Revenge is a Dish Best Served Hot

The Brothers

Briar pov

She returned home after her crazy night and immediately went to take a shower. While she was showering she couldn’t help but see all of the love bites and hickeys that was littered all over her body. Briar sighed as she looked at herself in the mirror.

Briar got out of the shower and after brushing her hair she simply sat on the bed staring into nothingness. The revenge was over and all she was left with was the fall out and the pain. The pain or loss from her child, her son. The staff at the hospital was amazing and let her hold her baby as long as she wanted. It wasn’t it enough, Briar still had to leave without him. Grayson. The only thing she had left of her precious baby boy was a tiny lock of his hair that was kept in a locket around her neck. Briar always played with it when she missed him, which was all the time.

Briar wasn’t sure how long she had been sitting there as it seemed to be late afternoon when she heard her doorbell ringing. She got up and walked around the boxes that she hadn’t managed to unpack yet. Briar had only moved in to this two bedroom house within the last year. She moved when she found out she was pregnant, a studio apartment had no space for a baby. Now she had all this space and no baby.

She opened the door expecting to see Liam but was surprised to see her brothers. Three of them anyway, Oliver, the oldest was missing. He was always missing.

“What are you doing here?” She asked the three men standing in their police uniforms staring at her intimidatingly. If she had been anyone else Briar would be scared, she just saw her punk brothers.

“We came to take you home,” her second oldest brother stated in his more pronounced Tennesseean accent. Eric stayed at the local sheriffs department in their small hometown after he returned from his stint in the Army. Their father hired him right away. He was the sherif after all.

“Come on sis,” the twins implored her and Briar looked to the her identical twin brothers. They went to college as studying criminal justice as they wanted to go into the state police force. The two of them went to a small college in Illinois that had a great reputation for criminal justice program and they came back last three years ago. The twins came back just in time for the shitshow that was their mothers cancer. Though they didn’t help in any way. Briar was the one that took care of their mother, put her college education on hold, watched her wither away to nothing. Her brothers went on with their life as if nothing happened. They would come over Sunday afternoon and eat the dinner she made. Her father would put her mother in her seat at the table and once dinner was over her brothers left. That was the extent of their involvement.

When her mother passed Briar took what was left of her college savings and never looked back. Briar went to her dream school, university of Missouri.

Briar fully admitted she had a grudge against her brothers as well as her father. Briar cleaned up her mothers vomit and waste while her brothers would come by once a week for an hour. Her father was busy working, he didn’t have time to take care of her mother. Briar had been run ragged, college was a breeze compared to the nonstop care of her mother.

Oliver was nowhere to be seen, he didn’t even bother to come home for their mothers funeral. He had an emergency with a brother in the marines.Oliver begged for forgiveness when he returned two days later and Briar never forgave him. “I’m not your family, so I don’t know why you care if I forgive you or not,” Briar told him and pushed past him and the rest of the men in her life. She never saw them again.

“I don’t know how you found me, but you need to leave and don’t come back,” Briar told her brothers coming back to reality and shut the door in their faces ignoring their look of hurt.

Briar knew calling her father a week ago was a mistake. She had wanted to end everything and she just wanted to say goodbye to her father. In a different life she was a daddy’s girl. She used to follow him around everywhere. Her father taught her to shoot, hunt, and fish. Then his oldest son went off to the military and he only talked about Oliver’s accomplishments, similarly when the twins became all stars on the football team. There wasn’t enough room for her in her own family. The only one who continued to pay attention to her was her mother, her mother loved her and had time for all of her five children. She loved them all equally. Briar held nothing but love for her mother.

Briar bought a burner phone and called her father, he didn’t pick up his phone, he never did. She left him a message and it was a painful one.

When she was done she took a bottle of pills and downed them. Briar passed out and the next thing she knew was waking up in the hospital with Nicole hovering over her.

Briar had to stay for the mandatory evaluation and Nicole visited her frequently. It was in that hospital that the two of them came up with this revenge plot. Sitting here now the day after does she regret it? No. The humiliating scene of catching her fiancé with that club girl made her feel two inches tall and plummeted her self-esteem. Last night that man made her feel so wanted. So no, she had no regrets.

Briar laid down on the bed despite it being five in the afternoon and the fact she hadn’t eaten all day and went to sleep. She fell asleep thinking of her son as she did every night.

…

It was midnight when she heard the roar of motorcycles. She couldn’t tell how many and she went to go look through the window. She peeked out just in time to see Liam and his best friend Brian get off their bikes.

“Briar! Briar! You worthless slut! Get out here right now!” Liam shouted. It seems like he found out. Briar quickly threw on the dress from last night as it was closest and walked outside.

“Liam Will you be quite you are going to wake up my neighbors.” Liam got in her face and roughly yanked on her arm.

“Shut your mouth you loose slut!” Liam shouted in her face. Briar looked at his face and saw that he had taken a beating; he had a black eye, busted lip, and his jaw was bruised.

“What happened to you?” She asked with a smirk on her face.

“You know what happened to me! You slept with the enemy!”

“He was your enemy? I didn’t know that at the time, he was just really hot! With a huge di-“

“You b***h!” He screamed and without any warning Liam slapped her hard across the face. Briar was about to reply when she heard it, the unmistakable sound of a gun being c****d. He was going to kill her?

“You get away from my sister!” A chilling voice she knew all too well came from behind them. Briar was angry, but the other men froze and turned to see all four of her brothers standing behind them. Oliver was standing there in his black suit, which is typical for agents of the FBI. Then she heard the rumbling of engines. Great. Axel just had to show up right now. She couldn’t deal with this right now. Briar made her way back inside.

“Where are you going?” Several voices called out to her.

“Away from the d**k measuring contest that is sure to take place,” Briar said and Axel walked up.

“Axel Hart is that you?” Her brother Oliver asked.

“Oliver Madden, how long has it been two years?” Axel asked and if Briar wasn’t watching the exchange she would have missed the guilt in her brothers eyes.

“Really Oliver?” She decided to bluff.

“Come on Briar it-“

“No! He’s the one you helped two years ago?” Briar asked furious and Axel seemed angry.

“What I’m good enough to f**k but not good enough to help?” That comment seemed to anger her brothers, but she continued on ignoring them.

“Not if it means missing my mothers funeral which is what Oliver did and why I will never talk to him again.”

“Briar it’s not like that I-“ Oliver pleaded.

“I don’t care!” She shouted surprising everyone. “I don’t care about your excuses or your reasoning. I was the one who cleaned up mothers vomit, her s**t, fed her, clothed her. I was there for her when she was in too much pain to sleep. Me! Not one of you took but an hour out of your week to spend with mother. Me! It was all me. Oliver you couldn’t even make it to the funeral and dad had the balls to say you were on assignment when in reality you were helping an illegal biker club.” Everyone looked at her in shock as she screamed at them in anger and grief. “I left and lived my life on my own. Now you are here why? I don’t care why, just leave I never want to see you.”

“Dad said you called him and it worried him,” Will muttered.

“Yeah and where is he? With his new girlfriend I’m sure. He’s not that worried.” Briar said dismissively. Her father moved on from her mother quickly which is another reason she never came back to her hometown. She turned around and went back to her house.

“Briar. Are you okay?” Eric asked the dumbest question ever and she simply ignored him.