Week 357 – As if on cue the bar went dark and chaos erupts

Come on, Tony, please hurry, Natasha silently begged. 

Talking to her brother was terrifying. Now that she knew the truth about him he was so much more than just her jerk of a brother who got kicked out as a teenager. There was eight years between them, they’d never been close and he was gone before she hit double digits. 

It was like he vanished and she’d had no idea he’d gone from drugs to running a prostitution ring with underage girls. 

This was all so crazy that if she hadn’t seen the suspicion in her brother’s eyes when she showed up here she might not have believed it. 

“Why are you really here, Tasha?” Brandon demanded. 

“Umm … I told you,” she whispered, completely intimidated by him and wishing Tony would hurry up and get here. “Someone trashed my house.”

“So you came here?”

“Told you, I didn’t want to worry Grandfather, and I had no one else to turn to.”

“No boyfriend?” he sneered. 

“Uh, I don’t have time to date.” That at least was completely true. Taking over the business was a lot of work, and besides she was always so awkward with guys she just met. 

“No friends?”

“Friends are friends, but you’re my only family.”

Brandon scoffed, anger flashing in his eyes, then they lit up in a way she didn’t like one little bit. “Sure, family. Lot of good that ever did me.”

“I was just a child back then,” she reminded her brother. She got he hated their parents, and even their grandparents. But their mom and dad were dead, as was their grandmother, and their grandfather’s health was shaky. But she hadn’t done anything wrong. 

Not that she’d ever reached out to him either. 

There would have been plenty of opportunities over the years, but she’d always been too busy pursuing other things to bother. 

“Lets talk where we can get a little ore privacy,” Brandon suggested but the spark in his eyes set her on edge. 

Still she couldn’t refuse because Tony wasn’t here yet. 

“Umm, sure,” she agreed shakily. 

Rounding the bar, her brother gripped her bicep in a grip tight enough to cause bruises and even though terror pulsed inside her, Natasha forced herself not to fight back, followed Brandon even though she had a really bad feeling about this. Then, as if on cue the bar went dark and chaos erupts.