Page 5 of Stay Toxic

“Alexi,” he answered shortly.

“Alexi,” I said. “Who was manning the guard gate today?”

“Me,” he grumbled. “There was a bad accident down the road. A woman was hit by a car.”

I looked at Artur. “Artur, pull up the cameras and see if this woman is the same woman that was hit by that car.”

Artur immediately started tapping away at the computer in the guard shack.

He twisted the screen toward me, and I snapped a photo and sent it to Alexi. “That her?”

“That’s her,” he said. “She’s dead as fuck. What’s going on?”

“That woman dropped a baby off at the gate with a note,” I said as I picked up the note and read it. “She wrote: This is my baby. I didn’t give her a name because I didn’t want to become attached. I saw you on the news. You’re the scariest man I could think of that might keep my baby alive. Don’t let him have her.”

“The man fled the scene,” he said. “Another bystander stopped. I headed down there when I heard a commotion. Never saw a baby, though.”

“It was there,” I said, pointing at where the baby had been sitting the entire time. “She. She was there.”

“What are you going to do?” Artur asked.

“Alexi, get whatever info you can on the woman. Artur, call and wake Polina up. Ask her to call her daughter.”

“On it,” Artur said as he pulled out his cell phone.

While he was doing that, I unbuckled the baby from the car seat, grabbed the bottle of milk, and picked the baby up.

The baby was tiny.

Much like my newest nephew was when he was born—Brando.

Brando wasn’t a tiny baby anymore like the one in my hands.

Unbuttoning my suit jacket, I tucked the baby into my arms, then buttoned my suit coat up over her, and walked up to the house.

Years ago, when I had this place built, I’d never intended to stay.

I’d thought that I’d follow up a lead on my missing sister, get confirmation that she wasn’t here, and then keep looking.

Turns out, my kidnapped sister washereand had been the entire time. She was being “raised” by the chief of fucking police for Dallas Police Department.

My parents had spent the better part of our childhood years searching for Marina, now known as Maven. They’d even died while still looking for her. They’d followed every lead, turned over every loose paper.

When they’d died, I’d redoubled my search.

So, of course, when she’d been found out because of her friend Athena’s new phone app, we’d been skeptical.

We’d done absolutely everything we could to find her. Legal and illegal.

If you could think it up, we’d committed the crime.

We wanted to find our sister.

So how was it that she’d arrived out of the blue, with none of our help?

Yeah, needless to say, I’d been skeptical.

But blood tests had proven it. Maven was our long-lost sister.

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