Page 1 of Turning Tides
Chapter 1
Shane
Six years ago I’dbeen digging in my couch for loose change to buy shitty ramen. My shitty job didn’t pay the bills and when I could afford gas, I drove for Uber, or sometimes DoorDash. My brothers weren’t much better off than me. Kieran’s student loans were choking the life out of him, and most of the time we didn’t know where Brodie was.
Of all the stupid things that could have turned our lives around, it was a lottery ticket. If it had been hard work, we’d have been millionaires a million times over. But that’s not how life worked. It was blind luck. A lucky whim. A gut feeling.
It wasn’t enough that I’d never have to work again, but it was a scary big amount of money. The first thing I did when the money hit my account was to call my brothers. I wanted to make their lives better too. The Taggart family had been through hell and the universe had decided to make good on some debt it owed.
Growing up, we’d all been told we had college funds. A windfall from our dad’s parents when they passed that had been placed in trust. Only, Dad spent it all before we saw a dime. He lost the house too and that’s when Mom moved us three boys into a single bedroom apartment she could barely afford.
She worked her ass off to get us through high school. Kieran went to college for a fancy accounting degree. I remembered him saying that the world was always in need of people to do taxes. I think he had apremonition. Maybe he knew that he’d be my first call when those lottery numbers flashed up on the screen.
Kieran was now debt-free. Brodie was traveling the world like he’d always dreamed about. And as for Mom… well, I’d tried to get her to retire. I bought her a nice house with a white picket fence and everything. I set her up with a monthly stipend so she’d never have to worry about food or bills. She kept her job as a receptionist for a while, but when a coworker needed a place to stay after leaving her abusive husband, Mom asked her to move in until she got on her feet. Four years later, Mom was running a women’s shelter.
And me? I bought a house. Nothing fancy. Nothing grand. I didn’t want or need much space. I was single and didn’t need a huge house to rattle around in all by myself. My best purchase, though, was a bar—The Anchor. Kieran liked to razz me for the name, since the ocean was a short eight-hour drive away. But it was my anchor. My safe place.
Unlocking the back door, I went up to the now empty apartment that was above the bar. When I’d first bought the building, the bar was in great shape, but the upstairs had been used as a makeshift drug den. The whole upstairs had been gutted and redone. I’d had tenants in it over the years, most recently Mickey Underwood, one of my bartenders. Just like my mom, I couldn’t resist someone who needed help. I’d charged him a pittance for rent which I funneled to my mom for her shelter.
Kieran’s heavy footsteps followed me into the space. “I saw you come up. Hey, it looks better than the last time I saw it up here.”
“Yeah, Mickey did a great job fixing the place up while he stayed here. Mostly new paint and stuff, but when he moved out, I had the floors replaced.”
“You know you could rent this out for a mint, right? It’s a prime location, and even though it’s above a bar, there’s people who work nights and wouldn’t notice. And downstairs is quiet all day.”
“I know, but I like to keep it for emergencies.”
“You mean rescues.” Kieran shook his head. “You’re as bad as Mom.”
“I should be so lucky to be half the person she is. So should you.”
“Just don’t forget to look after yourself.”
I rolled my eyes. Kieran was a pain in the ass, but he was a well-meaning pain in the ass. He served not as my conscience, but my wallet. Clutching the purse strings and keeping me from giving all my money away. Not that I would, but… okay, I might. Not on purpose, but it was easy for me to see things I could fix with a little bit of money. I knew how hard it was to be hungry and cold and worried all the time. I couldn’t fix their whole lives for them, but sometimes I could make it a little better. Kieran kept me from going overboard.
“What brings you by, Kieran?”
“I can’t drop in to say hello?”
I scoffed. “No, actually. You’ve never been a man subject to his whims.” I glanced at him from the corner of my eye and saw his mouth twitch with amusement. Busted. “Spill.”
“Okay, so I was looking at the books and you told me to let you know when your investments had reached a certain point. Well, they have. And then some. I’ve sent you an email with the details and the numbers.”
I pulled my phone out and checked right then and there. It was a damn good thing the place was furnished because I dropped down onto the couch. “How’d you pull that off?”
The thing about money was that it was easier to make when you had money to begin with. Kieran liked to gamble, but instead of slotmachines or cards at the casino, Kieran played the stock market. I’d given him an initial investment of ten grand and told him to come see me when he turned it into a hundred.
“You did all this legally, right?” I stared at the reports he’d sent detailing every exchange, every loss, every gain. The gains were impressive.
“You’re an idiot. Of course it’s all legal.” Kieran sat next to me on the couch and draped an arm over my shoulder. I might be his big brother, but Kieran looked out for me. “What are you going to do with it?”
“I’m going to give you another ten grand and make you do it all over again, first of all.”
Kieran laughed. “I knew you’d say that, so I’ve already started over. That’s what’s left after I took ten grand off the top. So what are you going to do with it?”
Kieran knew I wasn’t making money just to have it. That I wasn’t looking to hoard as much cash as possible to sit on it like some money-loving lizard.
“Mom’s all set at the shelter. I might talk to Jonah Bennett.”
