Page 189 of Sincerely, Your Enemy

The house is a mess—no surprise there. The furniture is all here, but you can barely see it with all the bags and boxes scattered around the common areas.

It smells like cleaning products, too. Aveena and Dia stayed back to wash the kitchen floors, the windows, and the insides of the cabinets while we were filling up the truck a second time.

Aveena turns the corner, taking off her rubber gloves as she says, “All done. You could eat off that floor.”

Dia follows not far behind. “Man, don’t ask me how the last tenants could see through those windows. They weredisgusting.”

I hurry over to my friends and give them a hug. “Thank you, thank you, thank you. You’re the best.”

The girls laugh, embracing me with twice as much enthusiasm.

“Shit, I have to take this,” Aveena says when her phone goes off in her pocket. “It’s Xavier. I think Tyler’s being fussy.”

I don’t know how Xavier does this. He’s been juggling his basketball career, being a good partner, and being a father since he got drafted four months ago. Same goes for Theo. We’ve barely seen him since his birthday. While TJ was recovering, Xav and Theo were already out traveling the world and adapting to their new crazy reality.

Of course, it hasn’t made having a newborn easy for Aveena and Xavier, but they were able to make it work. Vee and Tyler have been travelling with Xavier for the most part, and when they’re not together, Aveena has a great support system, which allows her to take a breather every once in a while.

“I’m going to go check on the guys. Make sure they’re not assembling your new furniture backward.” Dia laughs.

They both walk off at the same time Daniel, Kelsea, Sierra, and Oliver come barging in. The kids were riding with Daniel from our old apartment.

“Six closets in this place, and I bet you westillwon’t have enough room for all your damn clothes,” Oli mocks his sister.

Sierra punches him in the shoulder. “At least I’m not collecting toys.”

“They’re not toys. They’re limited-edition action figures,” Oli fires back.

Sierra scoffs. “Exactly,toys.”

Oli rolls his eyes before diverting his attention to me. “Which one’s my room?”

“The smallest one,” Sierra declares before hurrying down the hall to claim ownership of one of the five rooms in the house, most likely the biggest one.

He’s chasing after her in no time. “Like hell!”

“Is TJ on his way to give the truck back?” I ask Daniel.

He nods. “Yeah, but it’s a seven-minute drive from here. He should be back any second.”

“Where’s Kelsea?”

“Outside, FaceTiming her boyfriend,” Daniel says.

That’s all she does these days.

TJ wasn’t a fan of his sister entering the dating world at first, but he felt better once he checked out the kid and made sure he wasn’t a part of a human trafficking ring.

It turns out not every teenager out there is trying to kidnap our sisters and sell them for parts.

Makes sense that he was concerned, though. If there’s one thing Aaron taught us, it’s that you can never be too careful. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t be calling him Aaron. His real name is Leo—Aaron was just one of the fake names he used to target women and young girls all over the country.

Turns out the guy they abandoned at the scene the day they tried to kidnap me had loose lips. He didn’t hesitate to rat out his buddies in an attempt to save his own ass. He took a plea deal and told the police where they could find the bastards he was working with, as well as who was involved in the kidnapping attempt.

The police went to the given address and found Aaron—I’m sorry, Leo—dead at the scene. Probably at the hands of one of his own. They also arrested Gabriel, or whatever his real name was, the guy who’d been grooming Sierra for months.

The man with the broken skull tattoo was nowhere to be found at first, but then they caught him trying to flee the country. We’ll never really know what went down after Leo and his accomplices escaped that day, but the police had more than enough evidence linking Gabriel and the man with the tattoo to multiple crime scenes to put them behind bars.

Obviously, these guys were but small cogs in a very big machine, and stopping them doesn’t fix the country’s human trafficking problem in the slightest, but the man who snitched gave answers to many grieving families and admitted to kidnapping a few of the kids that had gone missing in the area.

---