Page 36 of Letters to the Lost

“We promise Babygirl. No more lies.”

The others all nod in agreement, promising that we’ll tell her anything she needs to know.

“Do you all work for my dad?” she asks.

“We do, it’s not all the same. But we all work for your dad in some way,” Zander tells her honestly. Only him, Sebastian, and Dominic have explained what they do for her dad. While me and Atlas haven’t had the chance to yet. As if she can hear the direction my thoughts have gone, she asks exactly that.

“I know what you three do, but what about you two?” she asks as she looks pointedly at us both, her eyebrow raised.

“Well…” I start.

“I…” Atlas starts to say, causing us both to laugh.

“I track people for your dad. I’m good at tracking. So when your dad has someone who steals, lies, etcetera, then I’m the one to go find them and return them.”

“Is it dangerous?” Autumn asks, worrying her bottom lip between her teeth.

“Sometimes, but Atlas normally comes with me for backup,” I tell her, hoping to wipe away some of the concern from her face.

“Ok. And what about you?” She turns her head to look at Atlas, who looks like he’s about to run from the room.

“I’m Kelvin’s right-hand man. I forced him to give me a job, so I had the resources to look for you the moment I turned sixteen. He didn’t want to, but I told him I would be doing it with or without his help,” Atlas tells her. His description of what he does is slightly downplayed.

“And?” she probes, knowing it isn’t the full story.

“He’s training me to be able to look after you, but I’ll also work alongside Brenn when he takes over.” We all watch on with sympathy as he squirms under her gaze.

A pillow goes flying through the air, smacking Atlas in the face, others following in our direction as Autumn pelts us with her pillows.

“How could you hide such dangerous information from me you absolute cockwombles! What if something happened to you and I didn’t know why? Or were you going to try to hide this from me forever? I thought I had sweet boyfriends, little cinnamon rolls but NOOOOO, I get ones who work for my father, who is the head of a crime family. Who does illegal things. How did I not notice?!” She rants, her hands animated as she does so.

“Princess…” Zander edges closer to the bed as Autumn’s emotions start to bubble over. Her words are ineligible as she starts to laugh hysterically which quickly turns into tears.

Dominic starts to panic at the sight of Autumn crying while the rest of us sit there bewildered at what we’re watching as Zander holds her to his chest.

Autumn finally calms enough for her tears to stop, pink flushes her cheeks as she looks at us all.

“You good now Princess?” Zander asks her, smoothing her blonde hair away from her face.

“Mmhmm,” she murmurs.

“We need to apologize, Pumpkin. We should never have hidden anything from you or lied to you,” Atlas says.

All of us murmur our agreements.

I hate that we lied to her, hate that all of the secrets between us drove her to feel so alone that she couldn’t rely on us. Especially when she needed us the most.

“I need to apologize also; I never should have hidden the messages from you all,” Her body is still sandwiched into Zander, “I went through all of this with my therapist. We mostly covered why I didn’t tell you all, but I should have known that my thoughts were wrong and trusted that you all had me.”

“You should have, but we also should have trusted that you could have handled the truth. We are all in the wrong here and we were wrong to hide anything from you when we are trying to build a strong and healthy relationship between us all,” Sebastian states, before glaring atDominic, “Which also means you should have told us what you were doing.”

“I’m not sorry I put her first,” Dominic states, his knife twirling between his fingers, eyes narrowed on us all, “I did what I thought was best. You all would have pulled her out of there at the first sign of danger. I simply made sure that wasn’t an option so I would never nearly lose my Cupcake again.”

“We’re supposed to be in this together,” Atlas states.

“Yes and no. My relationship with Autumn is separate from you all, just like all of your relationships with her are separate from mine. You are my brothers, but she is my heart. I would sacrifice all of you if it meant she lived a long healthy life.”

I hate to admit it, he’s right. Our relationship might be all together, but we are all her boyfriends separately. If we fight, I don’t want the others to get involved, it has to stay between just me and her while we sort it between ourselves. Something I tell the others, hoping they are on the same page.

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