Never Been Good Read online

  Dedication

  To my beloved, darling husband who is the very best man I know.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  A Letter from the Editor

  Acknowledgments

  Announcement to Got It Bad An Excerpt from Got It Bad—Chapter One

  About the Author

  By Christi Barth

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Prologue

  Seven Months Earlier

  Graceland Cemetery, Chicago

  11:30 p.m., October 31

  “This is nice.” Frank Mullaney’s brother nudged him, flashing a grin from behind the enormous fake white beard. “We haven’t celebrated a Halloween together in years.”

  Yeah. His brother Ryan had lost his mind, no doubt about it. His brother, who happened to be currently dressed like Santa Claus. On freaking Halloween.

  Not that it was any better than his own off-season costume. Frank had flat-out refused—at first—when Ryan laid the leprechaun costume across his bed. Until he pointed out the two best points of the costume. A big red beard and hat that would totally disguise Frank’s features, and a fake pot of gold. Aka something that wouldn’t look weird for him to be carrying, just like the bag good old Santa had draped over his shoulder.

  Since it turned out that just under two million in cash couldn’t be stuffed in your pockets.

  Especially not when traipsing through a cemetery. On Halloween. At almost midnight, surrounded by drunken, screaming people on ghost tours.

  “That’s probably because we’re grown-ass men. Trick-or-treating would be weird at our age.” The thought of candy made Frank remember that he’d skipped lunch. And dinner. Because Ryan showed up at his front door with costumes and this crazy plan. “Although I wouldn’t say no if you pulled a Snickers out of your pocket and tossed it my way.”

  Ignoring him, Ryan continued, his voice a little softer. “We haven’t celebrated Halloween since Mom died.”

  Way to bring the mood back to serious-as-fuck. Grim enough to match the gravestones they were skirting. “You mean since she was murdered.” Because Ryan had just shared that little bombshell with him. It was still rattling around in his head like a pinball. God knew it hadn’t sunk in yet.

  Ryan stopped at the edge of a replica of a Greek temple. He dropped his sack onto the concrete foundation of the tomb. Fisted his hands on the red velvet and padding near his waist. “Can we not talk about that right now? One thing at a time. Let’s get through tonight. Through the next couple of weeks. Then, I promise, we’ll sit down and hash everything out.”

  Classic Ryan. Solving problems. Staying focused on the long game. It was exactly what he did as the right-hand man for the leader of the Chicago mob.

  Did . . . past tense. Seeing as how today he and Frank had stolen all of the mob’s cash. And then tomorrow, they’d watch their colleagues and friends get arrested in a sting—and hopefully the missing money would be attributed to the Feds’ raid. After that, the Mullaney brothers would disappear forever, courtesy of the U.S. Marshals Service.

  Frank shifted his weight from one foot to the other. The frostbitten grass made a crunching sound. Probably similar to the one his bones would make if this whole plan failed and the mob ever caught up with them.

  “Are you going to talk to Kieran, too?” Because their little brother was out of the loop on all of it. He had no idea that his big brothers were even in the mob, let alone close to the top. He was balls deep in law school.

  Until tomorrow.

  Until they ripped that away from him.

  Just to save Frank.

  How was that fair? God. Frank swallowed so hard he swore he could hear his Adam’s apple scraping against his throat.

  Ryan’s blue eyes shifted to the side. Easy enough to see his discomfort at being pinned down, with the whole place lit up with spotlights and luminarias along the paths and footlights edging the most famous tombs. “You and I will talk first. Then we’ll decide, together, how far in to dial Kieran.”

  “You think he’ll hate us?”

  Ryan’s mouth turned downward into a bitter smirk. “Since it was all my idea to put us into Witness Protection, yeah, I’m sure he’ll hate me. For a while. Pretty sure that you will, too. Once our new reality hits.”

  “No way. Not possible.” The only way they’d survived the death of their mom was by banding together as tight as stucco on drywall. Their dad dying . . . ah, no. Being murdered by McGinty, per the other surprise truth Ryan laid on him today. Their dad’s death had made their bond more unshakeable. Strong enough to get them through their worst days. It made them strong enough to survive anything, as long as the three of them were together. He could never, would never hate Ryan.

  “I’ll check back in with you in a month, when you’re jonesing for an MMA fight.”

  How many more surprises were coming? Frank shook his head. “I can’t fight anymore?” The mixed martial arts training started as a way to prove that even though he sat behind a desk, he was just as tough as everyone else in McGinty’s organization. Appearances mattered. Respect had to be earned.

  Kicking ass in the ring went a long way to making sure people stopped calling him a pencil pusher. But Frank liked it, too. Liked teaching the skills to kids so they could defend themselves. A good fight worked out all his stress. And yeah, he’d cop to getting a thrill from winning the competitions, too.

  “Keeping our noses clean is a pretty big requirement in WITSEC. I think an underground fight club wouldn’t go over—” Ryan broke off. Grabbed Frank by the neck and pulled him down behind the marble tomb.

  “What?”

  Ryan put his finger to his lips. Then he pointed at another tour group, coming at them from the edge of the lake. This one was full of shivering women in skimpy versions of superhero costumes, hanging on the arms of already drunk and stumbling men.

  Classy. And definitely making enough noise to scare away any ghosts that were stupid enough to hang around. Chicago’s most famous cemetery was full of tours on a regular day. On Halloween, it was as jam-packed as Wrigleyville during a Cubs home game.

  Something else that they’d have to give up.

  Shit.

  Frank hadn’t processed any of this yet. There’d been no time to think since Ryan burst in on him at breakfast. Told him McGinty was a lying son of a bitch who intended to send Frank to jail to cover his own ass.

  Before Frank had time to even break into a cold sweat of panic, Ryan told him that he’d fixed it. That he’d gone to the Feds and offered to turn evidence against McGinty, and everyone else. That the Mullaney brothers would get a free ride and full protection as long as he lived up to the bargain and they played it straight.

  Right after they socked away their “insurance” money.

  Because neither of them fully trusted the Feds to keep them safe.

  Yeah, that flop sweat was sure popping out now. It made the cheap polyester of his costume itch. Fr
ank wasn’t ready to give up his job, his clothes, his apartment, his fights, his life.

  On the other hand, jail didn’t sound much better.

  His breath rasped out in little clouds. He realized how cold the marble was under his hands. Cold as death.

  Jail—or a new life in the middle of nowhere—was definitely a step up from being cold in the ground. Which was undoubtedly McGinty’s plan B if the Mullaneys pushed back at his making Frank the fall guy.

  After the tour group went down the slope to the lake, Ryan asked, “You got a date for tonight?”

  “No.” He tugged at the cartoonishly wide lapel of his bright green jacket. “No chance I’ll get one dressed like this, either.”

  “You should get one. Go to a bar. Hook up. Live it up.”

  Was he serious? Their lives were in the literal eye of a shitstorm right now. Frank could flirt half-asleep, half-drunk, only half-interested, and still score a girl. But tonight? His head wasn’t in the game. Let alone his dick. “Not really in a pound-all-the-shots kind of mood, bro.”

  “Doesn’t matter.” Ryan stabbed a finger out toward the glow over the treetops indicating the bright lights of downtown. “You need to be visible. Hit the usual spots. Make sure at least a half dozen of our guys see you having the time of your life. It’ll keep them from being suspicious after the raid goes down. Can you fake it?”

  That was a funny question. That’s all Frank did every day of his life.

  He faked being okay with not being in on all the action. He faked being okay with not getting to choose his own damn college major, not being able to go to grad school. He’d convinced McGinty and the whole crew that he was fine with the choices made for him, the life they’d made and shoehorned him into.

  Now he got to start over—and yet again, Frank still didn’t get a say in it.

  “Yeah. I can throw back some whiskey tonight, no problem.” Probably the truest thing he’d said all day. The more he thought about it? The more getting shit-faced sounded like the only way to deal with all of this. No way he’d inflict himself and his weird-ass mood on a woman, though. “Want to grab one last deep-dish pepperoni at Lou Malnati’s? Before we make the rounds of the clubs?”

  “You bet.”

  Frank looked at his watch. The watch McGinty gave him the day he was promoted to vice president of the construction company. Damn. That promotion had been a way to keep Frank under his thumb all along. A way to keep a convenient patsy close by.

  Turned out the job he’d worked his ass off for was basically the mob’s version of a bench to be warmed. Just a placeholder in case McGinty needed someone who looked important enough—on paper, anyway—to take all the blame.

  He planned to put this watch under the front tire of whatever government SUV drove them out of town. Crushing it, crushing the taint of its memory, would be his last official act in Chicago.

  “We’ll only make it if we wrap this up fast enough. Are we close, Ryan? Where are we stashing all this cash, anyway?”

  “See that pyramid over there?”

  Gray stone rose into a triangle of blocks, with a sphinx on one side of the doorway, an angel on the other. Talk about a weird combination. It was cool and creepy and Frank had no idea how they were supposed to get inside of it. “The one with the giant black padlock on the door?”

  “It’s modeled after an Egyptian tomb.” Ryan stood, slinging the red velvet sack back over his shoulder. “You remember the thing about all those ancient pyramids?”

  “There was always a secret way out.” Okay, maybe tonight would be a little bit fun, after all. Sure, a slice of ‘za from Malnati’s always scored in the top ten ways to end a night in Chicago. But a crazy-ass adventure with his big brother sounded like an even better way to spend their last hours in their hometown. A story they’d tell over and over and over again through the years.

  Crap.

  They’d only tell it to each other. Since this all had to stay a secret. From everyone.

  For the rest of their lives.

  Luckily, Ryan seemed oblivious to how often Frank’s thoughts spiraled into near-panic. Gesturing for him to follow, his brother stalked in between the columns and zigzagged around a perimeter of six-foot-tall bushes. “Or, in our case, a way in. After this Schoenhofen guy died, his son-in-law took over the business. And he owed the mob a shit-ton of money. He ran the biggest brewery in Chicago back in the day. Thought he’d gotten so big that he could skip paying protection money.”

  That was just stupid, no matter what decade he was from. At least that stupidity erased the tiny bit of guilt Frank had been harboring about breaking into a tomb. “Let me guess. They took him out?”

  “Drowned him in one of his own copper beer kettles.” Ryan shot him a grin.

  Frank couldn’t help but smile back. It was kind of perfect. The Irish mob excelled at making their point in . . . creative ways. “Karma’s a bitch.”

  “Whoever took over the business next wised up. He paid up. Fast. As a show of good faith, he offered this tomb as a place for us to hide . . . whatever we might need to keep out of sight. People. Money. Bodies. With Prohibition about to hit, we jumped at it. Settled his account right up. We used it for years. Nowadays a cemetery isn’t so easy to go unnoticed in, so it just sits empty. I checked it out, oh, three years ago when I first learned about it. Nothing but cobwebs inside.”

  Suddenly, Frank didn’t want to hear any more Chicago history. No matter how interesting. It just reminded him of the ticking clock hanging over his head. The one where he, Ryan, and Kieran were all leaving Chicago for good. As hard as he tried to ignore it? That fact only seemed to clear out of his head for about two minutes, before the weight of it crashed back down again.

  Shit.

  Ryan was jumping through all these hoops for him. To save him. No way could he let his brother see how freaked out he was. It wouldn’t be fair to lay that on him. Frank caught up in a couple of long steps. “How did I never hear this story?”

  “Because you kept your nose clean running the legit biz. You didn’t spend every day hanging out, shooting the breeze with lowlifes like me.”

  “Look what good that did me,” Frank mumbled. Great. His clear head had only lasted twenty seconds this time around.

  Laying a hand on his arm to stop him, his brother asked, “What are you talking about?”

  “Ryan, you’re the fixer for the head of the Chicago mob. You’ve done more than your fair share of bad things.”

  The fingers on his arm tightened. “I take care of bad people. There’s a difference. Whatever I do, I guarantee they’ve got it coming to them. It’s justice, Frankie. No different than handing out parking tickets. Our way’s just faster. More successful, too.”

  Frank gave a quick thought to the parking tickets filling his glove compartment. Well, at least he was off the hook for a couple hundred bucks there. Silver lining. Get out of jail and get out of his tickets. Clearly, he owed Ryan a thank-you present. Something between a bottle of blue label Johnnie Walker and a boot to the balls.

  He shook off Ryan’s grip. Turned to face him. To bleed off some of the bitterness suddenly spurting up from his gut. “I toed the line. Ran the front. Paid taxes. Made sure all of you lowlifes had taxes and Medicare taken out of their paychecks. Health insurance. Made a construction company run even though half the people on the payroll never showed up to work. And yet I’m the one Danny McGinty wants to send to jail?”

  “You’re not going to jail,” Ryan said fiercely. “That’s the whole point of this. You will not see the inside of a cell, Frank. I’ve got that in writing from the U.S. Marshals. We turn evidence, we cooperate, we’re free to go.”

  It was almost too good to be true. Nobody stood up to the mob and just walked away. “What if something goes wrong?”

  Ryan put his head down, scanning the ground. Five graves down from the Schoenhofen pyramid the earth rose into a low bunker. Tombs with pointed roofs that came up maybe to his waist were built into it. At the
first one, Ryan dropped to his knees. He pushed at the cornice of each of the eighth-sized columns. Then he put his fingers around the starburst carved in the middle and twisted. The entire front swung inward.

  “That’s why we stole all this money, isn’t it? Best backup plan in the world. Plus, it gives you your one shot at finally being a bad guy to the core. I call that a win-win.” Shoving his sack in front of him, Ryan hit the deck and shimmied inside.

  Frank looked around at the shadows from the pine trees, the full moon overhead, and the stark lines of the tombs. This was a pretty epic way to end things here in Chicago. Belly-crawling into a century-old crypt on Halloween? Come on. Classic Ryan, thinking to hide the mob’s stolen money in their own hiding spot.

  So he’d have fun with this. No more sulking. No more freaking out. Maybe this new life was the best thing for all of them. They’d never intended to grow up to be criminals, after all.

  Starting over would be good. Not just because it kept him out of jail.

  And as long as he was with Ryan and Kieran, how bad could it really be?

  Chapter One

  Present Day . . .

  The Gorse Bar

  Bandon, Oregon

  Flynn Maguire hated a lot of things. As he slowly, carefully drew a pint of Guinness, he counted them. Starting with his brother, Rafe, who had the dumber than dirt idea to throw them all into Witness Protection.

  He also hated his new life.

  They were on version five of it now, having been planted and then yanked from four other towns and jobs. Their personal marshal, Delaney Evans, had issued the warning—aka threat—that if this one didn’t take, they were out of the program. He’d hate her a little, too, if he didn’t respect that she was just doing her job. Of all people, Flynn sure as hell knew what that felt like. Seeing as how he’d spent five years running a construction company he didn’t give two shits about. But he’d run it, and run it well.

  For all the good it did.

  He hated this quaint fucking seaside village of a town. On principle, anyway. Because it wasn’t Chicago. None of the towns they’d moved to were anything like the Windy City. The food, the people, the action—none of it compared. Flynn hadn’t realized how much he’d miss his hometown. Mostly because he hadn’t had any time to think about it between being told they were leaving, and disappearing.