I Have Five Kick-Ass Brothers – Episode 16
Theo abandoned the restaurant before Coco could follow. He drove toward the construction site with the alarm still echoing in his ears, every red light an unbearable delay. Years ago Raina had entered danger to save him; now she was trapped in another fire because someone wanted their shared past buried.
At the site, flames climbed through the canvas awning and black smoke rolled over the lot. Workers formed a desperate line with extinguishers while Joshua fought to enter the burning storage trailer. Noah held him back only because the doorway had collapsed.
“Raina!” Theo shouted. No answer came from inside. He stripped off his jacket and moved toward the smoke, but Noah caught his shoulder. The eldest Lincoln’s control finally broke. “You are already injured. I am not losing both of you.”
A crash sounded behind the stand. Raina appeared through a side opening, coughing hard and clutching the cash box against her chest. Joshua reached her first, lifting her away from falling debris as Theo crossed the final distance.
Relief weakened Theo’s knees. He checked her face and hands for burns while Raina insisted she was fine. Only when she saw the terror in his eyes did she stop protesting. “I found another exit,” she said. “I remembered what smoke does to a room.”
The old accident had guided her. She had crawled low, covered her mouth, and followed the air toward an opening—the same instructions she once gave a frightened boy. The recovered memory carried its own proof, but survival mattered more than certainty.
Firefighters contained the blaze before it reached the surrounding equipment. Their preliminary inspection found accelerant near the rear of the trailer. This was not an electrical failure or a cooking mishap. Someone had deliberately destroyed the business Raina built.
Coco arrived moments later, claiming she had followed Theo out of concern. Her timing drew every suspicious gaze. She performed shock at the blackened stall, but her eyes moved first to the cash box in Raina’s arms, as if checking whether something inside had survived.
Raina noticed. She opened the box and found the money intact, along with a folder of supplier receipts. One receipt had been added without her knowledge: a purchase for industrial solvent, charged under the stand’s name that morning.
“This makes it look like we bought the accelerant,” Noah said. The planted record could turn arson into negligence and leave Raina responsible for endangering the construction site. Whoever planned the fire wanted more than destruction; they wanted blame.
A city inspector arrived with surprising speed. He reviewed the receipt, photographed the damage, and ordered the stand closed pending investigation. Raina watched a red notice attached to the remains of her sign. In one night, the work that made her feel useful became evidence against her.
Coco folded her arms. “Maybe street businesses are more complicated than playing poor,” she remarked. Theo turned on her with such fury that she stepped back. He asked how she knew the inspector was considering negligence before anyone had announced it.
She claimed it was obvious and accused him of twisting everything she said. The inspector interrupted, insisting Raina appear for questioning the next morning. If she could not explain the solvent purchase, fines and criminal charges were possible.
Mrs. Lincoln wrapped a blanket around her daughter. “We can replace a stand,” she said. “We cannot replace you.” Raina heard the sincerity but also an odd certainty about money. Her supposedly struggling mother did not sound frightened by ruin.
Noah promised to hire the best attorney in Brookfield, then corrected himself when Raina stared. “A friend owes me a favor,” he added. Another crack appeared in the family’s story, joining Henry’s familiar face and Joshua’s unexplained authority.
Raina was too exhausted to challenge them. She turned to Theo and asked whether Coco had remained at the restaurant when the call came. He remembered the alarm beginning moments before Noah reached him. The coordinated emergencies had forced witnesses apart.
Theo’s assistant checked traffic cameras. A vehicle registered to a Smith household employee had visited both the clinic archive and the construction site. The driver could connect the missing record, the threat, and the arson.
Before they could locate him, the employee’s car was found abandoned near the river. His phone remained on the seat, wiped clean. Someone with resources was cleaning the trail faster than Theo and the Lincolns could follow it.
Raina looked at the ashes of her stand, grief hardening into resolve. “They expect me to disappear when they take something from me,” she said. “It did not work with the Smith name, and it will not work now.”
The inspector returned from his vehicle carrying handcuffs. He announced that a worker had been hospitalized after inhaling smoke and the planted receipt was sufficient for detention. As he approached Raina, five brothers stepped between them—and Noah reached for the phone that could expose the Lincoln family’s true power.
