“Where were you headed before seeing me?” He asked needing to change the subject.
“Oh shit, I was looking for you to give you this. It seems this came for you a while we were out on that recon mission and it got lost in the shuffle of all the other things on the commander’s desk,” Riley said handing him two envelopes; one was thicker than the other.
He looked at the heading and his brows creased in confusion. Gray Trevino Law Office, Esquire. “What’s this?” Creed asked tearing open the thinner of the two envelopes and started reading. His eyes widened in surprise then in horror as he read the first three sentence over and over.
This can’t be fucking true.
He stumbled and his back hit against the wall hard when he saw the date on the letter,two weeks.Richard and his wife’s been dead for two weeks, and I’m just finding out.
“Cree, what’s wrong?”
Creed looked at Riley as if he had no idea who he was for a brief second. He couldn’t speak and simply handed Riley the letter. Tears rolled down Creed’s cheeks, bending his head.
My big brother is dead.
He felt Riley hug him and he broke down letting his grief take over.
A couple of hours later,Creed was finally on his way home. His commander had apologized profusely for not getting the message him as soon as he’d gotten back from his mission. Creed was too angry and hurt to respond.
No number of apologies can change the fact that my brother is dead and I’m just finding out about it two weeks later.
It would take him two days to get back to the states. Sitting on the plane, Creed opened the letter he’d received from the lawyer’s office.
I have a nephew.
His eyes stung, and he shut them tightly hoping to stop his tears from falling. He was going to miss his brother and was overcome with regret that he wasn’t there for Richard in his last moments.
According to the letter he got from the lawyer, his nephew Connor was in the custody of a trusted friend of Richard’s mate, Winter Di Matteo. Creed hoped that whoever Winter was, he or she still had Connor and was taking good care of him.
Gods, I hope he doesn’t end up in the foster system or a group home since no one has heard from me.
Creed couldn’t let his nephew get lost in the system, not only that, he and Connor were connected by blood. Other than Riley, Richard was the only family he had. Their birth parents had died when Creed was a little over six years old, and Richard was eight. Creed nor Richard never knew what caused their real parents death. They had spent a couple of years in going from one group home to another before they ended up in the care of, Roe and Latoya Makami— an interracial Japanese and black American couple who adopted, them giving them their last name.
They were an older couple who showed Richard and Creed love unconditionally. When he was around thirteen, Creed had asked Roe why he and Latoya had adopted him and Richard. He wanted to know if it was because they had the same features. Except for his and Richard’s eyes were dark gray, the same color as Latoya, and Roe’s were deep and soulful brown. Their light brown skin matched, and he and Richard could pass their Japanese-American sons. Creed had never forgotten the answer that Roe gave him.
“I don’t care what color you are or where came from. What made me want to bring you and your brother home was the hurt and anger I saw in your eyes, and truthfully, it scared the hell out of me. I made a promise to myself to soothe the hurt you felt from being bounced around from one place to the next. I saw the good inside of you, Creed, and I didn’t want you to be consumed by your anger that you would become someone you'd hate later in life. I wanted you to see how the love of a family looks and feels. Never forget that anger causes pain but love always heal.”
Creed accepted Roe’s answer and learned to live a happy life. And the older he and Richard got, the less they thought about their birth parents, or how they had died. Sadly, and as far as he knew, neither he nor Richard ever had the desire to search for other living relatives. Creed had always figured if they had family alive, they would have wanted to take them in and care for them.
He and Richard lived a good life with Roe and Latoya. When they turned sixteen and found out that they were both alphas Latoya threw them both a coming out party. It was also at his party that he found out he preferred guys to girls.
Richard, on the other hand, was into both male and females. Their parents were both very understanding. Latoya gave him and Richard a stack of condoms and told him not to live it up before finding their mates and settle down. Latoya died in Creed’s last year of high school. It was a rough time for all the men who valued her in their lives. She was the glue that kept the family together and always saw the good in people.
Creed had enlisted in the Navy and went to his first duty station, when he’d gotten word that Roe had died from a heart attack. Creed was stationed states side and had rushed home for the funeral and was just as heartbroken over losing the only man he knew as a father.
And now I’ve lost my only brother.
Creed crumbled the letter in his hands. He wasn’t totally alone; he had a nephew to take care of. Since he only had three months left on his military service and he’d racked up leave days, he was on terminal leave. He wasn’t fully out of the Navy yet, until he signed the last document, but he was practically a civilian in every sense of the word. He was going to find his nephew and give him the life he deserved.
He remembered what it was like when he and Richard went from one group home to another. He refused to have his nephew go through the same fate. Granted, in the end, they had a wonderful childhood with Roe and Latoya, but he knew what could happen to a child if they got lost in the system.
I refuse to let that happen to my own blood.
