1
Nick Murphy stood at the island in the kitchen, finishing his beer and hoping he didn’t look as nervous as he felt. For now at least, Ronan wasn’t even looking at him. His brother was too busy digging through the fridge, pulling out an assortment of ingredients he planned to use for dinner while his dog, Chief, watched from her cushion under the window.
“What?”
Nick realized Ronan had stopped foraging and was staring at him.
“Nothing,” Nick said.
“You might as well tell me the truth,” Ronan said.
Nick’s heart froze in his chest. “The truth?”
“You think this is going to be another failure.” Ronan surveyed the ingredients on the island. “But you would be wrong. I have a plan for all this stuff.”
Nick stifled the relief flooding his body. His brother didn’t know his secret.
Yet.
“I’m sure you do,” Nick said, finishing the rest of his beer in one swallow. “I wish I was equally sure Julia will be able to choke it down.”
Ronan’s wife Julia was due to deliver their first baby in two weeks, and Ronan had been pulling out all the stops to pamper her in the final days of her pregnancy, although Nick thought it was debatable whether any of Ronan’s home-cooked “meals” constituted a good deed.
Ronan shook his head. “Asshole.”
“I’m just giving you a hard time,” Nick said.
A year ago he wouldn’t have bothered softening his criticism. Back then, Nick had considered his brothers — Ronan and Declan — little more than business partners and roommates. Then their company, Murphy Intelligence and Security, had been hired to find Julia’s missing sister Elise. Ronan had fallen head over heels for Julia, and she and Elise had moved into the house while MIS took down the transnational trafficking ring responsible for Elise’s kidnapping.
Nick hadn’t loved the idea at first. Their business was complicated.
More than complicated: illegal.
They’d started MIS after their youngest sister, Erin, had overdosed. They’d buried her while the man who’d gotten her hooked when she’d been just a kid had gotten off scot-free. The company had been a way for them to exact vengeance, not just on the man who had led Erin to her death but on others like him who’d escaped the hand of justice.
Some people would call them vigilantes. Nick preferred to think of them as an off-the-books extension of the Massachusetts judicial system. It was still out there, shuffling through thousands of cases every day, bringing criminals before juries and negotiating with them in back rooms downtown.
But when the law failed to work, when the victims or families of victims couldn’t live with it, when they started asking around about their options, they sometimes ended up at MIS.
Having Julia and Elise in the house had felt dangerous. Reckless even. But after Elise’s kidnapping, the sisters hadn't exactly been sold on the law as a means of justice, and they’d both proven to be trustworthy, and in Julia’s case, an asset to the business.
Nick had still thought mixing business with pleasure was a bad idea, but it wasn’t like he had a leg to stand on with that argument anymore, and he had to admit there was something endearing about his massive, former-Navy-SEAL big brother desperately trying to cook something edible for his pregnant wife.
“Hey,” Declan said, coming into the kitchen and glancing at the ingredients spread out on the island. “What’s on the menu?”
He was dressed in jeans and a button-down, his thick dark hair styled in a way that said he’d made an effort but wasn't trying too hard. Nick caught a heady whiff of the expensive cologne Declan had imported from Italy and knew his younger brother was on the prowl.
“It’s a… rice thing,” Ronan said.
“A rice thing?” Declan repeated.
“Get the fuck out of here,” Ronan said.
Declan laughed. “That’s the plan.”
“Time for a fresh conquest?” Nick asked.
Declan’s preference for one-night stands was the source of endless ribbing in the house, although to be fair, he hadn’t been out as often lately.