Chapter 2
KATE
“Katie!” Mam knows I hate the little-girl nickname. “Open your door this instant, young lady!”
Typing furiously on my laptop, I glare at the group chat that has been boiling over for the last hour, since the Swiss job collapsed. Six months of non-stop work… Of carefully coding exploits… Of getting this close to breaking into Banque Wagner Privée…
And I hate Lone Feckin’ Wolf. This isn’t the first time we’ve gone up against the gobshite. But this is the first time his taunt has turned my team against me.
Back to coding school for you.
DarkMoney666: Whatever, Ghost.
DarkMoney666: If you can’t do the job, maybe we need someone new
DarkMoney’s a fucking eejit, easily the worst coder on our team. But he worked some cryptocurrency ransom deal just before Christmas, then spent his dosh on new computers for all us Red Cap Raiders. If push comes to shove, the guys might side with him over me.
Mam slaps at my door with the base of her palm. She could make more noise if she curled her fingers into a fist, but that might risk her manicure. Her voice is dangerously sharp as she shouts, “Don’t make me get your father involved, Katie.”
The Red Cap Raiders think I’m a thirty-year-old Indonesian man living alone in a penthouse apartment in Jakarta, working as a vice president in a Dutch bank by day and as a hacker by night.
I wish.
I’m a twenty-six-year-old woman, trapped in my parents’ home in Baltimore, the oldest of two daughters to a captain in the Irish mob.
And I’m about to be thrown out of the Raiders, the only club I ever wanted to be in.
Well, the best defense is a good offense. Time to be offensive.
CyberGhost: You think YOU have an answer for Lone Wolf?
CyberGhost: Think YOU can get past him?
CyberGhost: I’m waiting
CyberGhost: DarkMoney you cocksucker
CyberGhost: Icekiller?
CyberGhost: Shaddow?
CyberGhost: MaskedMarauder?
CyberGhost: Anyone? Forgot how your keyboards work motherfuckers?
CyberGhost: Come on you fucking pussies
CyberGhost: What you fucking got?
Dark, Ice, and Shaddow are morons. They’re hired hands, brought in a year ago, when I thought Red Cap was finally going to break into the big time.
MaskedMarauder is my only teammate who comes close to matching my skill at hacking.
He can cut to the heart of any programming problem, slicing away all the bells and whistles to deliver simple, elegant solutions.
But he gives caution all-new meaning. It takes him half an hour just to choose a new password.
“Katie,” Mam calls. “You leave me no choice.”
And my bedroom door flies back on its hinges, the doorknob punching a fist-size hole through the most recent repair in my bedroom’s plaster wall. Mam drops to her knees just inside my room, framed by one of my father’s enforcers, the gorilla who just kicked in my door.
“Why?” Mam wails, the scar above her lip quivering as she beats her breast like some penitent saint.
“Why am I cursed with a daughter who tries my soul? Why, on this day, when all I ask is for our family to stand with all the other clans? St. Brigid defend us—just one single, solitary chance to show that we Baltimore Lynches belong…”
I know the rest of her complaints by heart.
She never would have fought for her life against those shitehawks in a Donegal back alley if she’d known how cruel the world would be to a woman with a scarred face.
She should have stayed in Ireland instead of coming to Baltimore’s Canton neighborhood where Da works like a dog with nothing to show for it.
She should have become a nun when she had the chance, taking the veil to avoid being cursed with a daughter like me…
The recital loses some of its power for being delivered the third time this month. And the fist Mam clenches above her oft-beaten breast is lined with at least ten carats-worth of diamond rings. Plus, she’s wearing an eight-thousand-dollar Oscar de la Renta gown.
It’s not hard to figure out why Da’s branch of the Irish mob always runs in the red.
“Why?” Mam cries, increasing her volume. “Why?”
“Enough!” my father bellows from the hallway. “Shut yer fuckin’ gob, Orla.”
Mam stops mid-wail.
I get my height from my mother. My red hair, too, along with my dark green eyes and porcelain skin that burns if I even glance toward the sun.
My father, Barry Lynch, stands five feet four in his platform shoes.
He’s got black hair, brown eyes, and cheeks that could stand in for a cherub’s.
A fool might question if Mam had spent time with the proverbial milkman, but then they’d have to answer to my father’s raging temper.
Da’s killed more than one man with his bare fists.
To be fair, I inherited that temper. Along with Da’s gift for foul language. And I’m not opposed to using my own fists when things don’t go my way.
“Downstairs,” Da orders his enforcer. Then he cajoles my mother to her feet. “Darlin’, don’t hurt yerself.” He holds her bejeweled hand over his heart, transformed into a solicitous, loving husband now that he’s getting his way. “Fetch Breagha from her room now, and both o’ ya down to the car.”
Mam bats her eyelashes until he kisses her knuckles. “A Lynch woman offers up her pain to the clan,” she says, pretending to be brave. With one final glare in my direction, she heads off to find my perfect, well-behaved sister, leaving me with my beast of a da.
“And you,” my father says, leveling his beady gaze on me.
“You have five minutes to get your narrow arse downstairs. Makeup on. Dressed for Fiona Ingram’s wedding.
” Before I can argue, he says, “Cross me on this, Kaitlín, and I swear to God I’ll send you back to Athgarven tonight.
And this time, I’ll have you stripped to make sure you’ve got no phone. ”
The Lynch clan hails from Athgarven, County Donegal in Ireland, for generations back.
The village has a church, a pub, and a pile of stone that stopped being a castle a thousand years ago.
Just last year, I spent a month in the Irish countryside as payback for ruining my parents’ thirtieth anniversary party.
I couldn’t help myself. The man I sent to the emergency room with a broken nose and a ruptured testicle wouldn’t take no for an answer.
In Ireland, I spent twenty hours a day online with the Red Cap Raiders. I alternated business development with conquests in Winter Reckoning, the online game where we hang out when we aren’t at each other’s throats.
I’d go mad in twenty-four hours if I was stranded in Athgarven without my phone.
“Do you understand?” Da demands.
I glare.
“Do ya understand me, Kaitlín Minola Lynch?” He doesn’t raise his voice. He lowers it. And that’s how I know he’s truly serious, that I’m one minute of backtalk away from being stranded in Ireland.
“Yeah,” I say, shelving any complaint I might make about his using my full name. “Five minutes.”
I close my splintered door and turn back to my computer. My challenges to the Raiders have gone unanswered. Disgusted with the lot of them, disgusted with myself, I log out of the chat and turn to my closet.
I’m tempted to show up at the wedding of Boston’s Irish mob queen in yoga pants and a Cheetos-stained hoodie, but the lingering threat of Athgarven changes my mind.
Instead, I opt for a black shirt with long sleeves, cut like a man’s.
I tuck it into an emerald-green pencil skirt and tug on a pair of unlaced Chuck Taylor’s.
I take my last thirty seconds for makeup. Da asked for it. Da will get it.
I slather on cosmetics like I bought them at a fire sale — eyeliner, shadow, lipstick. All of it dark. All of it smudged. All of it daring anyone in the world to complain. What I lack in skill, I make up for with a very heavy hand.
Tucking my phone into one of my skirt’s slash pockets, I take the stairs two at a time.
My father’s driver is holding the door to the limousine.
I hate driving through Baltimore in this thing—nothing shouts wannabe like a stretch limo on the waterfront.
But Da insists symbols like this make people respect the Canton Crew—even when he’s in debt up to his bollocks.
Whatever.
My father glares at me as his driver closes the door, but I’ve followed his orders to the letter, so he doesn’t get to complain. Predictably, Mam reaches for the vodka before the car clears the gates of the family compound.
My sister shakes her head at my outfit, but she’s always on my side. Clearly doing her best to distract our parents, she asks, “Da? Tell us again who will be there?”
What she means is: Which eligible bachelors are attending?
At twenty-three—three years younger than I am—Breagha is the Canton Crew’s most valuable asset. She’s beautiful. Polite. Smart. Everything a mobster could ever want in a wife. Everything I’m not.
If my parents marry off Breagha first, they’ll be stuck with me forever. No yoke in his right mind would ever claim the Lynch girl with a vicious tongue she’s not afraid to use, the one with claws that never get sheathed.
So Breagha’s not going anywhere until I’m safely out the door. My parents might as well hang a sign around my neck: Broodmare For Sale. Cheap.
As the limo winds through the city, my mother produces a deck of playing cards from her tiny clutch purse. She shuffles like a Vegas shark and deals full hands to Breagha and to me. It takes me a moment to realize each one presents the dossier of an eligible mob bachelor.
“Jesus Christ!” I shout, tossing my cards onto the floor.
“Language,” Mam warns, tapping one of her talons against the closest card. “Come on, girls. Names, facts, and figures. You can never be too prepared.”