Page 7 of Burke (The Haven #2)

S hirley stared down at her phone, not quite believing that she had gotten up the nerve to let Burke know what was happening. She feared she wouldn’t get much sleep tonight.

She woke up the next morning and stared around at the small apartment she’d rented.

She’d been doing odd jobs for the last year, just trying to figure out what she wanted to do with the rest of her life.

She had project management experience, and she’d held that position at a big company, but the stress had been crippling to the point that she had quit.

Her mental health needed rather desperately to find a new career path.

It had been great until it wasn’t, and she needed to take a break from all that stress.

Right now, she was working as a receptionist, while she figured out her life.

She desperately wanted to get away from her family, yet the guilt crippled her.

They were family, and she loved them, but she didn’t like them at all, and that was really hard on her.

The following morning her sister called, a happy-go-lucky tone in her voice. “Hey, Shir, we’re going out for breakfast. Want to come with? My treat.”

“What? On Burke’s credit cards?” she snapped.

Silvia laughed. “Yeah,… on his credit card. Why the hell not?”

“How can you do that?”

“Oh please, don’t you start with that pious bullshit,” her sister snapped. “He fucking broke up with me. He deserves everything he gets.”

“He broke up with you because the relationship wasn’t working. You were sleeping with another man.”

“Yeah, it wasn’t working, and it’s not working now either,” she barked. “Besides, he won’t know.”

“Yeah, but are you paying the bills?”

“No,… of course not.” She laughed. “The credit cards will get canceled eventually, and we’ll just… carry on.”

“So, you’ve done this before?” she asked in horror.

“No, I haven’t, but Frankie has. He learned from his poppa Jensen.”

Shirley took note of the name, as she had mentioned to Burke that his name was Jay, short for Jacob, and she needed to update him.

“He says that’s how he always does it, that it’s a great system,” she explained. “So, we live a decent life, and we don’t have to pay the bills.”

“So, you’re screwing somebody over every time you do this, and you don’t care?”

“Of course I don’t care, and why should I? I tried hard to be a nice person and look what happened.”

“Yeah? What happened?” she asked angrily. “Nothing. You’ve never tried.”

“What are you talking about? He broke up with me.”

Shirley groaned. “Silvia, you know perfectly well that you weren’t happy with him, and you were out screwing around on him.”

“So what?” she replied vindictively. “He’s still not allowed to break up with me.”

“That’s crap,” she muttered. “You always look at everything in a backassward way,” she muttered.

“And you always blame me.”

“No, I’m not blaming you. I just don’t understand how you have absolutely no morals and expect the entire world to look after you, when you do nothing responsibly to look after yourself.”

“I do a lot to look after myself,” she cried out. “And that’s exactly what I’m doing. I’m looking after me instead of having somebody else come in and steal everything and have the life that I should have had.”

Shirley argued, “He wasn’t responsible for your not having the life that you should have had.”

“Look. If you care about him so much, you should have gone after him.”

“I should have.… You’re right,” Shirley snapped, “because I did care about him, but you screwed all that over too.”

“Oh,… what the hell, Shir?” Silvia snapped right back.

“He won’t know anything about it—at least not until he tries to buy a house and his credit is completely destroyed or when the bill collectors come after him.

He’s probably got a new car or something,” she said vindictively.

“I wish I could see the look on his face when he realizes that it’s been repossessed to pay for the credit cards. ”

Shirley stared down at her phone, listening to her sister in complete shock. “I don’t even know you anymore.”

“There’s nothing to know.” Silvia cackled with joy. “I’ve always been this way. You just didn’t want to see it.”

That was similar to what Burke had said too, but it was even harder to hear it coming out of her sister’s own mouth. “I didn’t think you hated people quite so much.”

“I don’t hate him,” she stated. “I’m pissed off at what he did, but I don’t hate him.”

“How can you be pissed off at what he did? He didn’t do anything but get himself out of a mess.”

“Of course he did something,” she spat.

“Right, he broke up with you.”

“Look. It might not be a big deal to you, but it hurt me.”

“You’d already had an affair, and I don’t know how many times you’d run up bills in his name.”

“I don’t care,” Silvia bellowed. “He was supposed to try harder. That’s what you do. You try harder. You hold on to the people you claim you love.”

“Did you try harder?” she asked her sister.

“That wasn’t for me to do. That was for him to do. Why can’t you understand that? No wonder you don’t have a partner. God, how did you miss all those lessons?”

“Maybe because I was busy trying to be a good person.”

She snorted at that. “Yeah, and where did it get you? Nowhere .” Silvia added, “Don’t bother coming to breakfast. You’ve ruined the mood.” And, with that, she ended the call.

“Oh, jeez, as if I was going anyway. Unlike you, I wouldn’t expect Burke to pay for my breakfast,” she muttered out loud, then groaned.

She sent Burke a quick text. Hate to say it, but she’s headed out for breakfast on your credit cards again. She got a response right back.

Shouldn’t go through now because those credit cards have been canceled.

Shirley winced and sent back a text. All three of them?

He phoned her immediately. “Did you say she has three credit cards in my name?”

“Yes,” and she named off the companies.

“Wow, so more phone calls,” he muttered.

“I’m so sorry.”

“Stop saying that. I know you’re sorry, but I highly doubt you could have stopped her.”

“Actually she called me all kinds of names because I wasn’t interested in going out and having breakfast… on you.”

“She what?”

“Yeah, she called to invite me out to breakfast, her treat , and I mentioned something about it being on your credit card, and she went off on what a brilliant way it was to live.”

“Jesus,” he muttered.

She heard the fury starting to build in Burke’s tone. “I’m sorry.”

He froze. “Shirley, stop—”

“I know. I know. I need to stop saying that.”

“You really struggle with that, don’t you?”

“A lifetime of guilt will do that,” she muttered.

“Yeah, your family is a bit of a mess in that way, aren’t they?”

“ A bit ,” she repeated, with a broken laugh. “Who am I kidding? You know them all too well. Both of them are a mess.”

“How is your dad?”

“Running a new con, according to Silvia. I don’t know what it is and don’t want to know.”

“I hope it’s got nothing to do with me.” Burke gave a heavy sigh. “I gather the new boyfriend gets along really well with him.”

“Yeah, this guy has a history of racking up credit cards until the cards get canceled. Then they move on to somebody else. And I forgot to tell you, today she called him Frankie.”

“Frankie.… Great .”

“She’s hoping you find out about it the hard way, when your vehicle gets repossessed to pay these bills or when you go buy a house and have shit for credit.”

“Jesus, I forgot how nice of a person she is,” he quipped.

Still, Shirley heard the anger in his tone. “I know. I’m—” Then she froze.

“Yeah, I know. You’re sorry.” He sighed. “Listen. I need to get to work. Thanks for the update.” With that, he disconnected.

She didn’t even know what to say. What could she say?

Her family was a complete mess, and, in her own way, Shirley had done nothing but enable them because she didn’t know what else to do.

How do you turn in your own family and not have them turn on you like rabid animals?

She tried to shut off even thinking about her family as she arrived at work, sitting at the receptionist’s desk, answering the phone calls and greeting the people walking in.

Very quickly though, she got a phone call. A personal phone call at work. She was busy with the incoming lines when it came through for her. When she explained that she was at work, she realized it was the police. “Oh, crap.”

“I understand that you know something about a credit card scenario involving Burke Thomas.”

“Yes, I do,” she confirmed.

“I need you to come in and talk to me.”

“I will, but I can’t do it right now.”

“May I ask why?”

“I’m at work, and I really need my job.”

“I can certainly understand that.”

The telephone discussion continued, and they made arrangements for the afternoon when she got off work.

But, for the rest of the day, all she could do was turn around, looking at every door, to see who would be coming in, afraid that Silvia might somehow have found out that Shirley worked here.

She also realized that, as soon as her sister did find out where Shirley was working, she would be in trouble and should be prepared to make a quick move and find yet another job.

Just the thought was enough to make her sick.

By the time she got through work today, she was a nervous wreck. She walked to the police station to talk to the man who had called her. As she stepped inside and spoke to the front desk, she was directed to a small table. When she sat down, the man came over and joined her.

“I’m Detective Martin. Thanks for coming in. Do you want to explain what’s going on?”

She winced. “I can, but…”

“But what?”

“My sister’s boyfriend is dangerous,” she shared. “I know this is my sister’s fault, and I know that this is the right thing to do, but I really don’t want them to find out that I told you about them.”

He stared at her steadily for a long moment. “How dangerous?”

She winced. “I’m pretty sure that a good solid beating would be the least of my worries.”