Chapter 16

Chapter Sixteen

Brendan

I t's going to be late on Monday night by the time we finally get back into Chicago. We have comfortable sleeper seats on the train and our own room. It's giving us privacy and time to work, while Jordan pulls up intel on the fifty most dangerous people in the Irish families.

"Is there anyone you trust in the families?" Jordan asks softly as he writes out names on a tablet that can be easily wiped or saved as he glances here and there at his laptop.

"This is one of the drawbacks of not seeing anyone for years," Lía sighs. "I don't know who we can trust."

"Maybe, but there have been people who have said things to me over the years," I remember. "Mickey O'Brien has been asking me how you are for at least the last five years at events. He told me that if you ever needed help to reach out. I don't think he had any idea what was going on, but he's smart enough to connect the dots that something wasn't right."

"Does he have any strengths?" Jordan grunts, opening a spreadsheet on his laptop. This man has a sheet or a document for almost everything.

"He's one of Lía's cousins, though he's in his late thirties. Mickey has a trucking business, and has refused to let Seán use it to traffic people. He's firmly against the practice, and instead runs stolen cars to the border. The man makes a killing," I state. "I always respected that he could say no to Seán and not get dead."

"That's a talent in and of itself," Lía says, smirking. "We're going to need a way to supplement our resources as we change our stream of income. Daddy has that club too… what the fuck do we do with it?"

"What about rebranding it?" Jordan asks. "Shut it down and reopen it as an actual sex club with a membership. Sex sells, what if there's also an escort service within the club?"

"A night with an escort for sex?" Lía asks, responding with another question. "The woman goes free at the end of the night, right?"

"She or he keeps full autonomy of their choices, Princess," Jordan explains. "There will be very specific rules, membership requirements, and anyone who breaks those rules are subject to consequences."

"Banshee consequences?" I tease, brow raised.

"Eh, there will be so much paperwork and conversations about what isn't and is allowed that we can absolutely throw them to our Princess to handle," Jordan says. "People need to work, and sex work makes good money. In the same vein, there's a need for discretion in this and most cities. We can open sex clubs in different cities and not need to worry about money."

"Not that Lía needs to worry about it at all," I remind him. "You're rich, baby."

"This is true," she says. "I'm too young to fuck off to some beach and never work again though. I want to build something that I can be proud of. Sex clubs sound fun."

"Done correctly, they're very fun," Jordan says with a dark chuckle. "Alright, who else has approached you, Brendan?"

"The Macdonald brothers hated your father, Lía. You should have a meeting with them to discuss the changes you want to make," I tell her. "The last thing you want is to end up on some kill list because they think you're just like him."

"Add them to the list," she murmurs. "Who else?"

Over the next three hours, we make plans and calls, scheduling meetings for the next few days after we've had sleep and food. The train gives us space from other people, the ability to communicate with others without having trouble with signal, and no one can track us.

By the time the train pulls into Chicago Union Station, we're exhausted. Pulling our luggage behind us, Jordan calls a ride share from the app on his phone, and within minutes we're on our way to our town home.

Before I left, I wired the house with a security system for sound and video, but it's been quiet. No one's broken in, and the house itself isn't one that anyone would expect us to sleep in. It's a middle class residential neighborhood. We should be fine.

"I just want my bed," Lía groans as the car pulls up to the house.

"I feel that in my bones," Jordan mutters as we pile out of the car. He takes Lía's bag, and I can tell she's tired because she doesn't try to fight him on it.

Jordan finds little ways to spoil us, while I made sure Lía and he ate on the train. The food mostly consisted of snacks, but it's enough until we get up for the day tomorrow. Hopefully we get to sleep a bit without interruption. Fuck, I should find some wood to knock on.

Climbing the steps to the townhouse feels as if it takes too much energy, and Lía sighs as she unlocks the front door.

"Remember to disarm the alarm, milseán ," I say as she pushes it open slowly. We rarely would arm it while we were out, so it's not a habit to remember to do it.

"Shit, that's right," she mumbles. As exhausted as she is, Lía still is careful as she disarms the alarm and then clears the house of any dangers.

It's ingrained in her to check, a byproduct of our lives. While she's downstairs clearing each room, I run upstairs and check everything else.

"Clear here!" I call out, returning to our room and pulling off my clothes. I want a shower and my bed.

"Also clear," Lía yells, and I hear as her and Jordan's footsteps climb the stairs.

We have a ton of meetings planned for late afternoon tomorrow. That may be a bit opportunistic, but two days later we'll be inundated by the family members we plan to execute.

They are too dangerous to allow to live, and will refuse to give up their large menageries.

Fuck, it'll be interesting to release all of those people. What a mess. Ugh.

There's a lot of work ahead of us, and probably a shit ton of therapy in those people's futures.

"Is anyone hungry?" I ask, yawning. "I could order a pizza so we can eat in bed."

"Eating in bed sounds good," Jordan says as he walks into the room, eyes tired. "I'm exhausted, but I'm too wired to sleep yet. I want to check a few things first."

His computer bag is in his hand as he drops it on the desk and props up the suitcases.

"Always working," I tease him as I shuck off my pants, throwing them in the hamper. I'm going to need to do a few loads of laundry tomorrow. My weapons get placed on the table next to the hamper as usual, my hands moving on autopilot.

"Unfortunately, it may be like that for a bit as we get everything settled."

"It doesn't bother me," Jordan says, yawning so wide his jaw cracks. "I like being busy, and it helps to know I'm helping."

"You did a pretty great job with Bruin," Lía says with a sleepy smile as she pulls off his sweater. "Clothes off. My sheets are clean, and you're sleeping with us tonight and every night on."

"Yes, ma'am," he says with a chuckle, capturing her mouth with his lips as he tosses his sweater aside. Catching it, I shake my head as I toss it into the hamper. Between the two of us, Lía and I get Jordan and herself undressed.

"I'll place our order for pizza while you turn on the shower," I say, walking toward my pants where I left my phone. It was dumb of me not to remove it earlier. Fuck, I'm exhausted.

The only warning I have that something is wrong is the itching between my shoulder blades before the glass breaks from the window as something is thrown into the bedroom. The heat from it has me throwing myself on the ground, and I hear Jordan grunt before he's down with Líadan. Fuck, talk about catching us with our pants down. Motherfuckers.

An old fashioned Molotov cocktail is the culprit, but I unfortunately don't think I'll be able to put it out easily. The fire is racing through as it lights up the bedroom, and I reach for my pants, grunting as I pull them on and grab my gun where I left it on a low table. The bedspread and curtains are going up in flames as if whatever went through the window had an accelerant, the heat blistering.

Fuck.

"Lía," I bark as I look over my shoulder and begin to army crawl toward them.

"We're fine, Jordan was hit by some glass when it exploded. We really need to get the fuck out of here," she says, knocking over a suitcase to pull out clothing to quickly dress.

Gunfire follows the fire through the window from the street, another reminder to stay low as we scramble to leave.

Jordan grunts as he pulls on whatever Lía hands him, forcing himself onto his knees to yank down his laptop bag and barely save his equipment.

"I can hear people yelling outside," he says just loudly enough for me to hear as he gets to his feet, while hunching over.

Grabbing whatever towels I can reach from laundry that didn't get put away before we left, we hold it over our faces as we begin to run together. Gunfire follows us through the house and someone fires a machine gun from the street. The once quiet street no longer is, and it seems we've brought our family bullshit home.

"Basement," Lía yells over the noise as another fire bomb is launched into the guest room across the hallway from the room.

"More contingency plans?" Jordan asks wryly as he stumbles after us. There's blood running down the side of his body and back, and his sweatpants are loosely slung over his hips.

It's a good thing we aren't going too far. None of us even were able to get shoes on.

For fuck's sakes.

Wrapping my arm around Jordan's waist, I bear some of his weight as I cover us. It looks as if they're trying to get us out of the house to either take us or kill us. Either is up in the air at the moment.

"Come on, you bastards! The little queen will burn if you don't leave the house," Cormac yells. Why didn't I kill him at the club?

"I'm adding him to my torture list," Jordan growls viciously as we move quickly and carefully down the stairs.

"You have a list?" Lía asks as she hits the floor to begin army crawling toward the basement door.

There's more smoke down here, and the men outside have been busy throwing in more flaming torches. I have no idea what they used as an accelerant because it's moving too quickly to just be alcohol or gasoline.

Jordan crouches down with me as we race across the main floor, and the gunfire continues. I can already hear the wails of the fire trucks, and know that the police will be following soon. Cormac must either be stupid or desperate to attempt this in our neighborhood.

I don't know who ratted us out or found us, but I'm really liking the sound of this list of Jordans.

"I was going to surprise you with it," Jordan mutters.

The fire is getting worse around us as Lía opens the basement door and we pile onto the landing before she slams the door shut. Luckily it hasn't reached the point where everything is pressurized, and all the handles are boiling hot.

…not that the basement door even has a handle to be worried about.

Fuck, there goes the damn house, because nothing can be saved. It's a good thing Lía already was talking about leaving. While we've had good memories here and in the park across the street, we need to move on either way.

Somewhere we can make new memories with Jordan.

It's already cooler in the basement as we drop the towels and take giant breaths of clean air. Lía and I bought this place from a doomsday prepper that gutted the basement and made sure the air vents in here weren't the same as the rest of the house. It has its own backup generator too.

The plans for the basement aren't on any of the city blueprints, and can't be accessed by anyone other than Lía or I. She had to press on the right part of the wall to get the door to pop out, otherwise it appears to be a smooth surface.

"Keep going, baby, don't think about it," I tell Lía as she stops for a moment, inevitably thinking about the house. "You wanted to move anyway, remember?"

Lía snorts in amusement as she walks down the stairs and nods.

"I didn't expect the house I'm currently living in to be set on fire while I was naked," she grumbles as Jordan follows her.

His back has shards of glass all over it from when the window broke, and he appears twitchy.

"How are you feeling, old man?" I tease him while worrying that he's going to go into shock before I can get him to the only doctor I actually trust right now.

Dr. Kurtz lives in a rundown area of Chicago, and has never worked for Seán. Before he moved to Chicago, he traveled around working in different hospitals until he landed here. I go to him whenever I'm shot, which happens on occasion.

Dr, Kurtz enjoys telling stories when I'm really drugged up about the time he spent in South Carolina specifically, and how even suburbia wasn't without its faults. He also did one of Líadan's surgeries because he has surgical privileges at a few of the hospitals.

Just because he won't ask questions and doesn't care about our criminal background, doesn't mean he's not a professional. Thank fuck for that, because Seán had no idea how to take care of another person.

Lía had already moved out when she was having crippling menstrual cramps, and Seán kept telling her suck it up.

The surgery was minor, but she had a cyst that was the cause of her major pain last year. Of course, I was a basketcase throughout it all, and we never told Seán that she even had surgery.

If he couldn't be a good father to her, then he didn't deserve knowledge about her wellbeing.

Lía and I rebelled in small ways, until we were able to overthrow his entire regime.

"Remember what I said about spankings," Jordan complains as he walks further into the basement. "This is impressive."

"They can't hear us, and have no idea this is here," I say, going to where my backup weapons and clothing are. "We bought the house from a doomsday prepper. This qualifies, I think."

"A little dramatic, but I would say this is going to save our asses," Jordan grunts. "Fuck, I'm bleeding like a stuck pig."

"I'm afraid to remove the glass," Lía says, moving around to look before she winces. "Shit. Okay, we're grabbing what we need and then leaving."

"Where are we going, sweet girl?" he asks, closing his eyes against the pain.

"Here are sneakers, Jordan. Since we're headed to the subway, I have an oversized sweatshirt for you too," I say, helping him into it once his intense hazel eyes open. They're clouded with pain, which is difficult to see, since he handled being tortured better than this glass.

The muscles in his back shift as he pulls on the sweatshirt, and the sounds Jordan makes from the pain cause goosebumps to rise all over my body.

"Do not even think of bending over, shithead," I growl, dropping to my knees to put on his shoes. "I'm so fucking pissed off at the state of your back. The window fucking exploded, but we had special glass put in because of how bad the storms can get here."

"Everything is burning so hot, it has to do with their accelerant," Jordan mutters as he shoves his feet into the shoes. "Thanks, I think if I had to put these on I'd probably have embarrassed myself with crocodile tears."

"They're only crocodile tears if they're fake," Lía says as she pulls on a sweatshirt. "The rest of the house is going to be destroyed, but the basement should be fine. This is all flame retardant, even against whatever they put in their shit. While we were planning to move eventually, this house was good to us."

"Our first place together," I say, standing, taking a moment to pull her into my arms and kiss her hard. "It's a lot of change really fucking fast. It's allowed to suck, Lía."

"Well, it does," she sighs. "They're going to be waiting for us to come out or die. Since neither is going to happen, we need to go."

Opening a trap door that opens down into the subway tunnels below us, she picks up the bag she's been packing while I talked to Jordan and helped him.

"Grab a flashlight, and Jordan this ladder isn't going to be very fun to go down?—"

"It's fine, Princess. Hold onto my flashlight in your bag until I get to the bottom," he interjects. "I'll manage."

"Okay, I'll stop babying you," Lía says, a smirk playing on her lips as she holds a smaller flashlight between her teeth before she climbs down the ladder.

"We'll take the tunnels to a station, and then it's a straight shot to Dr. Kurtz's home," I say, already shooting him a quick text. "He's going to be able to numb you up and start the unpleasant process of getting all that glass out of you."

"Sometimes I wish you'd both lie to me," he mutters before Lía yells up for Jordan to climb down. She made sure to go down first so that she could have light for him, and not get taken out by him if he fell.

We're logical if nothing else.

As soon as Jordan is down, I vaguely hear the sounds of an ax and sirens outside. The basement is so well insulated, it's difficult to tell.

Bye, house. Thanks for being a port in the storm.

Beginning to climb down the ladder with my own backpack filled with weapons and snacks, because I'm still fucking hungry, I close the trap door behind me, where it melts back into the floor perfectly. You'd never even know it was there.

Taking a flashlight from Lía when I get to the bottom, I help Jordan as we slip into the tunnels and into the night.

"Do you have cameras outside of the house that'll show you who was there tonight?" Jordan asks as we walk in the dark.

There's no ambient light down here, and the sounds of rats as they scuttle about are loud.

"Yeah," I murmur. "I can access all of that from my phone. They didn't trip any of the sensors because they didn't get close enough until they started throwing shit through the windows."

"Good, I want to look at those and add them to my fucking shit list," he says as he walks stiffly.

"I have a feeling you're going to keep Lía and I very busy with this list, Jor," I say, chuckling darkly. "I'm glad for it, because I'm a bit pissed off that they burned our house down. Regardless of thinking about moving."

"No one wants to find themselves homeless and naked," Jordan says before he chuckles. It's almost a giggle and so unexpected, Lía and I snicker with him.

Hearing Lía laugh is the only thing that makes any of this bearable.

"Homeless and naked sounds like a really fucked up movie," I tease him. Our laughter is the release of our shared experience. While we're not out of the woods completely, we are safer.

"Thankfully, that's not the kind of entertainment I'll ever manage," Jordan says, setting us off again.

The trip through the tunnels and to our train passes quickly, and then we're using the abandoned train stop to step easily onto the train to get to Dr. Kurtz's neighborhood.

"Stay awake, Jordan," I bark as I prop him up. Blood loss is a concern, but there's not much I can do except keep the glass where it is for now.

"I'm resting my eyes," he grunts. "I'm tired and didn't get my nap."

"You were awake earlier and wanting to take over the world," Lía teases him, though her brows are pulled together in worry. Her fingers are curled into my thigh, because I won't let her hurt herself and she knows it. The pain keeps us both focused, so it's a win-win situation.

"You don't want to sleep on the subway," I remind him. "We're getting off at the next stop, anyway. Getting jarred awake sucks. Don't go to sleep. Stay with us."

The words help rouse him, and he looks a little sharper. I know it's because he's fighting through the pain and haze. Jordan Miles is a tough motherfucker, though we've been testing his mettle recently.

"Fine," he says. "Tell me how you're going to make Cormac pay for this, and don't spare any details."

Like a fucked up story time, Lía and I tell him everything we have planned for the man who was Seán's right hand. He'll be a screaming shell of a man by the time we're done, and I'm rock hard by the time we get off the train.

"He's expecting us," I say as we walk through the quiet streets to 145 Wilder Street. It's a quiet brownstone that he owns, large enough to use the basement for his medical needs when people wander in.

Ringing the doorbell, I nod as Dr. Kurtz opens the door. He's an older man with wrinkles along his almost colorless spring-green eyes from smiling so often, and medium build. Dr. Kurtz has spoken about retiring soon, since he's in his early sixties now, but I know he loves the adrenaline rush of visits like this.

"Fancy meeting you here," he jokes as he opens the door wide. "Is there soot in your hair? Do I need to make sure I have oxygen masks?"

I had noticed the three of us were breathing harder, but didn't think too closely at it. Being in survival mode sometimes means I miss things. Fuck.

"Our house burned down, so that wouldn't be a bad idea," I wheeze as I walk in with Jordan.

"Every time I tell myself I want to retire, something like this happens, and reminds me why I don't," he mutters as he closes the door behind us. "Can you lot make it to the basement?"

"Yep," I say, my arm tightening around Jordan who is stumbling more. The last thing I need is for him to fall down the good doctor's stairs.

"I heard the rumblings of conversation about you Líadan," Dr. Kurtz says as he makes it to the bottom of the stairs and goes to wash his hands in the sink.

Sitting Jordan down heavily on a chair that isn't comfortable but will be easier to wipe down if he bleeds on it, I let Lía answer the doctor.

"I wasn't exactly quiet," Lía says with a shrug. "There's going to be more conversation and mess before I'm done, Dr. Kurtz."

"Well those people can go somewhere else for treatment or just fucking die," he says, drying his hands before he puts on gloves. "You deserve a life, and if you need to stir up a little chaos to make it happen, so be it. I'm very selective about who I'll treat anyways."

"I know, and we appreciate it," Lía says, her voice sounding raspy from the smoke as she sits down.

"Yes, oxygen for all of you," he murmurs as he pulls tanks over on their little carts and gets us situated. Taking scissors, he cuts the sweater right off Jordan's body. "No use trying to take it off the old fashioned way."

Looking down, he has Jordan lay down on an examining table with his oxygen mask. Pulling out medication, something that looks like a large pair of tweezers, and syringes, he blows out a breath before he puts on a mask.

"I should ask who you are, but I think you're doing your best to hold on at the moment," Dr. Kurtz says. "You've had quite the night, so I'm just going to knock you out with some good meds, and then work on your back. I'll speak to you when you wake up."

Giving Jordan a shot in his arm, the good doctor waits for him to be completely knocked out before beginning to work quickly.

"Now that that's taken care of, tell me everything that happened," the doctor demands.

With nothing else to do, and because it'll be on the news in some way tomorrow, Lía and I tell him what happened.