Page 9 of Burke (The Haven #2)

S tanding outside the police station, Burke turned to Shirley. “Time for coffee?”

She nodded. “Sure,” she replied, with a bright smile. “I really am happy to see you. It was such a shock to hear what my sister was up to.”

“I remember being shocked a couple times, hearing some of the things that came out of her mouth,” he shared, “but I apparently never really understood just how depraved she had gotten. It just seemed as if she were…” He frowned as he thought about it.

“I don’t even know how to describe it, but it was almost like she just didn’t really realize that my money wasn’t a freefall for her. ”

“That’s pretty accurate. I don’t know where she got that from either because it’s not as if we had a lot of money growing up.

But you know, my dad always had credit cards,” she noted, with a frown.

“Credit cards and cash, and, looking back, I don’t even know where he got half of that from, especially since he wasn’t the type to work.

And yet he would say that I owe him for having raised me. ”

“Of course he would. I’m not sure that’s an accurate term, since it’s not as if he raised you. It’s more about you had no choice in the matter as to who your birth father was.”

“Sure, but he would still say that he put the food on the table and that I owe him for that,” she added.

“You could always go no contact .”

“I pretty well am with my father. I haven’t spoken to him in a very long time.

A year or two, maybe even three, now that I think about it.

” She shook her head. “Silvia is in touch with him all the time, probably mostly because the boyfriend gets along with him. Two peas in a pod.” When she slid her glance sideways at him, he shook his head.

“And, no,… I’m not missing her or carrying a torch for her,” he declared. “It was over pretty fast, once I realized who she really was, even though I didn’t know the half of it.”

“Yeah, sometimes I think she should come with a warning label.”

He laughed at that. “She absolutely should, and how sad is that?”

“Which is true, so why do I feel as if I’m being disloyal.”

“No,” he stated, facing her. “If and when you had family members who cared about people—instead of sizing them up as a potential mark, then ripping them off—you would be all for them,” he suggested.

She frowned but listened quietly.

“As a child, you’re not responsible for your parents or anything about them,” he stated.

“But when you become an adult, you become responsible for how much you have to do with them. And, if they’re involved in illegal activities, you’ve got to set boundaries.

Otherwise you’ll just get sucked into that madness with them. ”

“Which I’ve always worked very hard to avoid.”

“Yes, but now it’s crunch time, isn’t it? Because now you know how much damage they are causing to so many other people that the onus is on you to do something about it.”

“Which I am,” she pointed out, “and the cost to me could be hefty.”

“Yes, and I am definitely appreciative of that fact.”

“I really wish she didn’t have this boyfriend,” she muttered.

“You really think he’s dangerous?”

“I know he’s dangerous,” she declared, with a shudder. “He has this look in his eyes when he stares at me.”

“If he shows any interest in you, your sister won’t handle that well.”

“Neither will I,” she muttered. “He is so not anybody I want around me. I mean,… you’ve been gone a year,” she said, with a frown.

“Something like that,… maybe ten months.”

“And she hooked up with him right away.”

“He might be the one she was involved with while I was still with her,” he noted, “and, if that’s the case, she’s been with him quite a while then.”

“And that could be. She didn’t tell me about him very early on, and even then I knew she was going out with somebody new, but she didn’t tell me the details.

It’s better that way,” she conceded. “I don’t really want to know the details of her life.

I don’t want to know anything about her.

I really just want to live a life without them.

They’re not very far from here, but I’ve been trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life now. ”

“I thought you had some project management gig,” he replied. “Are you not still doing that?”

“No, the stress was killing me.”

He frowned as he thought about that. “I do remember you coming home after work, visiting with us or something, and you were absolutely racked.”

“Yeah, that’s about the size of it,” she muttered.

“The project management field is incredibly hard, and, with everything else going on, I just didn’t need the extra stress.

Yet it’s also where my training is, but I’m currently working as a receptionist. My sister finds that hilarious because I trained hard and went through all that, whereas she did absolutely nothing, and she’s living better than I am.

” His jaw worked, and she nodded. “Of course she’s living better because she’s not working, because she’s living on everybody else,” she noted.

“I get that, but it’s still a slam in the face. ”

“Of course it is,” he agreed, “and nobody likes that, particularly when you know that she’s cheating to get that edge over you.”

“And yet she’s not doing it to get the edge over me. That’s just an extra perk. She’s doing it because she feels perfectly entitled,” she explained.

“That’s the part that blows me away,” he admitted, with a snort. “How is it that anybody feels so entitled that they can hurt others just to get something for themselves?”

“I don’t even think that she feels so much entitled as she just doesn’t care. It’s providing her with the lifestyle that she wants, that she likes, and nobody is really there to stop her.”

“Well,… this will stop now,” he vowed. “I don’t know exactly how ugly it’ll get, but…”

Just then her phone rang, and it was Silvia. She placed her finger against her lips, so he wouldn’t speak while she was talking to her sister.

He reached over and hit the Speaker button.

“Hey. What’s up?” Shirley asked.

“What do you mean, what’s up?” Silvia snapped in a snarly tone. “The credit cards got canceled,” she grumbled, practically growling, “which means we couldn’t pay for brunch.”

“What did you expect?” she asked, with a sigh. “Obviously, at some point in time, he’ll find out.”

“Sure, at some point in time, but he shouldn’t have found out so soon.”

“What do you mean? As soon as people start checking in on their credit cards or if somebody notices a bill hasn’t been paid, he was bound to figure it out.”

“Yeah, but we haven’t had this one so long that a bill would even be sent out, not that it would go to his address anyway, and that’s the trick,” she snapped.

“You have to use it as heavily as you can in those first few billing cycles because, once the bills go unpaid, these companies start reaching out, sending letters and making phone calls. There are some early grace periods, but, once they start figuring out that nobody is paying, it’s not long before problems set in. ”

“So, what you’re saying is that he must have found out sooner than you expected, and now you’re pissed?”

“Of course I’m pissed. I had to pay for breakfast.”

Shirley’s eyebrows shot up at that. “I would say I’m sorry, but, honest to God, I don’t know how you expect anything different. You should have paid because you were the ones who ate it.”

“It’s still not fair,” she grumbled.

Burke’s eyebrows shoot up.

“He was always on top of his finances like that,” Shirley pointed out. “You complained to me many times that you could barely buy anything without him knowing. So clearly he’s used to keeping track of his credit cards.”

“Sure, that’s why he was always pissed at me for spending money, but he shouldn’t even have known about these.”

“It’s not as if he gave you his credit cards to use back then in the first place, so why wouldn’t he be pissed?

” Shirley asked. It was a conversation she’d had with her sister many times, “And you’ve gone well beyond using your former boyfriend’s credit cards with this deal.

Opening accounts in someone else’s name is beyond the pale, even for you.

This is no innocent lark, Silvia, and you are just as complicit as Frankie is. ”

“Frankie says it got closed really fast, but that it’s happened a couple times before, so it’s okay. We’ll just go get new ones.”

“New credit cards in his name or in somebody else’s name?”

“I don’t know,” she replied, her tone turning cagey. “I’ll leave that up to Frankie.”

“ Right ,” she muttered. “Has Frankie ever worked?”

There was a moment of silence before Silvia replied, now anger blooming in her tone. “Don’t you dare start slamming Frankie now. He’s figured this shit out and that makes him smarter than anybody I know. Even Papa is a loser when it comes to Frankie.”

“Did you tell Papa that?”

“No, of course not,” she spat. “He’s useful when we want him.”

“ Right , everybody is useful when you want them.” Shirley sighed.

“You’re not very useful at all. Look at you. You don’t even make enough money in your job to pay your rent.”

“I’m paying my rent just fine,” she snapped.

“Yeah, but that’s all. If you’d come to breakfast, we would have had you pay for us,” she shared, and then she started to laugh. “And that’s kind of like justice.”

“What do you mean by justice?” she cried out.

“If it had worked out, it would have been him paying for you, and he wouldn’t even have known it. But, as it turned out, it was him stiffing you, and you having to pay.”

Shirley shook her head. “Whatever. Look. I’m really tired, so I’ll go.”

“Of course, you’re tired. It’s that work shit, and nobody likes it. That’s why none of us do it.”

Shirley scrubbed her face with her free hand. “You may not do it, but most people don’t have a choice.”