"Ajumma!" I ran to her, holding her head before it hit the pillow, and after a minute passed and she didn't wake up but her breathing turned heavier, her sleeping face angelic again, I took two steps back, feeling the pining stare of the serpent she called Raibh.
"Do you think we were convincing enough, Dai?" Diego asked, as they all stared at her. "In faking the fear and all."
I grinned mischievously, "Oh, you were. I didn't know you could scream like that, onii-chan," he hates when I call him that, but that only makes me want to do it more. I'm that annoying, it's my charm. "But Yeji definitely now thinks we're all pussies scared of serpents and snakes, that much was obvious. The girls did a great job with the first scream."
"Go to hell, Dai," he gave me the middle finger.
"Onii-chan, where do you think I came from?" I purred.
"Well, I am a bit scared of it," Adèle chuckled. "But not like that."
"She was unphantomably more corresponding today," Abby smiled hopefully. "That must be a good sign, right? Or do you think she could snap like that day again?"
Four petted her hair, "It was definitely progress."
"I don't think she'll snap like that again," I told her. "Not now."
"Not now that she has a motivation and someone to blame," Astrid spoke my unsaid words and I nodded. "I was a bit afraid of her knowing what we were suspicious of, but now I think it was a good move to tell her. Sure, she'll be absolutely said when she realizes she might have been the real target of those fuckers, but it's better to have an angry version of her, than a suicidal one, right?"
"You're right, babe," Four kissed her forehead. "Yeji is definitely a strong girl, we can only hope that, when we put the cards down to her and explain everything, she will take this as a new reason to stay with us."
"I agree and all, but, uh… guys?" Pravya gasped, "I think we better get those chickens to there serpent, before it gets too hungry and goes on a killing-spree after our bonds. I want them far away from my squirrels."
"And my birds," Abby agreed with her. She's able to communicate with seagulls, humming and mocking birds.
"We better tell the others all she said too," my cousin added.
"And get the nurses to come see her," it's the most important part. And as the others began to leave the room, I turned to Raibh who had their eyes already on me, switching to Bulgarian, hoping they can understand me now. "We'll get your chickens, Raibh. The nurses will also come in to check on her health, and treat her so she can get stronger again, okay? Can you collaborate with us and stay here protecting her while we get them?"
I swear the serpent moved their head in agreement. This is insane.
"I trust her with you," added in Bulgarian at last, before switching to English again and turning to Four and Astrid who were waiting for me at the door. "Let's go!"
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"She owns the Fehhasey Conglomerate?" All of our parents yelled at the same time, in pure shock, after we relayed everything we got to them, when we gathered in zio Silas' office, after they got Raibh the chickens, with ahjussi's help, since he came back little after we left her room, and he claimed to already know Raibh, which was already obvious, since he's the one who brought the serpent with him.
"Now I get why Felicity didn't tell me what her family worked on," zio mumbled, sadly. But his sadness slowly turned into anger, and a freezing wind hit all of us coming from the open windows, as he clenched his hands in fists, trying to contain his wrath. "It's all their fault," he hissed. "This can only have been the Midnight Paranoia faction's doing. They are the only ones who knew Aileen was my daughter, because they are responsible for stealing Abigail from Felicity and bringing her to me, under that fucking stalker's name. They… they must have known what she could do."
"They know what Abby can do," uncle Tiger pointed, and her pale skin flushed. "If she's able to communicate with three different kinds of birds, being a water elementalist, and possessing three different abilities, it doesn't take two brain cells to wonder what her twin sister could do. But while Abby is calm and tempered, and trained since she was little with us, Aileen is volatile, dangerous, a certified arsonist, has no control or even knowledge of what she can actually do, and now, she has nothing to lose."
"She's stronger than me," Abby pointed. "I can feel it, her power is more feral, while I'm more for protection, I feel like hers are destructive."
"That much is obvious, sweetheart," aunt Sera sighed. "We have never seen anyone communicate with ravens, and definitely not with any kind of snakes. Ravens may be volatile and hate humans, but snakes are dangerous, she literally is being guarded by a black mamba. The ravens that always avoided us, are roaming the top of the building in flocks."
"If she learns to control them, she'll be unstoppable," I grinned.
"Dai, that's not the problem here," aba-san turned to me, looking like a female version of otou-san. "The problem is that Aileen is now 18, and her power have been bottling up inside her all those years, unable to awaken them because she needs to know and believe in magic to do that. If Abby's suspicious are to be taken seriously, it means that, aside from her elementalist powers, Aileen has five different abilities bottling up inside her. And if she is of the destructive type, she could easily destroy a small city in an outburst," then she turned to zio. "She needs to go to the academy, Silas. She needs training, urgently."
"But she's already graduated from school," Anahit pressed her lips together. "God's, she's 18 and is already a college valedictorian from MIT. How are we going to get her to accept going back to school?"
"She's a ticking bomb as of right now," uncle Bart, Ana's dad, said, and we all turned to him. "We need her in the academy when she explodes, because she will. In the emotional and mental state she's in right now, any little trigger could get the bomb to ignite."
"Fuck," I cursed as something came to my mind. "Fuckfuckfuck."
"What is it, Jin?" Eomma asked, "Did you think of something?"
All of their eyes turned to me as I stand behind my parents and I felt dread taking over me. "What is it, Dai?" Zio asked, worried.
"What… what if she wasn't the target of the train accident?" I did not even recognize my voice as I spoke, haunted. "What if… what if her family really was the target? What if that's what they have been aiming for? According to ahjussi, Yeji told them countless of times that she could speak with animals, she literally began to go to the psychiatrist because her mom thought she had lost it. What if they knew that? What if they never stopped keeping an eye on her, after they stole Abigail from them?" I felt breathless. "What if… they wanted her to explode and use her against us? What if they intended on making her lose her mind by causing their deaths?"
Everyone stayed dead silent, realizing I could be right.
"If Felicity was as paranoid with trying to find Abigail as Yeji and ahjussi told us, enough to throw Yeji aside and traumatize her like that, who guarantees they didn't know how crazy she was to find her lost daughter? They are the ones who stole her to begin with. What… Jesus Christ… what if they planned this from the beginning? Stealing Abigail, handing her to us, making Felicity lose her mind and fuck Yeji's mind in the process, then take all of them away from her, make her explode, and maybe use her later against us. Because…" I swallowed.
As my eyes met Abby's hers widened in horror as she realized what I was thinking, "Because mom getting her memories back at the last minute was unexpected. If she hadn't hit her head and regained the memories, she wouldn't have told Sera about us, and we wouldn't know either. We only found her, because she allowed us to deliberately, but if she didn't know we papa was her father and his name, she wouldn't have found us, wouldn't have hacked us. She be lost in her grief alone, trying to find me, and they would be able to reach out to her with the false pretense of being able to help, then train Sera and turn her against us, saying papa stole me."
I nodded when she took the words from my mouth, "Exactly."
"But they would need to know she wouldn't go to the train with them," Aaliyah pointed. "Do you think they could have sent someone to check and finalize the plan at last minute?" She frowned.
"Ebony," she turned to me, "that's the minor of the possibilities. For all we know, they could have easily infiltrated some of their people in her life, to watch her, to check on her relationship with her family, on her arson tendencies, her love life, and on the process of searching for Abigail."
When the words left my mouth, our eyes widened at the same time, as all of us came to realization at the same fucking time. "Her psychiatrist!"
"Oh my God," Angelo gasped horrified. "What if her pills…"
"What if they tempered with her pills?" Feliks finished for him, probably using his telepathic abilities.
My eyes almost popped out of my face, "And she drank a whole bottle of them at once," I voiced what we're all thinking. "I'll get ahjussi!" In a second I stormed out of the office with Diego and Magnus on my toes.
"We'll go with you," they shouted running after me.
"Ahjussi," I yelled as I burst inside him room, after using my power to force the door to unlock itself, finding him shirtless, only with dark blue sweatpants on, eyeglasses on, and typing on his laptop with precision.
"What the fuck?" He gasped when he saw the three of us inside the room zio separated for him, then his eyes stopped on me, "How the fuck did you get inside, brat? I'm sure I locked the door."
"It was already unlocked, ahjussi," I lied. "What are you doing?"
"Working?" He gave me an annoyed glare. "You may not know, brat, but Missy put me in charge of taking care of all her possessions and of her family's business. Sofija may the acting CEO, but she has to answer to someone, and Missy made me that someone, because I'm the one who knew her grandparents' mind the best on this."
"Why didn't you tell us she owns the Fehhasey Conglomerate?"
He arched an eyebrow at my cousin, "And you are?"
"My cousin, Diego, ahjussi," his eyes met mine again. "That's not what it's important now, Diego," then I strode inside and grabbed Daniel by his left biceps, and let me tell you, the dude is surprisingly ripped. "Come with us, ahjussi."
"Damned brat," he cursed almost tripping to put his slippers on as he struggled to come with me, "I can walk, stop grabbing me like that!"
"You're too slow, ahjussi," I growled. "This way is quicker, now just come with us and stop whining."
"I'm not whining, you rude brat!"
"He's like this with pretty much everyone, uncle," Magnus mocked and his ginger hair danced as he ran to keep up with me, his resemblance to Adèle would definitely make them pass by siblings instead of cousins, their Irish genes did not come to play. "He's a brute. You'll get used to it."
"And I thought Missy was rude," he growled. "This brat is worse."
I did my best not to grin with amusement at another thing me and Yeji seems to have in common. God, just thinking about her brings my mind back to how she held me in the closet, how she called me by my Korean name, which only halmeoni and harabeoji do… how she asked if I trusted her and tried to save me from the serpent when I pretended to be scared, just so we could see if she really could talk with them.
She's so small near me, but her presence is so powerful.