Page 64 of Protect Your Queen

“Nothing’s wrong. I just wanted to talk.”

“You never call just to talk,” she laughed, lightly. “None of us do, Baby.”

Why didn’t we? Why didn’t we say ‘I love you’, or talk, or do any of the other things siblings were supposed to? We were told early on that saying ‘I love you’ would cheapenthe sentiment. Jareth said that we should take it for granted that we were family, that we loved each other, and that it was the five of us against the world. So why didn’t we call just to talk?

“I just wanted to see where you were,” I finally admitted.

There was a short pause, as if she was waiting for more information. Then she answered, “I’m at Jorik’s fight.”

“Oh? Where is it?”

“Ibiza today,” she said, as I heard the familiar sound of a bell in the background. “Your brother is going in as the underdog, which means that when he wins, we’ll get more from the bets.”

“Do we control that?” I was using the royal “we”. The Barkada “we”.

“No, Baby. We don’t.” I could hear her walking around. The voices on the other end of the line ebbed and faded. Then I heard something crash open, like a door. Then, she was in silence. “What’s wrong, Baby?”

In many ways, Jazz wasjustlike Jareth. They were both blunt, almost mean.

“I just wanted to talk.”

“What’swrong?” It wasn’t a joke. She wasn’t teasing me. It was just a question, delivered with callous precision.

“Nothing.”

“Why are you asking about the business?”

“I’m just… curious.” They had never spoken to me about it. I just knew that it was a part of where our money came from. There was something about shipping, docks, and owning warehouses and factories, and then the Underground MMA ring. But it was all bits and pieces of an incomplete image. “I just want to know.”

“We’ve been trying to protect you from it for so long, I don’t know if I could explain it all, even if I wanted to. And I’ll be honest, Baby, I don’t want to.” My heart sank as the disappointment of being shut out hit me all over again. “You know, Jareth didn’t want me to teach you to shoot. He thought that it would be bad for you.”

“Why?”

“Hmm,” she let out a small laugh. “He thought that if I taught you to shoot, then you’d become a criminal like the rest of us.”

I could hear her smiling on the other end of the phone.

“He wants very much to keep you safe, to make up for the times that he didn’t.” Then she sighed. “Thatwedidn’t.”

“I’ve always been safe with you guys.”

“Not always, Baby. Not always.” She sounded so sad. But I had never been unsafe. I had even slept through the night when our father disappeared. I had woken up in my bed to a house that was completely trashed, after our dear old Papa had gone out on a bender.

Even then, Jazz and Jareth had told me to just go to school, as they cleaned up the house and talked to the police about our father’s disappearance.

“You’ve always kept me safe,” I insisted.

“We’ve tried to.” She coughed a little. “Do you have your gun?”

I looked over to my bedroom door. The gun was still in the nightstand, untouched from the last time she had mentioned it.

“You don’t, do you?” She laughed a little, and I imagined she was shaking her head at me. “Do me a favor, Baby: keep it with you from now on. I worry about you.”

“I worry about you too.”

“Nah, I’m yourAte,” she used the word for Big Sister. “It’smyjob to worry aboutyou.Not the other way around.”

Chapter twenty-four

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