My Loser Daddy is a Big Shot novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Terms

Cavan is evicted on the sidewalk, refuses Ingrid's money, and in the laundromat basement reads the newest tip from the insider Lantern before deciding to marry her.

At seven the next morning, Cavan's mattress was on the sidewalk.

The landlord stood over it with a clipboard and a coffee.

"Four months behind, Keegan," he said. "I told you Friday."

"You told me Friday I had until Friday."

"Then it's Friday in my head."

Upstairs, a dryer thumped in the laundromat and made the whole building hum.

Posy sat on the curb in her school uniform with a fishbowl in her lap.

In the bowl, a goldfish turned slow circles and looked insulted.

"Daddy, he can't live on the street," Posy said. "He doesn't have a coat."

"He's not going to live on the street."

"Where's he going to live?"

Cavan did not have an answer for that.

A black sedan pulled up behind the landlord, and the back door opened.

Ingrid Sandvik stepped out in a grey suit, with her hair in a twist so tight it looked like a decision.

She looked at the mattress, the clipboard and the fishbowl.

"Four months," she said to the landlord. "How much?"

The landlord looked her up and down. "Nine thousand six hundred."

"Send the account to my assistant."

She handed him a card without looking at him.

He read it, and the coffee started to shake in his hand.

"Ms. Sandvik," he said. "Of Sandvik Freight."

"Put the mattress back."

He did, with two neighbors helping and nobody meeting her eyes.

Cavan stood on the sidewalk with his arms crossed.

"I didn't ask you to do that," he said.

"No. You asked for nothing, which is why I'm doing it."

She drew a folded contract out of her bag.

"One year," she said. "You live in my penthouse with your daughter. We marry on Thursday."

"After the trust transfers, we divorce quietly, and you leave with three million dollars."

Posy put her fishbowl down very carefully.

"Three million is a lot," she whispered. "Is that more than a hundred?"

"It's thirty thousand hundreds," Ingrid said.

Cavan took the contract and read the first page.

Then he folded it again and handed it back.

"No money," he said.

Ingrid frowned. "I'm sorry?"

"I'll marry you. I'll sign anything that keeps your uncle off your neck. I won't take a cent."

"Everybody takes the money."

"Not me."

"Why?"

He looked at the fishbowl, then at his daughter's backpack with the broken zipper.

"Because then it's a job," he said. "And I'd rather it were a favor."

Ingrid studied him for a long moment.

"That's the worst business decision I've ever seen," she said.

"I have two conditions."

"Name them."

"Nobody touches Posy, and nobody lies to her about what this is. She hears the truth in words she can handle."

"Agreed."

"And the fish comes with us."

Ingrid looked at the goldfish.

The goldfish looked back.

"I have a marble kitchen," she said. "He may have the island."

Posy launched herself at Ingrid's legs.

"You're going to be my stepmom," she announced. "But a fake one, so you don't have to be nice."

"I'll be nice anyway," Ingrid said, and for the first time since the night before, she smiled.

At four that afternoon, Cavan sent Posy upstairs with a neighbor and went down to the laundromat's basement.

The door behind the third dryer looked like a wall.

He pressed the corner, and it opened onto concrete steps and a low blue light.

Eugene Greer sat at a long steel table with three monitors and a radio headset around his neck.

"Warden," Eugene said. "You look like hell."

"I've been evicted."

"I heard. You also got jumped by two security men with a knife and then got engaged, according to the camera on the bakery."

"I'm not engaged. I'm getting married."

Eugene took the headset off slowly.

"To whom?"

"Ingrid Sandvik."

"Sandvik Freight," Eugene said. "The Sandvik Freight we've been building a case on for two years."

"The same."

Eugene turned one of the screens around.

It showed a spreadsheet with a column of container numbers, each one flagged red.

"Lantern sent this at noon," he said.

"Torsten Sandvik is moving twelve containers through the Duluth port on the sixth."

"Same day as the shareholder vote."

"The armor plates?"

"The last of them. Relabeled as boat parts."

Cavan leaned over the table.

For two years, an anonymous source called Lantern had been feeding the Ledger every secret inside Sandvik Freight.

Invoices, emails, shipping logs, a signature.

Cavan had never learned who Lantern was.

Lantern had never asked to meet.

"Somebody inside the company is trying to bring it down," Eugene said.

"And we can't find them. To learn who it is, you'd have to be inside the building."

Cavan looked at the red numbers.

He thought of the men in the alley, the knife on the roof, and the uncle who had sent them.

He thought of a convoy outside Kandahar, and four names on a black wall.

"Then I'm getting married," he said.

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