It was right then though, watching D flinch away in fear, that I understood.
Elsie wasn't there because she was looking for some heroin.
She wasn't even there because she was being extorted.
She hadn't fallen in love with one of the men in Third Street.
No.
Elana was their boss.
Elana had somehow replaced Enzo.
She was in charge.
She was in charge of a street gang.
My sister.
"Elana, what are you doing here?" I whispered as she took another step toward D, shoving her hand into his chest hard.
"That's my goddamn sister you brainless piece of shit!" she yelled and all eyes in the warehouse moved between us, I guess comparing us. Normally, before she changed her hair, there was an unmistakable resemblance. But now she had dark hair and gray eyes and I had blond hair and blue eyes. If you weren't looking for a similarity in our bone structure, it was easy to miss.
"I didn't know, E. I didn't fucking know!" D yelled back, but it was in actual fear, not anger. And I was left wondering what the hell she could have possibly done to make brainless, violent brutes actually fear her. A woman. A woman who grew up privileged who didn't raise a hand to someone because it would ruin her very expensive manicure. "She was snooping around the warehouse last week. I chased her, but I lost her and then I came across her tonight. I figured you'd want to know why she was snooping around."
"Oh, gee, I imagine she was looking for me. And in what universe does bringing her here for questioning involve fucking up her face and knocking her on the ground?"
"She hit me in the face with a gym lock!" he defended.
"Wow. Wonder why? Maybe because you kidnapped her? Maybe that's why she would hit you. Idiot. I'll deal with you later. Go help unload the truck," she demanded, waving a dismissive hand at him. It was the first thing she had done since she walked in that seemed like my sister. She was always doing the dismissive hand wave whenever she was done talking to someone she deemed too idiotic to entertain or when she trailed off while telling a story.
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.