Savior (25 page)

She turned back toward me, the anger draining from her face as she gave me what I would consider an apologetic smile. "Else..." she said in the old, familiar way she used to. But it was coming from the lips of a stranger.

True, I was glad she was alive.

But she was
alive
and she wasn't in a too-drugged-out state to pick up a phone and
tell
me she was alive. She was walking, talking, and ordering around gang members while still in town, while easily able to reach out and let me know she was okay.

So I
was
glad she was alive, I was also almost unreasonably pissed.

"Do you have
any
idea how worried I've been about you? You just up and disappear with no note, no call, no nothing, leaving your bird to starve in his cage and having me hire private investigators and get chased down the road by thugs!" I shrieked, only stopping when I realized one of said thugs was still standing beside me.

"Okay," Elana said, holding out her arms wide in a welcoming gesture. "Come on, let's go talk in the office..." she suggested.

But then the door opened, the sound making me cringe and my head snap over to see who was coming in. I relaxed slightly when I saw it was just D and two other guys carrying big cardboard boxes. They piled them on a table behind Elana as she slowly moved toward me, head tilted, like something about me was confusing her.

My attention went back to D as he reached inside the box and pulled out a plastic wrapped pile of smaller white and green boxes. I felt my stomach muscles clench.
SinuEase
was written clearly across the front. And I knew that name. I knew that name. And I knew that it was produced by Matthewson Pharmaceuticals. Matthewson. As in Rhett and Roman Matthewson. As in my best friend and his father.

My entire body went rigid, fire flooding my veins.

"You bitch!" I screamed as she got close enough, slamming my cut open wrists into her shoulders.

She stumbled back a step as I hissed in pain. Elana seemed more intrigued than angry. "Did you just call me a bitch?" she asked, almost sounding amused.

Alright, so we were sisters. And, well, we'd thrown the b-word around a few times when we got into fights over the years, but mainly in our adolescence when we were too immature to remember to filter ourselves.

"You stole from Roman!"

"Calm down, Else. It's not like I'm hurting his bottom line. They're insured to the hilt. They won't even miss this stuff."

"They're missing it. They're missing it and suffering a PR nightmare because of it. That stuff is heavily regulated because people use it to make..." I trailed off, my head snapping to our sides where all the people were pretending to not listen while they worked.

And what they were working on?

Yeah, they were cooking meth.

Meth.

That was why cold medicine was regulated and watched so closely, because it was the main ingredient in making meth.

"Are you fucking serious?" I asked, my voice low, as I looked back at my sister.

"Else..." she tried in her big-sister soothing voice.

"Don't
Else
me. You're working with a street gang and stealing from a mutual friend so you can cook meth? You have a trust fund! You don't need to..."

"Office," she barked at Trick who reached for my arm, holding it tight, and pulling me back toward the office. I struggled at first, but there was no use. By the time he pushed me inside and Elana followed in, I had stopped trying to get away. Trick left, closing the door behind him and Elana leaned against it, crossing her arms.

She watched me for a long minute. "I needed to get out."

"Out?" I repeated.

"Yeah, out. I was so over all of it."

"All of what, El?"

"Everything. Dad, the money, the cocky rich guys, the job I hated, the house that came with strings, all of it. That entire life."

"You could have just... walked away at any time, Elana. No one was forcing you to live in that house or drive that car or work that job or date those pricks. Those were choices you made."

"Choices," she laughed, shaking her head. "God, are you still that naive?"

"I'm not naive," I bristled. Sometimes, not often, but sometimes, I saw a bit of our father in her. It was in the condescension in her tone, in the way she made little, expertly placed jabs, knowing just where to poke to cause the most damage. In spending her life rebelling against him, she couldn't see that she had inherited some of his worst traits.

"Do you really think you have any independence? Why aren't you living in that small, unpretentious townhouse you really wanted? Why are you working in energy? Why do you still go to that ridiculous family dinner every Sunday?"

She had good points, she really did.

"I don't go to dinner anymore. Dad and I had a blowup. About you actually."

"About me?" she asked, and I could hear the neediness in her voice and wondered if she heard it herself. She wanted, she
needed
to know what our father thought or said about her.

"Yeah because I was mad that he wasn't looking for you and he called it a non-issue," I said and my voice was a little bitter as I dropped the last part, knowing it would hurt her.

Her lips tipped up but there was a deadness in her eyes at my words. "What did he have to say about the trust?"

"That you probably just emptied it and took off with some guy."

"He always had such a high opinion of me."

"Yeah and way to lower yourself to his expectations."

"Ouch, sis," she said, shaking her head. "You've never been so nasty before."

"Well I never had a drug dealing selfish brat for a sister before either. What is this? You want to stick it to Dad by what? Creating a criminal empire?"

"Could you imagine the look on his face when he found out?" she asked, smiling at the idea. "He would blow a gasket."

"Seriously? This is all because you want to piss off your father?"

"This is all because I'd never get free of him if I didn't make my own life! All the dinner parties and the charity events and the way he kept trying to make me get together with his business partners and..."

"Oh, please," I groaned, rolling my eyes. "He had no plans on trying to force you to marry anyone."

"Seriously?" she asked, laughing a little cruelly. "You really think he sees us as anything other than chess pieces he can manipulate across a board until he gets a checkmate. Grow up, Elsie."

"He never tried to set me up with anyone."

"He never
had
to!"

"What are you talking about?"

"Come on, there's naive and then there's plain dumb," she snapped and before I could open my mouth to object, she went on. "He didn't need to set you up with anyone because you already did that for yourself."

"I never seriously dated anyone he approved of."

"No, you didn't," she said with a smile. "But you were
awfully
cozy with Roman Matthewson weren't you?"

"Dad never wanted me hanging around with Rome!"

To that, I got another eye roll. "Reverse psychology, much? Dad's a pro at that stuff, Else. He knew that the more he objected, the more you would rebel and get close to him. He's been waiting about a decade for Rome to get his head out of his ass and make a move already."

I felt my stomach twist at that as well as the likely truth behind it.

"Too late now," I heard myself mumble.

"Too late?" she prompted and for a second, all she was was my sister.

"I'm seeing someone. Roman knows and he wasn't happy. He's giving up on me. At least in that way," I admitted, taking a deep breath, the pain of hurting the person I cared about probably the most causing a sympathetic agony inside me.

"Stock broker? Lawyer?" she was teasing me, but there was a hint of malice there too. I
had
dated mostly professionals in the past. It was what I knew. It was what was familiar. I never thought there was anything wrong or close-minded or ridiculous about it.

"Tattoo artist," I corrected with a chin lift.

"Look at you, still doing your little rebellions," she mocked.

"Oh for God's sake. Not everything is about Dad. I met a man. We hit it off. Dad was never a factor."

"He's always a factor. Every time I went on vacation, he had something to say. Every time I went to a charity event with a man he didn't like, he made his feelings known. Every time I went to buy a new car, he had to bitch about the one I chose..."

And that was about all I could take of her woe-is-me-ing.

"Oh,
poor little rich girl,
" I hissed. "I feel so bad for you that you got some flack when you bought a car worth six figures and you got some lip about it. And it must really
suck
to travel the world and go to swanky charity balls and date handsome, successful men. I feel so bad for you."

"Don't you dare go..."

"No. Don't you dare go trying to convince me that this little stunt of yours is anything other than the actions of a privileged, entitled, spoiled little girl. You wanted to stick it to Dad and be free... you'd have left every cent of that trust, let the bank have your house, the dealer have your car, and you'd take off to some new city and bust your ass building a new career and a new life free of him. That is how you stick it to him. This," I said, waving out one of my damaged hands, the blood crusty and filled with dirt, "this is just a little girl begging for Daddy's attention."

"I never wanted his..."

"You
always
wanted his attention. You wanted his attention and approval and it ate at you that you never got it. So what did you do? You looked for that attention and approval in the revolving door of men in and out of your life."

"Shut up!" she yelled, advancing toward me. It should have been scary and maybe, in a small part of my brain, it was. But while she might have been some criminal and drug dealer and God-knew what else, she was also my sister. It was hard to be truly terrified of someone you once watched throw up two bushels-worth of cotton candy when she got off a roller coaster and sing into her hairbrush while belting out Beyonce. There was just no way I was going to shrink away from the person I had shared my entire childhood and adolescence with.

"What are you going to do if I don't?" I challenged. "Hit me? Send D in here to rape and kill me like he was hoping you would let him do?"

She froze mid-stride, jerking backward like my words landed with impact. Her pretty features twisted up in a mix of shock and disgust. "Jesus... no," she said, her voice small. "God. Do you really think I'd let him do that to you?"

"Well I never thought you'd become a thief or drug dealer either," I said with a shrug.

"There's a big difference between what I choose to do with my professional life and what I do with my personal life."

I fought a snort I felt building when she said 'professional life'. "What personal life, El? You left me. You left all of us, let us worry sick about you, create God-awful worst-case scenarios in our heads."

"I was going to call and explain..."

"When? When we could legally declare you dead and bury an empty casket? When El? Because it's been weeks."

"I've been a little busy, Else!" she yelled, swinging away from me. "Do you have any idea what it took to do what I did?"

Still seeing no real way of getting out of my situation, I figured gathering more information was at least productive. "Do what?" I asked, sounding only mildly interested.

She took the bait. Of course she did.

"Do you have any idea how un-trusting a street gang is? How violent? And not to mention, unwilling to take orders from a woman. Luckily for me, they've been having some issues locking down a reliable heroin supplier. It was making the dealers antsy, worried about their income. It was easy to get some of the small timers with the promise of a truckload of cold medicine to make meth and create a new, steady source of money. Once I got them, got them working, got them some cash in their pockets... fake at first, just money from my trust because I didn't have any product on the streets yet like I told them I did, they started talking to the more important guys. They got on board. Then pretty soon, I had everyone but Enzo on my side."

"Enzo?" I repeated, my voice a little breathless. Because I found I was worried about him. Because no matter how Paine tried to play down the bond between them, I knew it would crush him if anything happened to his half-brother.

She rolled her eyes and waved a hand. "Former Third Street leader."

"Former?" I asked, feeling every muscle in my body tense.

God.

Could she have had him killed?

Was she really capable of that kind of awfulness?

"Yeah. I mean what kind of shot-caller lets someone sneak up under him and steal his business like that?"

"Shot caller?" I repeated.

Her lips tipped up a little. "I always knew my obsession with
Gangland
would come in handy one day," she mused and I almost smiled, almost. Because I remembered her talking my ear off about all the biker gangs and street gangs and stuff she used to watch on that show. I guess she wasn't watching it for the dark, gritty entertainment way it was intended, but as an educational device. "Anyway. He's out of the way now and I have this whole operation under my control."

"You like the power," I said, shaking my head a little.

"Everyone likes power. Everyone."

"That's not true," I objected. I liked control over my life, but I didn't want power. I didn't strive to claw my way up the corporate ladder and get a corner office position. I was happy being in the middle. I worked hard; I made a good living. I didn't need more than that.

"Oh please. You wouldn't have busted your ass as hard as you did in school and college if you didn't want a position of power in your future."

"I busted my ass in school because it was Mom's dying wish that I never be dependent on a man. I did it to have a comfortable, independent life. I didn't do it so I could harp on endlessly about how many people I have power over."