A gun? A freaking gun? He’d hit on a woman who carried a gun? Yeah, that stuck with Kieran a little harder than wondering how she knew his brothers. Or why anybody needed a gun in the middle of the afternoon. Which, as a soon-to-be lawyer, was probably a dumb thought. Criminals didn’t punch a time clock. Was she a criminal?
“Who are you—really?” he demanded.
“Delaney Evans. U.S. Marshal.”
No shit? Marshals were way hotter than he’d ever imagined. Kieran was also pretty fucking off balance to have that be his first response to whatever the hell was going on right now.
“I’m sorry, Kieran.” Ryan shook his head and let his hands hang off of his knees. His oldest brother hadn’t looked that sad and serious since . . . hell, probably since their dad died. “It’s a shitty way to do this, but I can’t think of a good way.”
“To do what?” Because Kieran was fucking worried at this point.
“To tell you that we’re in the Chicago mob. Both of us.” Frank pointed back and forth at his older brother. “Or we were, until this morning.
No. No fucking way. Kieran shook his head, trying to shake Frank’s words back out of his ears. “That’s one hell of a sick joke.”
“Notice how we’re not laughing.”
Yeah. He’d noticed alright. The pair of them matched head to toe. Kieran catalogued the oddness of all of it. Their mussed dark hair—and they both liked to hog the mirror a lot to be ready for any hot women that might cross their paths on a given day. Black jeans and tees, on a week day when they should at least be sporting ties. Most of all, the hangdog downward tilt to their whole faces. This . . . whatever this was, it was deadly serious.
He tried to lunge sideways to get to Delaney, but the damned seat belt snapped him back in place. Kieran white-knuckled the arm rest as he torqued his body around. “Holy shit, did you arrest my brothers?”
“No.”
“Then why—oh.” His brain finally revved past the shock. If what Ryan and Frank alleged was true, there was only one reason there’d be a U.S. Marshal in the car with them. “You fuckers are going into Witness Protection, aren’t you?”
“Yeah. I’m so, so sorry, K.”
“Cut the apology crap.” He didn’t have time for it. Because Kieran had the feeling he was already on borrowed time. That any second Marshal Evans would kick him out of the car and he’d never seen his brothers again. “You’re leaving me? This is you two saying goodbye? Forever?”
Damned if there wasn’t a lump in his throat. This couldn’t be happening. The Mullaney brothers were tight. Tight in a way that only happened when you lost both your parents before you could shave. He’d never even thought about what life would be like without his brothers.
“No.” Ryan fought briefly with his seatbelt before just reaching over and gripping Kieran’s upper arm. Squeezing it like a python. “We stay together. Always. Keeping the three of us together is the only thing that matters. It’s the reason we’re joining WITSEC.”
“I don’t understand. You’re ratting on the mob . . . for us?”
“The head of the mob, Danny McGinty—”
Delaney cut him off with a buzzer-like noise. “Hey. Remember the ground rules. Kieran doesn’t need details. The less he knows, the better.”
Ryan’s eyes burned with blue fire he aimed back at the marshal. “He needs to know the name of the man who fucked us over. The man who was behind the death of our parents.”
Kieran’s suddenly upside-down world did another one-eighty. Nobody had ever said their parents were murdered. What else about the life he thought he knew was a total lie?
The woman he still—unfuckingbelievable—wanted to kiss gave a sharp nod. “Fair enough. But watch yourself.”
“McGinty had some deals fall apart. He needed someone to take the rap, do time in prison. He picked Frank to be the fall guy. When he oh-so-generously gave me the heads-up, I decided to take action. No brother of mine would rot behind bars for something he didn’t do.”
The repeated honk of the taxi in the lane next to them bought Kieran time to figure out how to ask the obvious question. “You’re a mobster—but you didn’t commit a crime?”
“Pretty much no. I really do—” Frank grimaced, “did run the construction company you know about. Kept my nose clean. It was the front for the mob, but legit. I sure as hell didn’t do what McGinty wants me to cop to.”
Ryan held up two fingers. “No prison. And we stay together. Those were my terms when I went to the Feds and asked for protection. They gave their word. It’s all going down today. The raid on McGinty’s crew. And the three of us disappearing forever.”
Forever? Talk about dramatic overkill. Ryan always did like to tell stories. He looked out at the enormous, overwhelming blue of Lake Michigan. The lake that had anchored his whole life. They weren’t leaving Chicago. No way.
He pushed off Ryan’s hand. “Wait a minute. You mean we’ll be holed up in some boring safehouse in the suburbs for a few weeks while you get questioned.”
“No.” And Delaney actually looked at him with pity—fucking pity!—as she continued. “That’s only step one. The Irish Mob is bigger than McGinty, bigger than Chicago.”
Frank glanced out the window, then deliberately turned his back on the view. “It won’t ever be safe for us to come back here. Or ever be Mullaneys again. But that’s just a fucking name, right? We’ll be together, wherever we end up. Whoever we end up.”
He was right. Nothing else mattered but sticking with his brothers. The rest was just details. Really fucking weird and impossible details, but still. Practically immaterial compared to the Mullaneys being side by side.
Kieran hadn’t, couldn’t process any of this. How big of criminals were his brothers? What did they do? What would they do now? Even with traffic at a crawl, he knew they were too far down Lakeshore Drive to see Northwestern any more. Still, he craned his neck out the back window, trying to get one more peek of the law school. Because it was all he knew. All he’d planned and worked toward for years.
Stretching out her arm, Delaney said, “Hand over your wallet.”
When a woman with a gun down her pants issued a command, Kieran obeyed. He gave it to her, but kept his hand on top it, so his fingers brushed the inside of her wrist. That electric charge of awareness tingled in him again. Then she pulled out everything but the cash and gave it back. She tucked his ID and credit cards into her bag.
“Right now is the moment your life as Kieran Mullaney ends. Officially.”
Well, shit.
About the Author
USA Today bestseller CHRISTI BARTH earned a master’s degree in vocal performance and embarked upon a career on the stage. A love of romance then drew her to wedding planning. Ultimately she succumbed to her lifelong love of books and now writes award-winning contemporary romance.
Christi can always be found either whipping up gourmet meals (for fun, honest!) or with her nose in a book. She lives in Maryland with the best husband in the world.
www.christibarth.com
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By Christi Barth
Bad Boys Gone Good
Bad for Her
Never Been Good
Coming Soon
Got It Bad
Naked Men
Risking It All
Wanting It All
Giving It All
Trying It All
Shore Secrets
Up to Me
All for You
Back to Us
Aisle Bound
Planning for Love
A Fine Romance
Friends to Lovers
A Matchless Romance
Bad Decisions
The Opposite of Right
The Reverse of Perfection
Check My Heart
Love at High Tide
Love on the Boardwalk
Cruising Toward Love
Act Like We’re in Love
/> Tinsel My Heart
Ask Her at Christmas
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Excerpt from Got It Bad copyright © 2018 by Christi Barth.
never been good. Copyright © 2018 by Christi Barth. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins Publishers. For information, address HarperCollins Publishers, 195 Broadway, New York, NY 10007.
Digital Edition APRIL 2018 ISBN: 9780062685650
Print Edition ISBN: 9780062685667
Cover design by Nadine Badalaty
Cover photograph © Volodymyr Tverdokhlib / Shutterstock
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Avon and HarperCollins are registered trademarks of HarperCollins Publishers in the United States of America and other countries.
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