The Cardinal by M.E. Clayton

Chapter 2

Blake~

Mondays were always the worst.

It always felt like I was being punished for the days people took off. It felt like it was my fault that they dared to enjoy their days off, and when Monday rolled back around, it was my fault they were all behind on shit.

It was bullshit.

Now, that’s not to say people shouldn’t take days off from work or enjoy their time off because we all needed that break, but you didn’t have to be an asshole about it come Monday. And if you didn’t want to work on your days off, you should have chosen a less-demanding career. Don’t go into pharmaceutical sales, for Pete’s sake. As one of the largest medical distributors around, Sil-Med was an everyday operation. Those weekends off were just an illusion.

Luckily, my only role at Sil-Med was that of their front-office receptionist. I wasn’t important enough to have to contemplate working my weekends off. For the most part, my job was easy, and I enjoyed it.

Except on Mondays.

Everyone was such an asshole on Mondays. The top salesmen and bosses barked out orders and demands as if I was the sole cause of Saturdays and Sundays. A few of the salesmen even acted like I was their personal secretary sometimes. However, that was something I would always quickly clear up. I was the receptionist for this location and that was it. And there was a big difference between being receptionist, a secretary, and an assistant.

I was a receptionist.

Period.

Though, most days, I really did my best not to complain. The job was a decent one with good pay and affordable benefits. I’d been working for Sid-Med for over three years now and every year came with a raise and every Christmas came with a bonus. This job afforded me my own apartment in a decent neighborhood, though I still felt the need to lock my doors tight at night. Decent did not equal nice. It just meant there weren’t heroin needles littering the sidewalks. It didn’t mean there wasn’t any crime to be concerned about.

However, given the choice of moving into a nice place that I couldn’t afford and having to pepper spray an asshole, I’d rather pepper spray someone than be so broke that I couldn’t enjoy my life a little. I wasn’t a big spender, but I appreciated being able to go out and have drinks with my friends if I wanted and not be worried about the electricity bill at the same time.

My life left little for complaints, except for one thing.

My sister, Caitlin.

Caitlin was my older sister by three years. She was thirty while I was twenty-seven. Raised by a single mother, Naomi Turner had done her best to raise us right. Mom was a hairdresser and with an unsteady income-as with most beauticians-things had been hard growing up. We’d never been homeless or starving, but Mom had sought out government assistance a time or two when we were younger.

Our father, Alvin Turner, had bowed out of the family life when I was three and the bastard never looked back. Oh, sure, Mom had done everything she had been told to do, but how did a single mother collect child support from a man who refused to work?

The answer was simple; she didn’t.

Left to our own devices, we’d grown up as a team. When we’d been old enough, Caitlin and I had gotten afterschool jobs and had helped out as much as we could. It wasn’t until I was a senior in high school that Mom had met Charles Logan and things had started looking up for her. Ten years later, Charles and Mom were married and living a nice, quiet, unassuming life together. Mom was still a hairdresser while Charles was a pharmacy technician.

The only sore spot in our lives was Caitlin. Somewhere between graduating from high school and last year, she’d taken a wrong turn in life and had gotten into some pretty sketchy shit. Though I did my best to shield Mom from the truth of what Caitlin’s been up to, there was no guarantee she wouldn’t find out eventually. Caitlin’s called me several times from jail and there was always this underlying fear that she was going to call me for something unfixable one day. Or worse, that she might not ever call me again. My sister was in the worst way and she wasn’t ready to listen to reason. And I was still picking up the phone because I wasn’t ready to give up on her just yet.

Growing up, we’d been so close with just the three of us. Even though Caitlin was three years older than me, she had never treated me like a pesky little sister. She had always made time for me and she had been the one I always ran to with my teenage drama.

I also loved how we all looked alike. Caitlin and I had taken after Mom. One look at us and you knew we were all related. With ash-blonde hair, blue eyes, and Caitlin and Mom only being one inch taller than me, we were like matching triplets. The only difference was that I was five-foot-four and a lot curvier than my sister or mother. Mom used to say I got my figure from my father’s side of the family, but since he was such a loser, we had no contact with his side of the family, so the origins of my figure were all speculation.

Caitlin used to call me Cocoa because she said my body only belonged on those beautiful, curvy Black women who knew how to rock the big boobs, tiny waist, and wide hips. When I would point out that a lot of different women were curvy, Caitlin would always mention how there were probably receipts for those curves.

Me? I thought all women were beautiful, no matter what. I was raised by a woman whose job was beauty and she had taught me that every woman had something that was uniquely hers and that’s what made us all beautiful in our own right.

Last year, I had been met with the surprise of my life when I had gone to check on Caitlin one day and had found her with newfound curves after the way she used to always dismiss plastic surgery. I’d hadn’t seen her in over two months, and I had stopped by-announced-and when she had opened the door to her rack-shambled apartment, I had been shocked to see her new body. Especially, imagining how much it must have cost her.

Where my D-cups were natural, Caitlin had bought herself some E-cups and they looked out of sync with her petite five-foot-five frame. She had gotten some butt fillers and hip fillers, too, and it had all looked a bit cartoonish for her build. Of course, I hadn’t told her that. I had fawned over her new figure, didn’t ask how she could afford it, and pretended like everything was normal.

Then I found out the how and why behind the new body.

Caitlin had become a stripper.

However, it hadn’t been the stripping I had an issue with. I didn’t fault anyone for how they made a living. As long as they weren’t robbing little old ladies for their Bingo money, people had to hustle sometimes, and I understood that. And, hell, if you had the body to bring in hundreds, go for it. I wasn’t in a place to judge how people paid their bills. I watched my mother struggling too many times in my lifetime to judge how someone paid their rent.

No.

The problem wasn’t that Caitlin had become a stripper. It was that she had become a stripper with a drug problem and that was always a bad combination.

Never mind that she was my sister and I hated seeing her walking down such an ugly, lonely path, but I always had a soft spot for addicts. Not as if they were victims because our choices were our own, but whenever I came across an addict, I always wondered what happened to them that made them turn to drugs? Oh, I knew there wasn’t always a tragic beginning to becoming addicted to drugs, but sometimes, every now and again, those beginnings were tragic, and I’d always found that idea sad.

And now my sister was one of those people, though I have no idea what had led her down that path. Sure, we’d had some challenges growing up but nothing that warranted turning to drugs. The only thing I could conclude was that the influences in her life after she had moved out of our house had been stronger than the need to make good choices.

At any rate, Caitlin was my sister and I loved her, and I had no plans on ditching her, no matter how dark things might get. And I wasn’t stupid. I knew things could get darker because they were already pretty dark, but loyalty mattered. At least, between family it should.

And, no, I wasn’t in the position to run in and save the day and ship her off to the best rehab in the country, but I could answer my phone.

That’s the one thing I could do.

“I need to see Mr. Davidson, now,” barked a voice, and when I looked up, I plastered another fake smile on my face. “I’m Linden Archibald.

Of course, he was.

Ah, Mondays.