Chapter 1 - The Debt Behind the Peaches
June slammed the coffee pot onto the counter and whispered, “Tell me what my husband did.”
Cormac Riley placed a contract beside her hand.
A handwritten number showed through the final page.
$2,400,000.
But underneath it were two words June had never expected to see.
HER PAYMENT.
Cormac Riley watched her read them.
June Holloway had spent six weeks learning that grief had practical requirements.
Death certificates had to be ordered.
Utility bills still arrived.
Employees still needed paychecks.
Eggs still spoiled.
Coffee still had to be brewed before sunrise because men coming off the night shift did not care that the woman pouring it had slept three hours and cried through one of them.
Ray had been dead forty-two days.
June knew because she had counted every one.
She had not counted them romantically. There were no candles beside his photograph at home, no journal filled with memories, no dramatic conversations with his empty side of the bed.
She counted them because forty-two days was exactly how long she had been discovering that the man she had loved for twenty-seven years had apparently been a stranger.
The first secret had been a bank statement.
The second had been a key.
The third had been the ledger behind the canned peaches.
Now Cormac Riley stood inside Holloway House Diner before opening time and offered her the fourth.
June lifted her eyes.
“What does ‘her payment’ mean?”
Cormac’s face revealed almost nothing.
He was good at that.
Men like him probably survived by making silence more frightening than shouting.
At fifty-three, he had the appearance of someone who had stopped needing to prove he was dangerous years ago. Gray touched his temples. A narrow scar crossed his right eyebrow. His black shirt was open at the throat beneath a charcoal suit that probably cost more than June’s walk-in freezer.
His right fist rested against the wooden door.
He had locked it three minutes earlier.
His two men remained outside.
June glanced at them through the glass.
“Look at me,” Cormac said.
“I’ll look wherever I want. It’s my diner.”
Something shifted in his eyes.
Not anger.
Almost amusement.
It disappeared.
“You knew about the debt.”
“I knew about a number.”
“That isn’t the same thing.”
“No.”
“Did Raymond tell you where the money went?”
“My husband stopped telling me important things somewhere between our twentieth anniversary and dying on my kitchen floor.”
Cormac studied her.
June hated that look.
Men had been looking through her for years.
At twenty-five, people had called her pretty.
At thirty-five, they had called her Ray’s wife.
At forty-eight, after years of twelve-hour shifts, two miscarriages, thyroid medication, swollen ankles, and a body that had stopped apologizing for taking up space, people mostly called her ma’am.
Ray had stopped looking at her long before he stopped breathing.
Cormac Riley, however, looked directly at her.
That was somehow worse.
“Sit down,” he said.
“No.”
“June.”
Her expression sharpened.
“You locked me inside my own business, told me my dead husband owed you enough money to buy half this block, and handed me something that appears to put a price on my head. You don’t get to tell me to sit.”
Cormac withdrew his hand from the door.
“All right.”
June looked at the contract again.
The arrangement was bizarre.
Holloway House would remain under her ownership.
All outstanding supplier debts would be paid.
The delinquent mortgage would be cleared.
The building’s property taxes would be brought current.
In exchange, the diner would provide private catering services at addresses supplied by Riley Hospitality Holdings for twelve months.
There were confidentiality clauses.
Transportation requirements.
Menus.
Times.
A provision requiring June personally to supervise every event.
It was too generous.
Which meant it was dangerous.
“You want catering?”
“I want you.”
June stared at him.
Cormac seemed to hear the sentence after he said it.
“For the work,” he clarified.
June gave him a dry look.
“Good recovery.”
His mouth almost moved.
Almost.
She flipped another page.
“I have three waitresses, one cook who threatens to quit every Thursday, and a dishwasher who’s seventeen.”
“You’ll be provided staff.”
“I don’t want your staff.”
“You’ll need them.”
“For what?”
Cormac said nothing.
June pushed the papers toward him.
“There it is.”
“What?”
“The part you haven’t told me.”
He looked down at the contract.
Then back at her.
“Raymond wasn’t gambling.”
June had assumed he was.
The strange withdrawals. The hidden accounts. The meetings he claimed were supplier appointments. The enormous debt.
“What was he doing?”
“He was moving money.”
“For you?”
“No.”
The answer came immediately.
That frightened her more.
Cormac stepped away from the door and approached the counter.
“Three years ago, money began disappearing from businesses connected to my organization. Small amounts initially. Then larger transfers. Someone built a system that made the losses look legitimate.”
“And you think Ray did it?”
“I know Ray participated.”
June’s throat tightened.
“My husband could barely reset the Wi-Fi.”
“He didn’t build the system.”
“Then who did?”
“That is why you’re useful.”
She laughed once.
It contained no humor.
“You think Ray told me?”
“I think someone believes he did.”
Cormac nodded toward the window.
June followed his gaze.
Across the street, Mr. Alvarez was no longer raising his security gate.
He stood completely still.
A black SUV had stopped beside the curb.
Not Cormac’s.
Cormac’s expression changed.
It was tiny.
But June saw it.
“Do you know that car?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Friend?”
“No.”
One of Cormac’s men outside touched his jacket.
The other began walking toward the SUV.
Cormac moved quickly.
He came around the counter.
“Back room.”
June didn’t move.
“What?”
“Now.”
“I’m not—”
“June.”
Something in his voice stopped her.
Not authority.
Urgency.
The passenger window of the SUV lowered.
Cormac caught June around the waist and pulled her below the counter.
A crack shattered the morning.
The front window exploded.
June hit the floor.
Glass rained over the stools.
Cormac covered her with his body.
Another shot punched into the wooden shelving where her head had been.
Outside, tires screamed.
Then silence.
June’s ears rang.
Her hand was pressed against Cormac’s chest.
His heart was beating hard.
So was hers.
“Are you hit?”
She shook her head.
He examined her anyway.
“Cormac.”
He stopped.
It was the first time she had used his first name.
“Get off me.”
He rose and helped her up.
The front window was ruined.
Coffee cups lay broken across the floor.
Mr. Alvarez had ducked inside his shop.
Cormac’s men were running back.
June stared at the bullet hole in the shelf.
Six inches above the canned sugar packets.
“That was for you,” she said.
Cormac looked at the hole.
“No.”
June turned.
His eyes were on her.
“That was for you.”
Cold spread through her.
Cormac picked up the contract.
“You asked what I’m really asking you to do.”
June could barely hear him over the blood pounding in her ears.
“I’m asking you to stay alive long enough for me to find out what Raymond left you.”
“I don’t have anything.”
“Someone thinks you do.”
His phone rang.
He answered.
Listened.
His gaze hardened.
“When?”
A pause.
“Keep him there.”
Cormac ended the call.
“Who?”
“One of my men found something last night.”
“What?”
“In Ray’s car.”
June swallowed.
“The police gave me Ray’s car weeks ago.”
“They didn’t find this.”
Cormac reached into his coat.
This time he removed a small brass key sealed inside a plastic evidence sleeve.
June recognized it immediately.
It matched the key she had found inside Ray’s winter boot.
She had one exactly like it at home.
Cormac saw recognition cross her face.
“You’ve seen this.”
June said nothing.
“June.”
She thought of Ray’s key hidden in the flour tin above her refrigerator.
Then she remembered something else.
The night before Ray died, he had stood in their kitchen holding that same tin.
She had assumed he was looking for cash.
Maybe he had been hiding something.
Cormac stepped closer.
“How many keys are there?”
June opened her mouth.
A heavy knock came from the diner’s rear door.
Both of them froze.
The diner was still locked.
The rear alley entrance could only be opened with an employee key.
Another knock.
Three slow taps.
June stared toward the kitchen.
Cormac quietly reached beneath his jacket.
Then a voice came through the door.
A voice June had not heard since her husband’s funeral.
“June? Open up. Ray told me what to do if he died.”
May you like
The handle began to turn.
Someone already had a key.
