Chapter One
Canned laughter roared from the television she had on for background noise as she cleaned the kitchen after preparing her food for the week. It was her Sunday night routine to prepare her lunches to take to work for the week, so she could cut the cost of eating out and its effects on her waistline. The doorbell rang and startled her. A quick check of the clock told her it was a little after nine thirty, too late for the few people she knew to be visiting. Pulling a very large knife from the butcher block, she went into the living room, and just above the car commercial she could hear her name being called. The voice should have reassured, but it didn’t. That voice had only ever brought her trouble. With a curse, she went back to the kitchen and slid the knife back into the block and then went back to the front door.
Opening the door she left the chain on. “What do you want, Peter?”
“Aw, come on, Miranda—you aren’t even going to let me in? What the hell kind of sister have you become?”
“The kind of sister you made me. The kind that doesn’t trust you in my home. Tell me what you want so that I can tell you no and you’ll go away.”
“Miranda, please, this isn’t a joke.”
“I have never joked about the clusterfuck that is what you made your life. I told you three years ago, never again would I give you another dollar to help you out of a mess you made. I told you that I didn’t want to see you again. I said it and I meant it. I want you to leave, now.”
“Please, this is life or death here. It’s almost two weeks overdue. The vig is adding up every day. All I needed was ten grand for this in-and-out job, but my partner skated on me and took almost all of the money. I’ve tried to get the money myself but I can’t get it together. I’m into him now at twenty-five grand, and he told me today he wants his money tomorrow or he’ll come looking for me.
My time is up, you are my last hope. If I don’t pay back the money, he’s going to kill me. These aren’t the kind of people you play with. I fucked up. I went to someone who won’t just be satisfied with a little roughing up. The last person who didn’t pay back Declan Kelly now walks with a limp. I swear, I wouldn’t be here if I had any other options.”
“You borrowed money for a job? What kind of job? Let me guess, a little breaking and entering and theft on a jewelry store, like the last time you got caught and went away. Or were you going to break into someone’s home and steal from them, the way you stole from me the last time I let you into my home? What the fuck is the matter with you? Every day you were in the garage with Dad. You could have hired on at the garage. You were so good you could have opened your own shop.
I can’t even believe I’m saying this, but with all your knowledge of cars, why didn’t you go into ripping off cars? No, you have to rob banks. You have to break into a business with people involved and try and carry off empty fucking safes.
Was this a job you came up with, or was it the friend who skated out on you after you got the money? Was he really a friend or just someone you met? Did you even check out the guy, or are you so stupid and so unwilling to work for anything you said yes to something you knew nothing about?” The look on his face told her what she needed to know, and she was tired, so damned tired, of his bullshit.
First you’re going to be killed and then you’re going to walk with a limp. Which one is it exactly? Peter, I’m done. I am so damn done with dealing with you, and this conversation is over.” Miranda closed the door and leaned against it, her heart hurting over the need to push him away,that she had to protect herself from him. This wasn’t the way she wanted things to be between them.
“He knows about you! Declan Kelly knows all about you, and that you have the money. If you don’t give it to me, he’ll come for it himself!”
Removing the chain she opened the door. Anger coursed through her, and she was trembling. He smiled, thinking she was giving in, and came toward her, but instead she shoved him, hard. All five eight of him went down easily. He was thin and wiry, without a well-defined muscle in his body. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing dragging me into your bullshit?”
Cowering on the ground, he was shocked at her rage. “I didn’t have a choice. Kelly was the only one willing to lend me the money, but he’s different than the other loan sharks. He makes sure the person has something that, if it came down to it, would have the value to pay him back. He’s fucking IRA old school, and they don’t play. He knows all about you and that you fucking have the twenty-five grand. It’s nothing for you! I know you got this house in the divorce, all paid off, and that Michael gave you cash to go away. You make, what, eighty or ninety thousand a year, and you still sock everything away. I know you have it. He knows you have it. For fuck’s sake, just give it to me and I’ll go away!”
She felt pain and anger at his words, at his demand to take what she had worked so hard for, and his expectation that it was nothing for her to just give it all away again pushed her too far. She kicked him then, hard in the side, and was satisfied to hear him cry out in pain. “Get the fuck off my porch and stay the hell away from me. You have thirty seconds to get off my property or I’m calling the cop
s and having you arrested.”
Slamming the door closed she sank down to her knees as she cried over what she had done. She wasn’t a violent person and she didn’t want to hurt her brother, not really. Even though what he had said to her had felt like a kick to the chest. Yes, she could likely write a check for twenty-five thousand, but Miranda had worked too hard for too long to give it away like it was nothing. It was her security. She wasn’t going back to the way she’d grown up.
Memories of the hand-to-mouth existence, without any room for anything that wasn’t absolutely necessary, flooded through her mind. Their clothing was secondhand, as was everything in the tiny house they’d lived in. Miranda loved and missed her father, and she knew he’d done what he could, but she knew her mother’s battle with breast cancer that had gone from diagnosis to death in only eighteen short months could have been won if they had had the insurance they couldn’t afford. Standing over her mother’s grave at the age of twelve, Miranda had sworn she would do things differently, and she had.
Complete and utter to commitment to school had paid off, and she won a full scholarship to DePaul. She had also worked part-time to cover what her scholarship hadn’t, and had willingly given to her father to help with costs that came up for him and Peter. Her father worked as a mechanic, but slowly his body had been unable to take the stress, and he went from fifty hours to around thirty, just enough to keep the bills paid.
She had met Michael her first year in college, and while they married only a year later, their marriage hadn’t been one where she ever felt she could slack off in pulling her weight financially. Michael was significantly wealthy because of owning his own boutique brokerage firm and market investments, and he had practically lived in his office. He had only encouraged her to succeed, and was proud of her own sixty-hour workweeks. Because of her willingness to come in early and leave very late, her position and salary had grown year by year. Peter hadn’t been too far off in his guess at her salary, and her end-of-the-year bonus often put her over his guess.
Regardless of what she had, Miranda was tired of Peter wanting everyone but himself to pay for the mistakes he had made. When their mother died, Peter had been just ten years old, and it was as if he stopped maturing at that age. The loss of their mother had caused him jump the rails and never get back on them. At twelve, he had begun smoking and skipping school. Then hanging out with the kind of kids who had already been to juvie, and it hadn’t taken him long to wind up there himself. Her father had been unable to control Peter, who had repeatedly thrown up not having a mother anymore as his get-out-of-jail-free card. With their father’s death, Peter had been shocked into behaving for close to a year. As Miranda had just married Michael and didn’t need anything, she had given Peter her share of their father’s small estate. After the cost of the funeral and paying off the last outstanding bills, it hadn’t been much.
Eventually, Peter found his way into trouble, and rather than have Michael find out, Miranda had helped him. Peter had skipped town and all had been quiet until five years later, when Peter had showed up needing money again. At the time her marriage was failing, and Miranda hadn’t been in the mood, and refused to help him. It was during his begging that Miranda had only then found out Peter had been in prison for the last four years on burglary charges. When Michael came home, it had been easier to give in to allowing Peter to spend the night than to air out his issues. She could also admit she’d been embarrassed by her brother. In the morning, Peter had gone quietly and two days later Miranda had found out what her pride had cost her. Over the two days, Peter had hit her account in multiple withdrawals until it was empty. He’d stolen almost fifteen thousand dollars from her.
In the week from hell that followed, as she closed every single account she had and Michael closed his own accounts, Miranda suffered the silent treatment from her husband. She vowed to have nothing more to do with Peter ever again. A week later, he had shown up smiling from ear to ear and with a roll of money that was only three thousand dollars, expecting it to be enough to get back onto her good side. Miranda had taken the money and told him she never wanted to see him again. He had only shrugged and walked away. Now here he was again, and it shouldn’t hurt so badly, the things he said, but they did.
The next morning, she found it hard to concentrate at work. Although she was sure she had seen the last of her brother, she couldn’t forget his words of warning about Declan Kelly. No matter how hard she tried to shrug off her worries, she couldn’t help wondering about Declan Kelly and what he would do. She knew that although the conflict between the Irish Republican Army and British had more or less dissolved, the element originally grown to fund them still remained. Then again, it wasn’t hard to find some type of criminal element, if the surface were scratched, on a large percentage of Chicago. Chicago had practically been founded on criminal activity, and although people liked to pretend it had gone away or been jailed out of existence, it had simply gotten better at hiding.
Knowing it and seeing it were two different things, and Miranda had to admit the only things she knew about a world like that was from the few movies she had seen. While the movies were about the Italian mafia, she couldn’t see what the major difference would be from one group to the next.
Checking her accounts, she saw that if she shifted a few things that she could come up with the money. Then anger flared and she snapped the laptop closed. No, if Declan Kelly wanted her money, he’d get the same fuck-off she had given to Peter. She wouldn’t get away with what she had done to Peter, but she also wasn’t going to give him any of her money. Her phone rang, and she did her best to focus back on work and push Peter and Declan Kelly to the back of her mind.
As she walked home from work that night, Miranda’s mind was turning over the audit she had been working on that day. She was nearly done, and she was checking her mental list of things not to forget. She was so caught up in her thoughts she was almost to her porch before she noticed the two men waiting on her small covered porch, blocking her door. One of the men was well over six foot, with a large barrel chest, dark, curly hair, and dark brown eyes. He was every bit as intimidating as he was trying to be. The other man was a few inches shorter than the other man and wasn’t nearly as broad, but he was stocky and as fair as the other man was dark. He had dirty blond hair and light blue eyes. He was smiling, in a clear attempt at being cajoling. Miranda wasn’t buying it for a second.
“Mrs. Beckett?”