The Price of Protection

The Price of Protection
Iris POV

"Ian?" I whispered, staring at the boy who looked exactly like me.
My twin brother pointed his gun straight at my heart. His eyes were cold and empty, nothing like what I'd imagined.
"Put the gun down, son," Dad said carefully.
"I'm not your son anymore," Ian replied. His voice sounded like mine, but darker. Angrier. "I stopped being your son the day you left me to rot with the Castellanos."
"We thought you were dead!" Elena cried.
Ian laughed, but it wasn't a happy sound. "Dead would have been easier."
Alex stepped closer to me, his wounded arm still bleeding. "What do you want?"
"What I've always wanted. My sister."
"For what?"
Ian's cold eyes never left my face. "To finish what our father started twenty years ago."
"I don't understand," I said.
"The deal, Iris. The one everyone keeps talking about. Dad didn't just promise us to the crime families. He promised we'd work for them. Forever."
My stomach felt sick. "Work for them how?"
"As killers. As thieves. As whatever they needed us to be."
Sofia smiled from behind Ian. "The Castellanos trained him well. He's killed seventeen people in three years."
Seventeen people. My brother was a murderer.
"That's impossible," I whispered. "You're just a kid."
"I'm the same age as you," Ian said. "But I grew up in hell while you played college student."
The hurt in his voice made my heart ache. He wasn't just angry—he was broken.
"Ian, we can fix this," Dad said. "You can come home."
"Home?" Ian laughed again. "You mean the home I never had? The family that threw me away?"
"We didn't throw you away!"
"Then where were you when they beat me every day for the first year? Where were you when they forced me to watch them torture innocent people? Where were you when they made me pull my first trigger at age fifteen?"
Tears ran down my face. While I was worrying about homework and boys, my brother was being turned into a monster.
"I'm sorry," I said quietly.
Ian's gun hand shook slightly. "Sorry doesn't bring back the dead, sister."
"But it's a start," Alex said suddenly.
Everyone looked at him.
"You want revenge against your father? Fine. But Iris didn't abandon you. She didn't even know you existed."
"So what?"
"So maybe your anger is pointed at the wrong person."
Ian's face twisted with confusion and rage. "She got everything I should have had! Love, safety, a normal life!"
"She got lies," Alex corrected. "Just like you got pain. Different prisons, same jailers."
For a moment, Ian's gun lowered slightly. But then Sofia stepped forward.
"Enough talking. Kill them all, starting with the girl."
"No." Ian's voice was quiet but firm.
"What?"
"I said no. I'll take my sister, but I'm not killing her."
Sofia's face went dark. "That wasn't the deal."
"The deal changed."
Sofia raised her own gun toward Ian. "Then you're no use to me anymore."
But before she could shoot, the basement filled with smoke. Thick, gray clouds that made everyone cough and stumble around blindly.
"Smoke grenades!" Marco shouted. "Everyone stay calm!"
In the chaos, someone grabbed my hand. I thought it was Alex, but the grip was different. Smaller.
"Come with me if you want to live," Ian whispered in my ear.
"I can't see!"
"I can. Trust me."
Trust him? He'd just pointed a gun at me. But Sofia was trying to kill us both, and my brother was the only one offering a way out.
I let him pull me through the smoke, stumbling over broken pieces of ceiling and furniture. Behind us, I could hear Alex shouting my name, but his voice got farther away.
"Where are we going?" I asked.
"Secret tunnel. Leads to the old church two blocks away."
"How do you know about it?"
"I've been watching this house for weeks, planning the best way to get you out."
We crawled through a narrow hole in the wall that I never would have seen without Ian's help. The tunnel was dark and smelled like dirt and old water.
"Why are you helping me?" I asked as we crawled.
"Because you're my sister. And because I'm tired of being their weapon."
"But Sofia said you killed seventeen people."
Ian stopped crawling. "I did. And I'll never forgive myself. But I won't let them turn you into what they made me."
We crawled in silence for a while. Finally, we reached a ladder that led up to what looked like a church basement.
"We're safe here," Ian said, helping me climb up. "For now."
The church basement was empty except for old boxes and dusty furniture. Moonlight came through small windows near the ceiling.
"Now what?" I asked.
"Now I give you a choice," Ian said. "Come with me, and I'll keep you safe from everyone—the FBI, the Torrinos, the Castellanos, all of them."
"And if I don't?"
"Then you go back to Alex's world, where you'll be a target forever. Or Dad's world, where you'll be hidden away like a dirty secret."
It wasn't really a choice at all. Both options meant giving up my freedom.
"I want to go home," I said quietly.
"Home doesn't exist for people like us, Iris. We're too valuable to too many dangerous people."
"Then what kind of life are you offering me?"
Ian walked to one of the small windows and looked out. "A life where we protect each other. Where family actually means something."
"By running forever?"
"By fighting back."
"Against who?"
"Against everyone who thinks they can use us." He turned back to me. "I have money, weapons, safe houses. We could disappear completely. Start over somewhere new."
It sounded tempting. No more lies, no more being someone's pawn in their games.
But something felt wrong.
"How do you have money and weapons if you just escaped from the Castellanos?"
Ian smiled, but it didn't reach his eyes. "I told you, I've been planning this for a long time."
"Planning what, exactly?"
"Your rescue."
"From who? Alex was protecting me."
"Alex was using you, just like everyone else."
"No, he wasn't. He saved my life."
"He saved you because you're valuable to him. The moment you stop being useful, he'll throw you away just like Dad threw me away."
I stared at my brother, really looking at him for the first time. He looked like me, but something was different. Something was missing.
"Ian, what really happened when you 'escaped' from the Castellanos?"
His smile got wider, and that's when I saw it. The thing that was missing.
Warmth. Love. Humanity.
"I didn't escape, sister. I graduated."
My blood turned to ice. "What do you mean?"
"I mean the Castellanos didn't lose their best student. They sent me here to collect their prize."
"But Sofia was trying to kill you—"
"Sofia was following my orders. The whole fight was fake. A show to make you trust me."
I backed away from him, but there was nowhere to go.
"You planned all of this?"
"Every single part. The attack on the mansion. The smoke grenades. Even the secret tunnel."
"Why?"
Ian pulled out his gun again. "Because unlike Alex, I don't pretend to care about you. You're a job, Iris. A very important, very profitable job."
"I'm your sister!"
"You're my paycheck."
He pointed the gun at me, and this time I knew he would pull the trigger.
"Don't worry," he said almost gently. "I'll make it quick. You won't suffer like I did."
I closed my eyes and waited for the gunshot.
Instead, I heard a different sound.
A phone ringing.
Ian cursed and pulled out a cell phone. "What? I told you not to call unless—"
His face went white as he listened.
"That's impossible," he whispered. "You said she was dead."
He hung up and stared at me with new fear in his eyes.
"Who was that?" I asked.
"My handler. There's been a... complication."
"What kind of complication?"
Ian's gun hand started shaking. "Your mother isn't dead like everyone thought."
My heart stopped. "What?"
"She's alive. She's been alive this whole time. And Iris?" His voice cracked. "She's coming for us both."
Before I could ask what he meant, the church windows exploded inward.
A woman dropped through the broken glass like a dark angel.
She had my eyes and Ian's nose.
She was pointing a gun at both of us.
"Hello, children," she said softly. "Did you miss me?"