My Sister Is the Warlord Queen novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: One Call

Roisin is locked out of Thayer's building, Cal brings her purse and notices how Shea watches the exits, and Shea has every Ellery escort pulled; at 2 a.m. Thayer claims the bakery.

"Take care of it," I said. "Those were his words?"

Roisin nodded.

"Then he kissed my forehead and went to get his hair cut."

I pulled away from the curb before I did something to the Bentley.

"Where are we going?" she asked.

"Your place. You need clothes, and you need to sleep."

"It's his place," she said. "It was always his place."

Thayer's building was glass and steel on the Seaport waterfront, twenty-two floors of it.

The doorman saw Roisin coming through the revolving door and stepped out from behind his desk.

He didn't look at her face.

"Miss Keane," he said. "I'm sorry. I've been told you're not a resident anymore."

"I live on nineteen," Roisin said.

"Not as of seven o'clock."

He nodded toward the corner of the lobby.

Six black garbage bags sat by the mail room, knotted at the top.

One had split.

A sleeve of Roisin's blue cardigan hung out of it.

Her baking books were stacked on the floor beside them, and her grandmother's rolling pin lay on top.

Roisin walked over and picked up the rolling pin.

She held it in both hands and didn't say anything.

"Who told you?" I asked the doorman.

"Mr. Ellery's office called down." He swallowed. "Mrs. Ellery's office, actually."

"The stepmother."

"Yes, ma'am."

"Did the stepmother pack these herself?"

"Two men from a moving company."

"Did they take her laptop?"

He looked at the floor.

"Her laptop is still upstairs, ma'am. I was told it's company property."

"She bought it at Best Buy with her own card. I was there."

The doorman looked like he'd rather be anywhere else, which made two of us.

I picked up the first bag.

Behind me the revolving door turned, and cold air came in off the harbor.

"She'll want this too."

It was the bearded man from the gate.

He held out a small silver purse and a phone in a pink case.

Roisin took them and stared at the phone.

"I left them on the table," she said. "By the cake."

"I know. Carina was going to put the phone in the ice bucket. For the video."

He said it flat.

"I'm Cal," he said to me. "Thayer's brother. The disappointing one."

"Shea."

"I know. The janitor." He looked at the bags. "You need a hand?"

"No."

"You've got six bags and two arms."

"I've carried worse."

"I believe it," he said. "You came in that door and looked at both exits and the elevator before you looked at your sister."

I stopped with the bag in my hand.

"Habit," I said.

"Funny habit for a janitor."

"Janitors need to know where the doors are. People leave messes in front of them."

He almost smiled.

It changed his whole face.

Then he picked up two bags without asking and walked them out to my truck.

He loaded them in the bed like a man who'd loaded boats.

I loaded the rest.

Roisin sat in the passenger seat holding the rolling pin.

Cal stood at her window.

"For what it's worth," he said to her, "you were too good for him the first day."

"Then why didn't you say anything?" she asked.

He thought about it.

"Because nobody in that house listens to me," he said. "I should have said it anyway."

He tapped the roof twice and walked off toward the water.

I watched him go longer than I meant to.

"Shea," Roisin said. "Don't."

"Don't what?"

"You have the face you get when you're about to take something apart."

"That was for his brother," I said, and pulled out.

Roisin's bakery was on Dorchester Avenue, four blocks from the three-decker where we grew up.

KEANE'S, in gold letters on the glass.

She'd opened it at twenty-three with a loan I co-signed from a ship off Yemen.

The two rooms upstairs still had her old couch and her old quilt.

I put her to bed in her party dress because she wouldn't take it off.

"He picked it out," she said into the pillow. "He said blue made me look like I belonged."

"You do belong," I said. "Just not to him."

She was asleep before I turned off the lamp.

I went down to the bakery kitchen.

It smelled like yeast and cold butter.

I sat on a flour sack under the one bulb and took out the phone I don't use for family.

My second answered on the first ring, the way he always does.

"Commander. Congratulations on the broker."

"I need something else tonight."

"Go ahead."

"Ellery Marine," I said. "Which of their ships are under our escort right now?"

I heard him typing.

"Three in the Gulf of Aden. Two more staged at Djibouti. Contract renews in March."

"Pull our teams off every one of them."

He didn't ask why.

He's been with me eight years, and he's never asked why.

"Effective when?"

"Tonight."

"Their insurers will see it by morning."

"I know."

"What do I tell Ellery's office?"

"Tell them the Warlord Queen doesn't like how they treat family."

He was quiet a second.

"Yes, Commander."

I hung up and sat there in the dark until my hands were steady.

At two in the morning Roisin's pink phone lit up on the steel table, where I'd left it charging.

A text from Thayer.

"The lease on your bakery is guaranteed by my company. As of tomorrow it's mine. Be out by noon."

Then a second one.

"Bring the janitor. I've got a mop for her."

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