The Cardinal (The Holy Trinity Duet Book 2)

by M. E. Clayton

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 t
hing 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.

  Chapter 3

  Salvatore~

  Helping myself to a drink, I sat my ass on one of the barstools as Leo put his accounting folder together. The strip club I purchased last month was ready to open this week and Leo was doing his thing and getting me all the final numbers for the purchase and renovations.

  The Eagle had been an old joint that had gone into foreclosure because the previous owner had an addiction versus a vice, and with Luca’s permission, I’d been able to swoop in and buy it for a steal. Luca wasn’t a fan of strip clubs, but he had made the exception because a lot of our business associates enjoyed tits and ass while we were shaking hands on deals and it was safer to do it in our own club versus somewhere else.

  The layout had been typical of your standard strip club but what had been impressive was the building itself. For as old as the place was, the bones were good, so the renovations had been easy, inexpensive, and solid. The only things that had to be added were the VIP rooms, the security rooms, and the bulletproof windows. A lot of the upgrades had been cosmetic, but all of it had been state-of-the-art. But then everything Benetti-owned had state-of-the-art design.

  I had also elected to keep the original name of the club. People knew it as The Eagle, and I wanted to keep that familiarity inside the neighborhood. Sure, the neighborhood was crap with thugs and hookers littering the streets, but I wasn’t overly worried about that. Once word got around that The Eagle was owned by the Benettis, trouble would steer clear.

  At lease, for the most part.

  “So, is married life still the best decision you ever made?” I asked before taking a drink of my bourbon.

  Leo looked over at me and grinned. “As a matter of fact, it is,” he replied. “Sienna still gets skittish sometimes, but she’s adjusting faster than I thought she would.”

  “Are you still trying to convince her to quit working?”

  Leo grimaced. “I am, but it’s a slow-go.”

  “Put more guards on her and force the issue,” I suggested. “There’s no way she can come and go freely in her line of work with guards following her every move.”

  “I’ve thought about that,” Leo admitted. “It’s my last resort if she keeps refusing to see reason.”

  I smirked. “How in the hell you and Luca ended up with good girls still blows my mind. At least, Robbie had living poor and running with the bad crowd going for her before Ciro made her marry him, but the two of you end up with good girls.” I shook my head. “Whoever I end up with better be just as sick as I am or else the poor woman is never going to stand a chance.”

  “If there’s a woman out there as sick as you are, then God help us all,” Leo snorted.

  I flipped him off.

  Just then, my phone rang, Luca’s initials flashing across the screen. All our phones were programmed with initials instead of our names because in a court of law LB could be anyone.

  “Hey,” I answered.

  “Alonso Rubio is going to be in town next weekend,” he said, fuck a greeting, but that was just Luca’s way, no time for nonsense. “He wants to renegotiate on the shipment deals.”

  I scoffed. “He’s wasting his time.”

  “I told him as much, but he is still requesting a meeting,” Luca replied. “I had plans to head down to Chestershire that weekend to remind a couple of motherfuckers who we are, so can you take the meeting?”

  I grinned.

  Luca was a ruthless bastard but there were still people who underestimated my brother because of his cool exterior. His wife and Frankie were the only two people on the planet that could pull displays of emotion out of the man. People often mistook that unruffled demeanor as taking Luca for the rational type, but he wasn’t. People thought I was the psychopath of the bunch, but I had nothing on Luca. Just not many people knew that. Luca’s damage was a closely guarded family secret.

  “Sure, no problem,” I told him. “It’ll give me a chance to test out the club.”

  “It opens this weekend, correct?”

  “Yeah, so that’ll give me a week to iron out any issues before the meeting.”

  “I really couldn’t give two fucks about the man, but he does enjoy the fairer sex,” Luca remarked. “The environment should make him more amiable to the refusal to renegotiate.”

  “There’s always The Sapphire if The Eagle isn’t an option for whatever reason,” I posed. Ciro owned four bars, or clubs, or whatever you wanted to call them, and The Sapphire catered to men and no-strings-attached hookups. It’s where a lot of our men went to get their dicks wet without complication.

  “Let me know,” Luca said. “I’m heading out Friday night.”

  “Sure thing,” I replied before hanging up.

  “Party for two?” Leo asked, grinning. Sliding my phone back in my pocket, I deadpanned him, and he laughed.

  Leo could be my twin if you didn’t pay close attention. But, hell, we all looked alike with me and Leo favoring each other more so, though.

  We all had the Benetti raven-black hair, and while Luca stood at six-foot-four, Leo and I topped out at six-foot-two. And where Luca had Gio’s black eyes, Leo and I had inherited Carlita’s green eyes. We also got her dimples, though mine were more prominent than Leo’s. However, those were the only differences between the three of us. When we stood together, there was no mistaking the resemblance that made us Benettis. From a distance, the only thing that separated Luca from me and Leo was that Luca was covered up to his neck in tattoos. Leo had tats, and so I did I, but Luca’s crept up past his suit collars and past his shirt cuffs. He even had his wife’s name blasted across the back of his left hand. Benetti men didn’t wear wedding rings as not to give our enemies more information on us than they needed, and so the tattoo was basically his wedding ring. Phoenix and Ciro had the inside of their ring fingers tattooed with the same intent. And like Phoenix and Ciro, Leo had gotten his finger tatted, also.

  As for the wives, they all wore wedding rings the size of Montana boulders. Their rings were also equipped with tracking devices and those little gems have come in handy a time or two in the past.

  “Alonso Rubio is coming into town next weekend,” I told him. “He wants to renegotiate his end of the shipment deals.”

  Leo scoffed. “Idiot.”

  I nodded. “But the man likes tits and ass, so maybe a wet dick will keep him from getting too butthurt when we refuse him.”

  Leo lifted the folder my way, and jumping off the barstool, I walked over and grabbed it from his hand. “It’s all there,” he said. “The final numbers, and I gotta tell you, Sal, I think the club is going to be a hell of a come up.”

  “It didn’t cost much to fix up,” I agreed, but when Leo eyed me, I narrowed my eyes at him. “Spit it out.”

  He threw his hands up in surrender. “Just…hear me out, okay?” I nodded. “I’m not questioning your judgement, but…”

  “Spit it out, Leo,” I repeated.

  “I just don’t think Paolo Marino is the best man to run The Eagle,” he said.

  I sat down in one of the chairs positioned in front of Leo’s desk. “Why not?” I asked. “Paolo’s been with us for years.”

  “He has,” Leo agreed. “And he’s proven himself many times, but…” Leo shrugged his shoulder and relaxed back against his chair. “His respect for women could use some work.”

  Paolo Marino was a long-time soldier of ours. He was on the verge of making Capo, but we just didn’t have any open positions right now. Promoting him to oversee The Eagle was a steppingstone of sorts for him.

  “How so?” I asked, trusting my brother. “I’ve never seen anything outside what’s acceptable.” And there was a lot of shit that was acceptable. The line had been drawn at abuse but if you wanted to call a bitch a bitch, no one ba
tted an eyelash.

  Leo’s nose scrunched up in distaste. “I just don’t like the way he looks at women,” he said.

  “Christ, Leo,” I drawled. “That could be said for over half the male population.” I shrugged. “I’m not saying we’re the most respectable lot or that it’s right, but men have been looking at women like starving vultures for centuries.”

  “Hey, I’m not arguing that,” he replied. “I know I look at Sienna like she’s my last meal all the damn time, but since she’s my wife, I should look at her like that. But…Paolo’s different.”

  “I’ll keep my eye out,” I told him. Leo wasn’t one to interfere, so if his concern was important enough for him to voice it, I wasn’t going to discount that concern.

  “Okay,” he replied. “Just…wanted to share.” He grinned.

  “Duly noted.”

  Chapter 4

  Blake~

  The plan had been to go home, eat, take a hot bubble bath, and read for the rest of the evening. I worked from eight to five with an hour for lunch. That got me home around five-thirty because I took the bus. I didn’t own a car but that was fine with me. The bus system ran from six in the morning until eleven at night, so getting around wasn’t a problem. And there were always cabs for anything after eleven.

  However, my plans were ruined right as I’d been grabbing my favorite bubble bath with a phone call from my sister. I answered right away because calling was rare for Caitlin. Like everyone else on the planet, she was a texter.

  “Caitlin?”

  “Blake,” she rushed out, her voice wobbly, “thank God you answered.”

  “Are you okay?” I asked. “What’s going on?”

  “Are…are you home?”

  “I am. Do you need to come-”

  “No, no.”

  There were a few seconds of silence and I quickly began to panic. “Caitlin?”

  “Uhm, can you come here?” she asked.

  “Your place?”

  “No...I’m…I’m at work.”