Page 52 of Out for Blood
The space was small, no bigger than the living room of my old apartment, or what I’d started thinking of as my old apartment anyway (I still owned it and my stuff was still there but home was with the Hawks now).
It wasn’t even half full, and the boxes and bins had been pushed up against the walls, leaving an empty space in the middle.
Jagger took my hand. “You ready to do this?”
There wasn’t even a question that it would happen. We’d come this far.
Had risked this much.
I nodded and moved into the room, scanning the labels on the boxes and bins.
BRAM BIRTH - 5
BRAM AND CASSIE
BRADEN - MEMENTOS
CATHERINE - MEMENTOS
And then a series of boxes pushed into the corner: KENSINGTON, AVENTINE, KAPROLOV.
IF.
I stared at the box marked IF.
“Imperium Fratrum,” I said.
“They were close,” Hawk said.
“At least as close as we are,” Vigo added.
Jagger kissed my forehead. “You take the family stuff. We’ll start with everything else.”
“Bram looks so small in these,” I said, flipping through the pictures in the BRAM BIRTH - 5 box.
We’d been working for about a half hour, the Hawks going through my parents’ investigative records on one side of the room while I went through the personal stuff on the other.
It was like being transported back in time but also like being transported to a time I’d never been in at all, a time when it had been just my parents and Bram, before I’d been born.
My parents looked so young and happy.
So carefree.
And Bram looked like any other kid: just a dark-haired boy with a serious expression and a shy smile.
“I can’t believe they kept all this stuff,” I said.
Jagger came to look over my shoulder. “They obviously loved you and Bram a lot.”
I looked up at him. “Did your parents keep stuff like this?”
“Totally.” He didn’t sound happy about it. “If you walked into my parents’ house you’d think we were the happiest family on earth.”
I frowned and looked at Hawk and Vigo, still digging through stuff on the other side of the storage unit. “What about you?”
“My mom had a few photo albums,” Hawk said. “My dad’s not really sentimental.”
“I’m an only child,” Vigo said. “My mom still has my first-grade macaroni turkey from Thanksgiving, and I’m pretty sure my dad still drinks out of the#1 Dadcoffee mug I gave him for Father’s Day when I was ten.”
