her?" Blaise asked, and I looked up at him, wondering that same thing.

"I don't know? I remember you got Lenny to remove any video footage of us, but that's about it,"

He nodded and tossed his empty bottle of beer in the trash can across the room,

"We probably did tell him,"

"Yip"

I went back to my work, happily positive that we had indeed told Lenny to untie the sister of my arch nemesis. We didn't forget things that easily.

Later we found out that we actually did forget to tell Lenny anything,

Oops.

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