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Delia, a 13-year-old girl lives with her abusive parents and her eight-year-old twin brothers.
She shields them from the cruelties of their parents as much as she can.
The twins try to provide her with support but they are all starting to crumble under the pressure.
When their parents get arrested, a DNA test reveals relatives they never knew existed, including siblings.
They have three handsome brothers.
Placed in their oldest brother's care will this be the end of their constant suffering, or will life introduce a whole new form of torture?
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Gliding my fingers through Artie's hair, my eyes glaze over as I try to plan for life's newest curveball - foster care. Gina and Jake, our "parents" have been arrested for drunk driving, dealing drugs, assaulting a police officer, obstruction of justice, and since they have seen me and the twins probably child neglect will be added. Honestly, the last one will hurt a bit, I know we didn't look great, but I always tried my best to keep us healthy and clean.
Drew gently tapped me on my shoulder grabbing my attention. His chapped hands signed 'drink' before gesturing towards a water dispenser with plastic cups leaning against it, I nod, before holding up three fingers. When Drew returned with cups for each of us, I sat Artie's fatigued figure upright and handed him his cup. Artie started gulping it down and I scolded myself for not taking care of this sooner especially since we had free access to a water source.
Soon after we drank our fill, a middle-aged woman with a cheerful smile pasted on her face, walked in holding a Manila folder. She, our social worker, explained that our parents were being held in prison until the trial and considering the evidence wouldn't be coming out anytime soon, mine and my twins DNA samples had been taken and analyzed. She mentioned something about the process being shortened by some generous donor for all cases of children coming into the polices' care. But the news that sent me and the twins into shock were not them, but the sentence, "Your oldest brother has agreed to take custody!"
I wasn't that surprised that we had family members out there, our mother never talked about her family, but biology said she had to come from two people. However her sentence meant we had at least one brother, and considering she said oldest we probably have more than one. And he agreed to take custody of us.
The social worker finally gave us some information. We had 3 older brothers and Jake wasn't our biological father like we had been lead to believe. But our biological father was no like no longer alive he passed away about a year go I made a mental note to remind the twins not to bring the topic up. We don't want to trigger any negative emotions that could result in our harm. I always did my best to protect my brothers from the abuse, but there was only so much a 13 year old malnourished girl could do against two relatively healthy adults. And three adults would put me at even more of a disadvantage.
I wasn't enough to protect them, to provide for them and those facts hurt more than any torture our "parents" managed to come up with.
Our social worker explained that she was driving us an hour and half to a pre-agreed upon location where or brothers' driver would pick us up and driving the rest of the way to our new "home". Evidently our father was rich the social worker said something about him having his own company which was still steady with the hard work of our two older brothers.
After a 3 hour drive we finally pulled into our new neighborhood. Our brothers were rich alright the shock and awe had somewhat faded by the time we winded up the driveway to the "manor" as our driver called it. The towers at the edges and the cobblestones befitted the word castle more. It's a beautiful house. And I felt something twinge in the bottom of my heart. Maybe hope?
Yes, hope. Hope that this would be our new home. Not our house, but our home. Full of safety, warmth, trust, respect, and laughter. I almost laughed. Home was something that I wasn't capable of having. Maybe my brothers the adorable troublemakers they were.
But not me. And with those thoughts I walked towards my new place of residence.
***
Without my permission my knees began to feel weak almost making me sink to the white tile floors. Evidently my older brothers were not only rich but athletic they were tall 6'4"ish and the muscles showing through there matching blue tees, made me fear them even more then Gina and Jake.
The oldest one stepped forward with a smile. Subconsciously, I stepped backward and tugged the twins behind my back: away from the threat. His smile dropped to a frown before he spoke.
"Hello, my name is Daniel Knill, I am 27 and your legal guardian."
Daniel had blonde hair, grayish blue eyes and a face that seemed unfamiliar in displaying emotions. He gave a professional feeling as of this was a business meeting.
"Hi! I am Gracen your second oldest brother at 22."
Gracen had wavy blonde hair, light brown eyes and a he seemed to be energetic and constantly smiling. However I say the sharpness in his gaze. He was observant and casually in control.
"Hi, I'm Hunter. I'm 17."
Hunter had hair like the twins, chestnut and wavy. His eyes were the most striking blue. He gave a slight smile. He seemed quiet and reserved and although he was constantly observing us like the other two his gaze wasn't as sharp.
Daniel stared at us. I was puzzled, luckily Artie figured it out. Artie stepped out from behind me and introduced us displaying his "I am a well-behaved, innocent child." dimpled smile.
"Hello, I'm Arthur, that is Drew and Delia. Me and Drew are eight almost nine! And Delia is thirteen."
"That was an amazing introduction, but next time why don't you let you sibling introduce themselves. Some people might consider what you did rude." Gracen said smiling kindly. Daniel seemed angry to. They probably thought we were disrespecting them by not doing the introduction the same way they did. My mind screamed DANGER! Anger is not an emotion we have ever had good experiences with. Before Artie could get in trouble I stepped forward turning my body slightly so the twins could see what I was signing 'I am mute, and Drew feels uncomfortable in social situations. Drew often speaks for us to make things go smoothly. We apologize if you found it rude.'I started pretending to be mute at the age of 8 to avoid being abused for saying the wrong thing.
Artie repeated my message verbally. Bowing our heads at the end as an apology.
My hands began shaking. They were going to hit me, I hadn't followed what they said, tried to make excuses and humiliated their original comments. Before I could signal the boy to back away from me Hunter spoke.
"I'll show you your rooms."
They didn't hit me?
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