Shared by the Sinners

Shared by the Sinners Diana Stark Copyright Copyright © 2023 by Diana Stark All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher or author, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law. Design: Temys Designs Editing: Kelly Hartigan Contents 1. Chapter 1 2. Chapter 2 3. Chapter 3 4. Chapter 4 5. Chapter 5 6. Chapter 6 7. Chapter 7 8. Chapter 8 9. Chapter 9 10. Chapter 10 11. Chapter 11 12. Chapter 12 13. Chapter 13 14. Chapter 14 15. Chapter 15 16. Chapter 16 17. Chapter 17 18. Epilogue Chapter one K ieran Another man would have trembled at approaching Nucky Johnson’s suite like a lover coming to his sweetheart’s house. I had long since ceased to be that man. It did not take me all that long to gain an audience with the man who ruled Atlantic City as his father did before him. For all the American proclamation of hatred of monarchy, they sure loved their dynasties. Nucky Johnson had always tried to cultivate the impression of accessibility. Bullshit, if you asked me. The man was tough as nails underneath his lavender suit. He wouldn’t have survived here for long enough, his daddy’s connections or not. “Kieran O’Shea.” Nucky Johnson looked at me while he lounged in a plush armchair in his ridiculously opulent suite. “Would you care for a glass of whiskey? The best McCoy, I assure you.” My brother Declan would have scoffed at these preliminaries, the pretensions at gentility among gangsters, but I was not Declan. One could learn a thing or two from those at the top had always been my position. Now, Nucky Johnson probably didn’t have to do much to be appointed as his daddy’s undersheriff when he was just old enough to vote. Some things you could only luck into. But others you could learn. “Mr. Johnson.” I smiled a thin smile and took a sip. The Scottish whiskey, transported here right from the moors by McCoy the famous smuggler, burned my throat sweetly. It was a demonstration of power—let a Northside gangster likely more accustomed to a bathtub gin taste real opulence. I would have said one could learn from that, too, but this particular lesson I’d memorized long ago. O’Shea hospitality was known for its generosity—and put the trembling fear of God into lowlife bastards as much as Declan’s sharpshooting could. “I take it you didn’t come here for the pleasure of my company, Kieran.” “I didn’t though your company’s pleasant as always. I came to discuss my family’s expansion.” Family. Such a warm, innocuous word. Not in my world, though. In my world, it glimmered with cold steel. For the O’Shea family and the Northside Sinners were one. “Expansion into what? Are you planning to take another speakeasy under your protection?” “Naturally, Mr. Johnson. Provided the speakeasy will be somewhere around Broadway.” “An expansion into New York City, then. My, Kieran, you’re a bold bastard.” “Hardly. I’ve been born on the right side of the blanket, unless my mother isn’t telling me something.” “Fortune favors the bold, they say. But put yourself in my shoes, Kieran…” Oh, I gladly would. And, one day, I will. “If every bootlegger who bought stills for poor Northside families and told them to brew moonshine from corn sugar for a pittance tried to go into New York, New York would have soon burst. Or their heads would.” The smile on Nucky Johnson’s face was still pleasant. “I’m sorry your minions aren’t keeping you informed, Mr. Johnson. The days of alky cookers are way behind me. My boys are running rum now. The good stuff from Nassau. The best of them.” “The coast guard hasn’t caught them?” he asked sharply. “Not once.” “That’s impressive. You must have grown a lot in these past few years.” Another man would have taken this for a compliment, but I knew these games better. This fat man with his valets and his red carnations in the buttonhole would not be playing them for long, though—at least not with me. Let the other squabbling gangs of Atlantic City eat each other under his gaze like crabs in a bucket. I didn’t give a damn. But my family was going to grow into a power of their own once they tasted the air of New York City. Some found it unpleasant. Even dangerous. I found it alive with opportunity. “You flatter me, Mr. Johnson.” I showed my teeth. “Not at all. Given that lapse some years before, anyone would have thought the Northside Sinners finished and done. I’m glad to see it was not the case, of course. I’ve always enjoyed watching promising young men fulfilling their promise.” “I hope you aren’t referring to the years of my mother’s rule, Mr. Johnson. During the war, she was as good with keeping the family together as any.” Again this phrase. Keeping the family together. One would’ve thought Saoirse O’Shea was reading her wee children Washington Irving by the fireside. “No, I’m talking about the year before the war. Of course, you were very young then.” “Young and stupid, yes,” I replied crisply, intending to close the topic. “The Howards took advantage of that.” “The old Howard boss was not the one to tolerate a youngster rising too high on his watch. I imagine you wish you were the one who filled him with lead.” “Yes,” I replied quietly. “Yes, I do. But what happened was my own fault. I should’ve watched my back better.” Not my own back, to be precise. But in a family such as ours, the difference was nonexistent. It was a momentary lapse but a lapse that cost me everything. The soft, callow boy who allowed this to be done lay dead in the fields of Flanders, however. Or, perhaps, he had been shot in an alleyway of Atlantic City. I was a man now—a man who always protected my own. “The Howards