Page 1 of Duncan (Irish Mob of Boston #1)

Duncan

The middle child. The invisible child. The child, overlooked and neglected by most parents, who often sat alone, unnoticed.

No one expected much from the middle child.

That was what the oldest and youngest were for.

The oldest child bore the weight of parents’ hopes, dreams, and wishes, while the youngest received a lifetime of protection and prayer for survival.

No one ever thought the middle child would be the last one standing. Then again, with the ever-present threat of violence and the constant, low hum of illegal activity in the Irish Mob, anything seemed possible.

Now I was the only child.

Well, at least I thought I was.

A year ago, the realities of our lifestyle finally caught up with my younger brother, Duane, affecting him significantly.

I grieved as they slowly lowered his casket into the ground and quietly said goodbye to him.

As for the oldest, my sister Darcy had vanished, leaving behind a chilling silence of unanswered questions.

With no leads or evidence of her existence, I didn’t know if she was alive or dead.

So that just left me.

The middle child.

Or so I thought until I made a trip to the Midwest.

Now, I wasn’t so sure anymore.

As it turned out, Darcy left more than questions behind when she disappeared.

She left a secret.

One none of us knew.

Secrets fueled the Mob’s success.

But secrets never stayed hidden forever.

There were a lot of reasons people kept secrets. Fear was the biggest reason. Secrets had the power to protect people, and they had the power to destroy people. They could hide shame, and they could get justice.

It all hinged on whether someone kept those secrets or exposed them.

Darcy ran in fear, and her secrets protected her son.

Duane had tried to discover the truth of those secrets. He had been searching for Darcy and according to Lannie, Sal’s younger brother, he was close. Lannie also believed that was what got Duane killed.

I had a duty to my family.

I had a duty to find the person who murdered my little brother and find out what happened to my big sister.

I had a feeling one would lead to the other. Only I didn’t know which one to start with. Duane’s widow told me she’d packed up everything he had in boxes at her daughter’s house.

So here I was, knocking on my niece’s door.

“Hey, Lollipop.” I greeted my niece with a kiss on her cheek when she opened the door, and stepped in without waiting for her permission. She lived in a small apartment in one of the buildings I owned in downtown Boston.

The front door opened into an open space that contained her living room, dining room and kitchen all in one. To the left there was a hallway with two bedrooms on either side and a bathroom at the end.

“What are you doing here, Ducky?” She closed the door behind me, and I smiled. When she first started talking, Duncan was too much for her, let alone Uncle Duncan. She pronounced my name Dunky, and Duane taught her to call me Ducky. It stuck.

“Your mom said there were some boxes here from your dad’s office I could pick up.”

“Oh yeah. She told me you might come by for those.”

She eyed me suspiciously. “What?”

“What’s he like?”

“Who?”

Colleen rolled her eyes at me and sighed like a teenager. “Justin. Mom told me he lives in the town she moved to.”

Shrugging, I eyed her back. “I don’t know. He’s a punk ass kid like his dad was.”

That wasn’t true. Micah seemed like a good kid.

“He’s got a woman, so don’t go getting any ideas,” I told her, my finger pointing in her direction for emphasis.

She rolled her eyes again, before adding, “I was just wondering. You hear about someone your whole life and then suddenly find out he’s actually alive, and it makes you curious.” She shrugged.

“Well, curiosity killed the cat,” I reminded her.

“Satisfaction brought it back,” she retorted with a smug grin.

“I thought you were seeing that Leering kid?”

“It’s O’Leary, and no, we broke up.” I followed her down the hall toward her spare room.

“Why?”

She gave me a shrug, but no answer. That shrug was another way for her to roll her eyes.

Grabbing her elbow, I spun her around. “What’d the little fucker do?”

“Nothing, we just weren’t compatible.”

“Bullshit. Your mom said you really liked him.”

“I thought I did, but I don’t.” She wrenched her arm free and continued down the hall.

“What the fuck did he do, Colleen?”

“I am not telling you,” she called over her shoulder.

“I’ll put Cian on it and find out. You may as well tell me.”

She stopped and dropped her head back, looking at the ceiling.

“Why can’t you let it go? The whole point of dating is to see how much you like someone. Not all of them work out.”

“What. Did. He. Do?”

Letting out a heavy sigh, she turned toward me and relented.

“He cheated on me, ok? Happy now?”

“No, I’m not fuckin’ happy.” I pulled her into my arms and whispered, “I’m gonna fuckin’ kill him.”

Pulling back, she scowled at me. “You will do no such thing.”

“No one hurts my Lollipop.”

“He didn’t hurt me. I wasn’t sad. I didn’t even cry when I found out. I was actually relieved. I had been trying to figure out how to break things off. He just made it easier.”

“He still gets punished.”

“Ducky—”

I held up a hand, cutting her off. “It’s done. Now, where are the boxes?”

In total, I hauled six boxes from my niece’s house to mine. I regretted setting her up on the tenth floor. Duane had a shit ton of paper to go through so I called Cian and Mac over to help me go through it.

“What the fuck is all this?”

“This is everything he collected over the years.”

“All about Darcy?” Mac asked.

Taking in a deep breath, I let it out slowly as I looked at the papers I had already pulled from one of the boxes. My shoulders slumped when I answered, “No. This is everything he had records of since he got made.”

“That’s thirty fuckin’ years!” Cian shouted.

“I know. Which is why I need your help.”

“What about Sal?” Mac asked as he shuffled through the stack of papers in his hands.

“Sal gets nothing unless we find something to give him.”

Cian and Mac both stopped what they were doing and looked at me.

“Uh, Dunc...”

Setting down the stack in my hands, I looked at my friends. Cian was tall, about six foot four. But thinner than the rest of us. That’s not to say he wasn’t strong. You didn’t make it to where we were in the organization without learning how to fight your way out of certain situations.

Mac was roughly the same height as me, about six foot two.

But he was bulkier. His dad was a shady motherfucker, so Mac learned to fight early, and he learned to fight dirty.

Aside from Tyran, who was big everywhere, Mac was the biggest of us all, and the only one who hadn’t quite reached fifty yet.

“Sal doesn’t need to be distracted. He’s looking for Tyran. After sneaking away in Nebraska and then killing the Krueger brothers that were under Sal’s protection, he needs to focus on that. For all we know, this could be a wild-goose chase.”

They both nodded, and we got back to work sorting through thirty years of records.

It took us two days to go through all the boxes, separating everything into years. My brother wasn’t the most methodical. I knew he thought Tyran was the reason he never made captain, but it was me. He didn’t have what it took to be a leader, so he always worked under me.

Trying to organize this mess showed me I’d made the right decision.

Once we had the records separated by date, it was time to go through them and organize them by subject, or job.

That took almost a week.

“Jesus Christ, Duane was a fuckin’ idiot.”

“Duane was disorganized, which is why he worked for me. But make no mistake, he wasn’t stupid. If there is information to find about my sister, it’s here in this mess somewhere.”

I knew I would find it as long as I kept looking. I didn’t know why Duane hadn’t come to me with this.

Yes you do.

He wanted to make captain.

I guess he thought if he could find the one who got away, Sal would be so grateful he would make him a captain.

Except it wasn’t Sal’s decision. He’d left it exclusively to me, and I never would have moved him up. I loved my brother, but Duane was too impulsive. Too reckless.

The only thing Duane had ever done with any forethought was getting his wife, Maureen, out and sending her to Lannie in Nebraska. I was happy for her being out of the life. Though, I guess with her connection to Lannie, and his connection to Sal, she wasn’t really getting away. But she was safe.

Now that we knew what Tyran had done, there was no reason for him to go after Maureen. He proved that when he snuck away and ran back to Boston with his tail between his legs.

As I sat there thinking about it, I couldn’t help but wonder why Tyran went after Kyle and Kevin. What information was he looking for? What did the Krueger brothers have to do with Darcy? Or was that a separate betrayal Tyran would answer for?