1
Irene
I never should’ve tried to steal from the Healy family. Then again, I’ve never been good at making smart decisions.
Probably why I ended up living on the streets and picking pockets at the tender age of eighteen.
That, and my dad was an abusive monster and my mother was a drug-addicted shell of a human.
But they weren’t the reason I tried to steal from the Healy family. Truth was, I couldn’t help myself. I had to try to bite the hand that fed me.
It was just in my nature.
And my nature was about to get me killed.
The room was sweltering. Summer in Philly boiled the asphalt and the humidity felt like walking around in the bottom of a swimming pool. I was tied to a chair inside a structure—probably a house, but I couldn’t be sure. The blindfold was scratchy, wool or maybe cheap cotton mixed with synthetic fibers, but either way it was enough to block out everything around me. All was dark, and no matter how much I struggled against my bonds, they wouldn’t break.
Not that I had a chance. I was five foot four and weighed less than some really big dogs. I was strong and fast from living out on the streets for the past couple of years, but no way in hell could I break my wrists out of a rope.
How did magicians do it? Dislocate their wrists? Or maybe they had a key hidden away in their mouth. Unfortunately, I had no hidden key, and I didn’t know how to dislocate my wrists—although if I kept struggling, I might accidentally figure it out.
I let out a frustrated groan.
I really, really shouldn’t have tried to steal from the Healy family.
But they made it so easy. Probably because they trusted me, which was a huge mistake. I mean, I do make my living stealing from people, to be totally fair. They should’ve assumed I’d try to steal from them, too.
Instead, they were careless. Ronan let me see where he kept the cash. I showed up at his safe house with my take for the day—watches, wallets, jewelry, the sort of stuff I didn’t want to try to pawn in case it got reported stolen—and they’d give me money for whatever I had. Usually it was fair, or close enough to fair, and anyway they kept me safe since I was technically a part of the extended family.
Not that I cared.
But seriously, Ronan was too trusting. Seriously, it’s all his fault. I’d stand in the living room of his safe house in front of his TV while his boys leered at me and drank beer and whiskey and watched soccer or football or whatever was on, and he’d bang around in the last room on the left, then come back with fresh bills.
It was too obvious. I knew the house, I knew the room, and that was more than enough.
So last night, I decided to break in. Hear me out. Living on the street sucks—like, really sucks. I was hungry all the time and my living situation was less than ideal, to put it mildly. Ronan’s payout earlier that day was worse than usual and I found myself in a tough spot. I was desperate, basically.
Still, I shouldn’t have done it. I’ll be the first one to admit that, straight up. I shouldn’t have broken into Ronan’s safe house. I shouldn’t have stolen from him.
Like I said though, I can’t help myself.
It went fine at first. I snuck in through a second-floor back window. I had to sneak up a drainpipe then creep across a roof before I flipped the lock with a super-thin piece of metal and pushed the window open. I fell into a little empty bedroom, just a mattress on the floor and a pack of condoms thrown in the corner, some really classy stuff. I snuck down the hall in the darkness, down the steps, and tip-toed into that back room.
The place was dead. I thought it was empty.
So I turned on my flashlight.
If I could go back and do it all over again, I’d hog-tie myself until the urge to steal from the second-largest gang in the city passed, because that was some galaxy-brain style insanity. At the very least, I’d go back, kick myself in the knee and whisper, this is the Healy family, you psycho moron, they kill people for stealing from them, turn off that flashlight.
Unfortunately, that isn’t how time works, so I kept the flashlight on.
The room was a small office. Desk straight ahead, TV on top of a dresser on the right, lots of little storage containers stacked up along the wall. I popped a lid off one and found piles of what looked a lot like uncut heroin, and an enormous bag of pills in another, enough pills to kill everyone in Yankee Stadium.