They find a name in the Radley files: Charles DiLaurentis.
Alison was the one to find it, opened the file and read the name staring back up at her and frozen, staring down at the paper in her hands with a look of horror on her face, until Spencer had appeared at her elbow and asked what was wrong.
Alison hadn't been able to answer – she'd just thrust the file towards her, and Spencer had gasped and gaped at the name before taking it from Alison's hands, her eyes scanning across the page, and Alison had felt sick to her stomach that something like this could have been kept from her, something so huge could have been kept secret, and she'd found herself at the window of her attic staring at the backyard below and wondering how many more bombshells her Mom could drop on her, even though she was long gone.
She'd ignored the whispers of the girls behind her until Emily had appeared at her side, running a hand across her back and she'd allowed herself a moment of weakness, turning to her and letting the brunette's arms wrap around her, but it couldn't comfort her, not when she felt like her whole life had been tipped on its head.
The next day she'd taken the file to her Dad, slammed it down on the table in-front of him while he was eating, and he'd looked up at her, angry as she sent his mug of coffee clattering to the floor, the ceramic smashing against the kitchen tile, until he'd seen the look on her face, glanced down at the file and when she saw the colour drain from his face she scoffed, because it just confirmed what she'd already known – that he'd lied to her, for her whole life.
Jason had been there, too, because she didn't think it fair that he wasn't included in this – and she was a little relieved to see that he was as shocked as she was, that she hadn't been the only one their parents had kept this from.
Their Dad had sat them down and told them the whole miserable story of the brother neither of them never knew they had (Jason's face had paled as their Dad had talked, and when he'd finished he'd sat, frozen, for a long minute before he'd risen to his feet, angrier than Alison had ever seen him (and she'd seen him angry before, she'd made him angry before), his face red as he'd yelled), and when he was done Alison had had to leave, running out of the door behind her brother, and less than an hour later she sits in Spencer's kitchen and she tells the girls what her Dad had told her.
"I'm so sorry, Ali." Emily's hand has been holding hers the entire time she's been speaking, strong and sure, but Alison barely even feels it, because every part of her has been numb, ever since she found that file, and she'd expected hearing her Dad explain would have made her feel better but instead she just feels about a hundred times worse.
Because she has a brother, a brother she'd never known about. A brother who was locked away and forgotten about because her parents couldn't handle him, and she feels sick to her stomach, can barely imagine what that must have been like for him, doesn't think she'll ever be able to forgive her father for this.
She thinks of the tentative relationship that they've managed to strike up, since she came back, and she knows that it'll never be the same again. She doesn't know how to trust him, and she knows that she hasn't been honest with him, either, with the kidnapping story she'd spun to protect them all, but this? What he's done, what her Mom had done, too, it's… it's sickening, and she doesn't think she'll ever be able to look him in the eye again, doesn't know how to go home and face him in a house that's hidden so many secrets.
"So… do we really think that Ali's brother is the one coming after us? There's a death certificate in this file." Hanna waves it as she speaks, and Alison glances at it and wants to burn it, wants to shred it to pieces and pretend it doesn't exist, wants to go back to yesterday when her world, though off-kilter, ever since she and Emily had split up, was at least still spinning. "It could just be a coincidence, and he was in there but not involved in any of this."
"I don't believe in coincidences," Alison replies quietly. "And that death certificate isn't real," she adds because she's read that file front cover to back last night, until her eyes had started to blur and she couldn't look at it for another second. "My Dad said Charles died of a drug over-dose, but there's a form for organ donation in there."
"You think your Dad's lying to you?" Spencer asks, and Alison hates the sympathy she sees in the brunette's eyes, the gentle note to her voice like Alison's about to break (and she is, she's barely holding herself together but she's not going to break-down in-front of all of them, damn it).
"Well it wouldn't exactly be the first time." Mona's there, too, and at the sound of her voice Alison's eyes narrow into a glare, turning her head towards her, and the brunette just blinks slowly back at her. "What? It isn't."
Alison hadn't wanted her here, hadn't wanted her to know how fucked-up her family truly is (though Alison thinks that Mona knows more than even any of the other girls do – she'd had her dairy for a long time, after all, had no doubt read the entire sorry thing, knows more about Alison than anyone else in the world), but Mona had been helpful, and she knows that, without her, they wouldn't have any of these files in the first place.
That doesn't mean that there isn't a part of Alison that doesn't want to leap across the kitchen counter and wring her neck every time she opens her mouth, though.
"I don't think it was," she says, slowly, thinking back to her Dad's face when he'd told them the story. "I think that's what he believed – or what my Mom let him believe, but whether that's what actually happened…"
"Your Mom did spend an awful lot of time there," Aria points out quietly. "We thought she was with Bethany, but maybe…"
"Maybe she was with Charles, too. Maybe they were friends." Alison thinks of the dead girl in her grave, wonders if maybe she has something to do with the reason why Charles might be after them – though she thinks that maybe he doesn't need more of a reason than the awful way their parents had treated him, like their dirty little secret, to be hidden away and never spoken about. "God, this is so messed up."
She closes her eyes, shakes her head and wills no tears to fall. For so long she'd thought of A as a monster (and they still are, undoubtedly), but to find out that they were probably her flesh and blood? That, in another life, they would have been family instead of enemies? She'd always known that she was at the centre of this whole thing, but she'd had no idea how, and she wishes that she'd never found out.
"This doesn't change anything though, right?" Hanna asks, almost anxiously. "We're still going to take him down?" Alison can feel Hanna's gaze on her, opens her eyes to find all five girls watching her.
"No, it doesn't change anything," she answers quietly, because she'd spent the night lying awake staring at either that damn file or her ceiling, wondering if this made things any different but this is still the same person that has been torturing her and her friends, the same one that had threatened Emily and hit her with a car, the same person that had strangled her in her own home, and just because they share the same blood that doesn't make it okay. "This is still A. And they've still gotta go."
"Not to rain on the parade," Mona cuts in, and Alison has to force herself to keep breathing and to keep her mouth shut, just like every other time Mona's spoken that day. "But like Ali just said – this doesn't change anything. We have a name, but so what? We can't do shit with a name."
"It's more than we knew before," Emily defends, and Alison wishes that she wasn't looking at her with such concern – she doesn't think the brunette's eyes have left her face once, and she finds it hard to breathe with the weight of that stare on her, because it's oh so easy to cast her mind back to yesterday afternoon, to remember the way Emily had felt around her fingers, hot and wet and perfect, and in the wake of everything that's been revealed since, Alison wants nothing more than to take her hand and pull her to her house, up to her bedroom to lock the door, to lose herself in the woman that she loves, and wipe the memories of the past two days from her mind. "That counts for something."
"It doesn't count for a lot." Alison hates that Mona's right, knows that she can do very little to argue with her. "We might know who A is, but we don't know anything else. We don't know why he's after us, we don't know where he's hiding, if he's working with someone else, what he even looks like… And we have no way to find any of that out."
"Maybe not…" Spencer trails off, and Alison turns her head to face the brunette, watches the wheels turning in her mind, an idea sparking in her eyes, and she's glad, for the first time since she'd been cornered in a classroom yesterday afternoon, that she'd included the rest of them in this.
She doesn't know how she would have dealt with this revelation, without them. Doesn't know how she'd have been able to handle finding out about Charles if they hadn't been there, if it had just been her and Mona. Doesn't know she would have ever found the words on her own to tell them about it if they hadn't seen the file, too – if she ever would have been able to admit that her own brother is the one that has caused them so much strife.
"What are you thinking?" Mona asks, excited as her eyes focus on Spencer, and Alison thinks about how dangerous the two of them would have been, working on the A Team together.
"We know that A has a hell of a lot of money, right?" They all nod, because without it there's no way he could be in so many places at once, have the equipment he must need to keep them all in check and to keep hidden and out of sight.
"You think there might be a trail," Mona replies, a smile curving at the edges of her lips as Spencer nods.
"Ali, if your Mom knew that Charles was alive this whole time and kept it from your Dad… it's possible that she might've been funding him somehow. And if we find that money, if we can follow it…"
"Then we might be able to find him," Mona finishes, while the rest of them just look between the two brunettes in awe. "Ali," Mona turns her attention from Spencer to the blonde instead, so elated by their conversation that her usual disdain whenever she's forced to address Alison is noticeably absent. "I know you weren't exactly around, but do you think there's a computer or a laptop at your place where your Mom might have checked her online banking?"
"Uh, my Dad has a computer in his study, but I don't know if my Mom ever used it." She hadn't been there, it's been three years since she last laid eyes on her Mother and yet she's still haunting her, could have ruined her life in more ways than Alison had originally thought, by hiding her brother from her. "If not, there's her office." Alison hasn't ever set foot in it, but she's seen the signs. "Jason has a key, I can get it from him."
"Okay." Mona nods to herself, and Alison can see her mind working, calculating what it is, exactly, that she needs to do, and Alison has to admire her in that moment, despite the way she feels about her. "I'll need access to those computers."
"You're going to hack into my Mom's accounts."
"Well it's not like she's using them." Alison's eyes flash, and Hanna is quick to intervene, sensing the tension between her two friends, not for the first time that evening.
"She's just going to take a look, right Mona?" Hanna asks, throwing Mona a pointed look. "She's not gonna do anything to them."
"Scouts honour," Mona replies sarcastically, and Alison's eyes narrow into a glare but she bites her tongue, because much as she might hate it, she needs Mona's crazy computer skills for this.
"I don't even know if all of her accounts are still open," she says then, because she that had been the farthest thing from her mind when her Mom's body had been dug up in Spencer's backyard.
"Doesn't hurt to check," Spencer murmurs, a glint still in her eye. "Especially if it gets us somewhere."
"And if he's still using her money, Charles probably kept them open," Aria points out, speaking slowly. "And what do you think he'd do if those accounts suddenly… disappeared?"
"I think that would definitely get his attention." Spencer's practically alight with glee, and Alison knows that this is the part where they stray into dangerous territory – they're already pushing it, by rooting around at Radley, and she knows that Charles will have suspected them as the culprit, especially with them spending so much time together lately, and especially with Mona, and she wonders how long it will be before one of them gets a text that tells them to stop looking.
"Do you want to get started now?" She asks Mona, because even though the thought of spending more than a few minutes with the brunette makes her skin crawl, she knows that they need to move fast with this if they're going to keep ahead of the game, if they want to have any hope in hell of bringing Charles down.
"Hell yeah."
x-x-x
The amount of damning evidence Mona finds rooting through her Mom's bank accounts makes Alison's stomach roil.
Thousands of dollars set aside to several mysterious accounts, money raised from those charity fundraisers her Mom had been so fond of throwing and Alison had hated being involved in (she thinks of the winter ball her Dad is throwing, wonders how much of that is him taking over from her Mom, wonders how much of that money will find its way into Charles' pockets).
She looks at the numbers and she feels sick, thinks of the number of things she's been involved in – thinks of her friends parents, and how much money they'd put into these kinds of things and god, had the whole fucking town been funding A's tirade against them?
She stands over Mona's shoulder as she works to make sure she's not up to no good, reads the screen silently and feels her horror grow with every page Mona clicks through, an endless supply of money being moved around, more than Alison can even comprehend, and sure enough, some of it is still moving, some transactions listed after her Mom had been murdered, and even though Alison knows that she should be celebrating that they've actually found something that they can use, she just feels disgusted that her own mother could have kept something like this from her, from all of them, because she's sure that her Dad has no idea about any of this, believes that he thinks that Charles is dead and maybe that's her being naïve but she can recall the haunted look in his eye all too easily.
Mona tells them that whatever she used to get into Jessica's accounts is untraceable, and that Charles will have no idea that they've been snooping into his finances. Alison is hesitant to believe her, but they have no other choice, save calling Caleb to confirm it and Hanna says firmly that she doesn't want him involved in any of this and Alison isn't willing to press her on it because if she could have it her way, Emily would be in the dark, too.
So they pull back and they don't do a thing as they try to formulate a plan of what to do next. Mona is confident she can trace the money and shut Charles down at the source, and Alison is content to let her and Spencer work out the finer details, too emotionally drained to listen to tech talk she doesn't understand as they talk about bringing down her brother once and for all.
She lets Emily comfort her, even though she knows she shouldn't. But it's so easy to fall into her, to lean into her arms and breathe her in and let herself believe that maybe everything will be okay (she doesn't believe that though, not for a second – what they're doing is risky, so, so risky, and Alison isn't confident that they'll all be able to make it out of this in one piece and the thought it terrifying, suffocating, so she lets herself lose herself in Emily Fields for just a little while, tries not to think about anything other than how amazing it feels to be wrapped up in her once again, even if it's only for a little while).
When they go their separate ways later that afternoon, Emily murmurs 'this will all work out' into her ear like it's a promise but Alison knows that it's not one she can keep, and she brushes a gentle kiss to Alison's mouth that she still feels burning her lips even as she's slipping through her front door and praying that, save for Pepe, she'll find the house empty.
She doesn't know where Jason is or if he's even coming back, and her Dad had been thankfully absent when she'd crept back into the house with Mona in tow and doesn't seem to be back now, either, so Alison decides to do what she'd settled on when she'd been watching Mona trawl through their computer and saw her Mom's secrets laid bare, and try to find some more of them.
Her Mom wouldn't have been expecting Alison or her Dad to move back home before she was murdered, so Alison's sure she wouldn't have hidden things as well as she would have if she wasn't living alone. She starts in the study, rifling through drawers and stacks of paper, Pepe curled up in the centre of the room chewing on a bone she'd bought him the other day. She finds more than she ever would have wanted to, notes from fundraisers, cheques made out to some of the accounts Mona had uncovered – she even finds a handwritten letter, her breath catching when she sees the way it's signed (Love, C.D), but she can't force herself to read the words. She wants to burn it, wishes she could burn the memory of Charles from her mind but she can't, so she settles for burying it at the bottom of her pile of evidence with shaking fingers.
She finds a photo, too, hidden away at the bottom of a drawer in a boring-looking folder named 'Bills' that Alison would have never looked inside had she not been checking everywhere, and when she shakes the folder and a single photograph falls out, landing face-up on the floor, she releases a shaky breath.
Because staring up at her are her brother and her Mom, both smiling happily, and beside Jason is another, older boy, with the unmistakable blue eyes of a DiLaurentis, a wide grin on his face as he looks at the camera, and Alison looks at him and wonders how he could have become the monster that has been haunting her for so long.
"Is that him?" She jumps at the sound of a voice, not expecting it – she glares at Pepe for not warning her as her heart hammers loudly in her chest, but he's too busy gnawing at the end of his bone to be paying any attention to what's going on around him, and she sighs as her eyes lift to land on her brother's, who stands in the doorway looking down at the photo with a torn look on his face.
"Yeah, that's him." She bends to pick up the photograph and hands it to Jason, and has to look away when she sees his eyes fill with tears.
"They made me think I was crazy," he murmurs eventually, gripping the photo so hard that his hand shakes, his knuckles flashing white. "That I made him up. Why would they do that? Why would they hide this from us?"
"I don't know," Alison shakes her head, because she wishes they hadn't, maybe it would have changed so much, if things were different – maybe this whole nightmare would have ended with Mona, and she could have come back to a town where her Mom was still alive and she wasn't still forced to look over her shoulder.
"How did you… how did you even find out about him?" Jason's question is a mixture of curiosity and accusation, and Alison's been debating, ever since she'd seen the look of betrayal on his face as their Dad had told them about Charles, how much she should tell him if he asked.
"It's a long story," she warns, because she'd decided to tell him the truth, in-case this affects him, too, because maybe Charles wouldn't be satisfied with meddling with just one of his siblings' lives. "And telling it… I haven't exactly been honest with you, either." She doesn't what to expect from telling him this, how he'll take being lied to again by a member of his family, but she figures it'll do more harm if he finds out from someone else – and if she and the girls get their way, the whole story's going to come out anyway, sooner rather than later.
"Okay," he nods, his gaze turning wary, and Alison's hands wrap around the back of the chair in-front of the desk and she rolls it towards him as she hops onto the edge of the desk.
"You might wanna sit down." She tells him everything, and she starts at the beginning. She starts with the texts she'd gotten from Mona, though she hadn't known that at the time, and she tells him about being buried in the backyard (she looks at her hands when she tells that part, because it's only the second time she's said it aloud and she doesn't want to see the look on his face, because reliving it is hard enough). She admits that she wasn't actually kidnapped (he scoffs when she says that, and throws her a 'well, duh' look, and she wonders if anyone actually believes that story), skims over her two years away but not why she stayed hidden, before she moves on to what the girls have been going through in her absence, how it hadn't stopped with Mona even though they'd told everyone that it had. Finally, she goes through how it was she'd ended up back in town, and how the texts had started up again, and how she'd found Charles name hidden in a file from Radley, and when she's done they sit there in silence for a long while, as she waits from him to process what she's just told him.
"Wow," he breathes, eventually, letting out a low whistle. "Ali, I… I had no idea what you've been through, god, I'm so sorry." She nods, because even though she doesn't need or want his sympathy, she's just relieved that he's not pissed at her for keeping so much from him. "You really… you really think our brother is the one doing this to you?"
"I think so." She doesn't want to think so, wants to believe that, somewhere out there is a brother who wants to come home and be a part of their family again, but she knows in her gut that that's not true, how naïve it is.
"If there's anything you need me to do," he replies, his voice fierce as his eyes meet hers. "Anything, Ali, you tell me, okay? I don't care if he's our brother, if he does anything to hurt you…" He trails off, eyes flashing with something dangerous. "I don't want you to be scared to be here anymore."
She's kind of taken aback by his reaction, and a little floored, because the Jason she used to know wouldn't have responded like this (she wouldn't have been close enough to the old Jason to even tell him any of this in the first place), and her throat feels tight when she sees the sincerity on his face.
"I will," she promises, even though she knows there isn't a single thing that could make her admit she was in trouble if it put him in danger. "Thank you."
