"Brother? Luke, what is he talking about?" Aunt Carol looks to her husband, struggling to follow along with everything that is happening.

"I swear to god, if Leila and I are cousins and no one-" Tristan starts muttering.

"No! Guys, will everyone relax," my uncle interrupts before Tristan can finish his sentence. "Brian and I were in the same foster home growing up. Before we got adopted into separate families."

"Uncle Luke, I didn't know you were adopted," I whisper. My brain starts racing to connect the pieces. He was a shareholder in The Underground. He invested in the first place because it was being run by his foster brother. When Brian went to jail, Tristan trusted Luke to help out because he had a sizeable portion of shares for a long period of time... but Tristan didn't know the connection. And apparently neither did Aunt Carol.

"You never told me that we had moved in next to your brother," my aunt says, searching UncleLuke's eyes for an explanation why.

"I know I should have told you," he replies. "all of you." He looks directly at Tristan, knowing in some way he has betrayed him. "But after I fond out about the abuse charges, I didn't want any connection to this bastard."

"And yet you didn't have a problem still being connected to my club," Brian retorts.

"Club?" Aunt Carol asks. 

"I can explain later, honey," Uncle Luke promises. "Right now, I need you to take Leila inside while the three of us discuss some things."

"No way," I blurt out. "You guys need a moderator."

"Leila, if you're suggesting yourself then that's out of the question," Tristan replies in a serious tone. 

"I'm not just going to sit around wondering if the three of you are beating each other up."

"We'll be fine," is all Tristan says before starting to walk back towards his house. "Are you guys coming?" he directs towards his father and Uncle Luke. Without hesitation, the two fo them start following Tristan to his house, keeping a distance between them, leaving Aunt Carol and I alone on our front yard.

"Leila," I hear my aunt say quietly behind me.

"Let's go inside," I suggest. "I can explain."

~~~

"I don't know the details of the arrangement, but I'm sure Uncle Luke can tell you more once he's back," I answer one of the many questions Aunt Carol has asked me in the last hour.

Once we retreated to our living room, calming cups of jasmine tea warming our hands, I tried to explain to her the whole situation that revolved around The Underground. To the best of my ability, I attempted to answer her questions, but knew my uncle would be able to do a better job once he finished discussing things with Tristan and Brian. 

"I just can't believe he was so involved in something and I didn't know about it," Aunt Carol sighs into her refill of tea. "I thought I knew everything about him. And now I find out he's been running a secret club with the neighbor's kid. The neighbor who is his foster brother? How could I not know any of this?"

"How could you though?" I reassure her before she starts to spiral. "There was no way you could have picked up on any of this information and it wasn't like Uncle Luke was really in a position to tell you. The only reason I found out was because I knew something was going on and had to do a lot of sneaking around to find out what."

"I could have done that, too," she says.

"You have your catering business. You're too busy."

"And you have school," she retorts back, smiling a little. "In any case, I'm glad I know now. Unfortunate a fist fight had to break out for me to know, but I guess that can be explained by your uncle."

"Speaking of which," Uncle Luke's voice startles the two of us as he enters the living room. "I can do that now. If you're not too exhausted from today that is." He looks tired as well. That business discussion must not have went well.

"We can talk upstairs. Unless, Leila needs to hear about this, too?" Aunt Carol asks, looking between me and her husband. 

"Tristan is coming over to talk to her about it," he says. "Brian just left to go stay at a hotel. And don't say anything to Helena, she still doesn't know that Brian was even here, let alone about the club."

"Shouldn't someone tell her?" I ask. "This does involve her family."

The back door slides open an Tristan walks in right on time. He looks just as weathered as my uncle.

"I'm going to tell mom once everything is finalized," Tristan says, answering my question. "She doesn't need to worry herself over stuff she has no control over."

"We'll leave you two alone," Aunt Carol says, taking Uncle Luke with her so she can get some more answers to her millions of burning questions. I catch her grab two ice packs from the fridge, pressing one to my uncle's swollen lip and tossing the other one to Tristan.

Tristan holds the pack to his knuckles on his right hand and takes a seat next to me on the couch, sinking in to the pillows and exhaling audibly. I reach over and lift the ice pack away from his hand, revealing his busted knuckles from punching his father earlier. They still look raw, the cuts fresh as if he had reopened them recently. I glance up at him and he just nods. A suspected, the discussion he just came back from got violent.

"I know what you're thinking," he mutters, closing his eyes and leaning his head back to rest on the back of the couch. "And no, it's definitely better that you weren't there. You being a moderator would not have prevented another fight."

I stay silent, not sure what to say. So I let Tristan rest in silence before we get back to the elephant in the room. How the meeting went, though meeting may not be a loose term for what it actually was.

We sit in my quiet living room for what seems like hours, though from the ticking of the old clock on the wall, it's only been a few minutes. Just when I think it's going to be a while longer until we talk about it, Tristan surprises me with another topic.

"Do you forgive your mom? For what she did?" 

"Excuse me?" I ask, startled and confused. Why is this on his mind now?

Tristan turns his head to look at me, those green eyes peering straight to my soul. I can't tell by his expressionless face if he's being serious or not. He blinks once, not repeating the question, just waiting for me to answer.

"I don't know," I say. "Sometimes, when I think about it, I get so angry that she took away my family. But then, I feel guilty because she wasn't in the right state of mind. She was struggling and didn't know what she was doing. I don't think she meant to hurt me."

"Do you ever think that she just wasn't thinking about you at all? That she was being selfish in her actions? That everything she did was for her own gain?" Tristan's voice starts speeding up and shaking. I look back at him and see his eyes starting to water. We're not talking about my mom anymore.

I scoot closer to him and wrap my arms around his torso the best I can to give him a hug. He adjusts and holds me, squeezing me into him. I feel one of his tears fall onto my forehead, but I leave it to travel down the center of my face. We stay like this for the rest of the night, not speaking. Just holding.