I Have Five Kick-Ass Brothers – Episode 10
Coco returned to the Smith mansion with fury barely contained beneath her designer coat. The encounter at the food stand replayed like an insult: Raina surrounded by protective brothers, Mrs. Lincoln daring to reject her, and Theo looking at Raina with dawning recognition. By the time she reached the living room, fear had disguised itself as rage.
Mrs. Smith rose from the sofa, immediately concerned. “What happened? Who upset you?” Her instinctive tenderness should have reassured Coco, but Coco had begun treating affection as valuable only when it came with unquestioned obedience.
“This is your fault,” she snapped. Mrs. Smith recoiled. Coco accused her of introducing Asher, as though a family acquaintance had forced her to bring him where Theo might see them together. “Now Theo barely speaks to me, and everyone expects me to fix it.”
Mrs. Smith tried to explain that she had only wanted Coco to meet people within Brookfield society. She had no idea the young woman would measure every relationship by what it could provide. “If Theo cares for you, a misunderstanding about Asher can be resolved,” she said gently.
The reassurance did nothing. Theo’s coldness had begun before Asher appeared, and Coco knew why. His attention had followed Raina, the one person who could expose the stolen story on which Coco’s future depended.
As she paced, an old photograph album on the side table caught her eye. Mrs. Smith had been sorting family keepsakes, deciding which belonged to Raina and which should remain in the mansion. Coco seized the album and began turning pages with growing resentment.
There was Raina at school, Raina on birthdays, Raina smiling between the parents Coco now claimed. Each photograph documented a life Coco believed had been stolen from her. She flipped faster until a loose picture slipped free and landed faceup on the carpet.
The image showed a teenage Raina in a hospital bed. Her face was pale, but she was smiling as if trying to comfort whoever stood behind the camera. A bandage covered part of one arm, and beneath it ran the edge of a long, angry scar.
Coco picked up the photograph with suddenly numb fingers. Theo’s story returned to her: an accident, an injured girl, a debt he had carried for years. If Raina had been hospitalized after saving him, the scar could connect them more clearly than any surname.
“Mom,” she asked, struggling to keep her voice casual. “Why does Raina have this scar?” Mrs. Smith leaned closer, her expression clouding with an old worry.
“That was taken after she spent several days in the hospital,” Mrs. Smith said. “She never told me exactly how the injury happened. She only said someone else would have been hurt if she hadn’t stepped in.” The forgotten detail landed like a threat.
Mrs. Smith reached for the photograph, murmuring that perhaps it should be packed with Raina’s belongings. “No,” Coco said too sharply. When her mother looked surprised, she forced a smile. “Keep everything together. She might come back asking for it someday.”
“That’s thoughtful of you,” Mrs. Smith said, unaware that Coco’s pulse was racing. Coco slid the photograph back into the album while calculating how quickly she could make it disappear. If Theo saw that scar, his doubts might become certainty.
Across the city, Theo stood at the windows of his office while Brookfield glowed below. Two hours had felt longer than the years he had spent searching. When his assistant finally entered carrying a thick folder, Theo turned before the man reached the desk.
The report confirmed the daughters had been switched at birth. Raina had lived as Raina Smith throughout childhood; Coco had grown up with the Lincolns. Only the recent DNA test had reversed their names and households. The investigators who identified Coco had followed blood instead of the actual girl present at the accident. Theo felt a flash of anger at the error, then recognized that his own eagerness had allowed it to go unchallenged.
“This proves Raina was the Smith daughter then,” Theo said. His assistant agreed but cautioned that it did not prove she was the child who saved him. A shared household and matching age made the conclusion likely, not absolute.
Theo turned another page and stopped. A hospital photograph had been recovered from archived records. Teenage Raina faced the camera with one arm partly exposed, and across that arm ran a scar whose shape Theo recognized before conscious thought caught up.
He rolled up his sleeve. His own faded mark followed almost the same line, a permanent reminder of the accident. In memory, the brave girl had been cut while shielding him, their arms caught against the same jagged edge before she pulled them both free.
Sound and smoke rushed back with terrible clarity. He remembered blood on her sleeve, the pressure of her hand, and her insistence that he stay awake. The face remained blurred by pain, but the eyes belonged to Raina. The scar completed what her character and history had already told him.
“It still isn’t absolute proof,” his assistant warned. Theo closed the file, certainty settling over him. “It is enough to know where the truth begins,” he said. At that same moment, Coco clutched the original photograph and planned to destroy it—unaware that Theo had already found the matching scar and was coming for Raina.