Chapter 10 Eian #2
“I’ll get drunk once we’ve dealt with these assholes and they’re in jail.”
“They’re not going to jail,” I tell him, wondering if he truly thinks that’s the end-goal here.
“Oh.” His eyes open in surprise and I can physically see him digesting the news.
He sits down slowly in one of the two brown leather sofas in front of the fireplace.
“It’s just that . . .” I keep pouring my drink, deciding to give him time to gather his thoughts, but when he still doesn’t speak by the time I’m sitting next to him, I know I’m going to have to push.
“What?” I ask.
“When I came back to the city and started working as an anchorman, I had to turn in all my research to the police. I actually had a good relationship with the commissioner of the NYPD. I guess it just hit me that I’m . . . Well, it’s stupid, forget it.”
“It’s not stupid,” I say, maybe a bit more forcefully than necessary. “I’ve only ever lived this life. I’ve never had to adapt to such a drastic change, except when I took over the family. I think you’re allowed some time to adjust.”
“Thanks,” he mumbles, and after a long moment where he stares unseeingly at the painting on the mantle—the one that shows two boys playing on the shore of a lake—he shakes his head just like he did before dinner and looks down at the coffee table where the brand new laptop is sitting.
The briefcase I gave him this morning is right next to it.
He takes a drive out of his pants pocket and gets to work.
I sip my whiskey as I watch him set up the laptop then connect the drive to it. A progress bar appears on screen, and he puts the laptop away to take out a manila envelope from the briefcase.
“So, I have—had this hacker friend. Okay, acquaintance,” he corrects himself without looking at me.
“He’s really good, and though he can hack anywhere, he mostly looks for bad people.
Anyway, he knew to tell me if he found something big that he couldn’t just shut down or figure out, and he found this website.
” He passes me a sheet of paper with the screenshot of a website on it, and every word I read, every inch of it is disgusting.
“It’s for the auctions, and that’s how I found out about the human trafficking ring.
He managed to get some information off it, but not much, mostly offshore bank accounts that can’t be traced unless you hack the banks, and he wouldn’t do that. ”
“How did he know it was happening in the city?”
“The one name he could link to this website was a guy named Luca Marcia, and he lives here. He assured me this Luca hadn’t left the tri-state area in years, at least not legally.
He didn’t even have a car to his name. So I found him, followed him for a few days, and found him hanging out around your casino in Chinatown. ”
“How do you know I have a casino in Chinatown?” I ask, worried because that shouldn’t be widely known information.
“Because I saw you walk out of there one night, when I was hoping to catch him there again,” he says, a bit dismissively, but I wonder where the hell he was that I didn’t see him—or fucking Blake.
“In any case, that’s what made me think maybe you were involved, but then a few weeks later, I saw him talking to Cotroni. ”
“Lucian’s second in command,” I hum thoughtfully.
“Yes, and it was clear they were friends. I saw them in a diner and managed to bump into Luca when he was walking out. All I got from his pocket was a receipt—”
“You pickpocketed him?” I ask, beyond impressed.
“Yes,” he answers, voice all business as he once more turns to the computer.
“Ah, here it is. These are the files of the bank accounts we managed to find, the usernames they’re linked to, and the even shorter list of accounts we could get more info on.
All these statements are more than a year old, though, so . . .”
“They could still give us a name, and I’ve got someone coming in two days to help with this side of things.”
“Who?”
And now he looks at me.
“Seamus O’Malley,” I tell him in an even tone.
“And you think he’s good enough to go poking around in the dark web and hacking into foreign banks?” he demands, his back straight and looking like he’s ready to start hissing at me.
It’s an attractive look, but such an interesting reaction . . .
“He’s twenty,” I start, trying to keep my amusement at bay. “Like a nephew to me. And he’s probably the second smartest person I’ve ever met. Hell, he was the smartest when he was ten, but I’ve expanded my horizons since then.”
I like that not one word was a lie. I really don’t feel like lying to Colby.
“I can’t know if he can do all of those things until he gets here and we ask him, but he’s the only person I trust to help us with this.
Now, since it looks like we’re going to have to go through about a million lists of endless numbers, why don’t you print everything and I’ll go get us something to snack on. ”
I stand and leave before he can say anything he might regret or anything I don’t want to hear. It’s true that there’s no way of knowing if young Seamus can help, but I don’t feel like bickering with Colby because he won’t even wait to meet him.
So I go to the kitchen, grab two cupcakes from my secret stash, and make us each a coffee. I have no idea how Colby takes his, though that’s something I’m hoping to rectify, so I put together one of those fancy trays Celly likes and take it back to the library.
Colby’s watching the printer spit out paper like it’ll stop doing its thing as soon as he takes his eyes off it.
“Come here and take a minute.”
It’s a bitch that I wonder whether he does it because he feels he has no choice but to follow my command or because he likes the suggestion. Just another thing I’m not going to figure out until I use my words.
The whirl of the printer working keeps us from an even more awkward silence as he adds a splash of cream to his coffee and takes a bite of his cupcake.
“Jesus, this is good,” he says with his mouth still full.
“I know, it’s from my secret stash, which I never share with anyone.”
“Really? No one?” he asks, scepticism dripping from every word.
“Not even Bran. But then again, his sweet tooth is milder than mine.”
“That surprises me,” he says before taking one more bite, and I wait before asking.
“That I don’t share or that I have a sweet tooth?”
“That you have a sweet tooth.” He takes the plate and scoots back to rest against the sofa, and holds it up to catch any crumbs. “This really is great. I thought I’d found the best cupcakes in the city, but these beat them. Where are they from?”
I debate for only a second whether to tell him or not, but then again, Harry and I have gone to great lengths to hide our relationship, and no one knows Theo’s the baker anyway.
“It’s called MP. It’s in—”
“Soho, right?” He nods sagely. “I knew that place couldn’t be beat. It’s my favorite too. Well, it used to be when I lived in Manhattan.”
“I need to work hard on my self-control so I don’t go there every day,” I tell him, and do my damndest to hide the pride I feel for my nephew. He really is the best—
“Did you know that no one knows who the baker is?” he asks excitedly and sits up a little. The new light in his eyes is a more muted version of the one he had when he walked out of the bank this morning.
“No one?” I play dumb, liking this side of—
“Well, I do,” he says and tilts his head in a mock bow.
“You do?” I can’t quite hide the panic I feel at that, but I guess he doesn’t notice it, or maybe mistakes it for surprise.
“Yes.” That excited twinkle gets brighter.
“A colleague of mine was a lifestyle reporter and did a piece on it, that’s how I found out about it.
One of the things that she said was that no one knew who the mystery baker was, and just for fun I went to take a look, fell in love with the sweets, and then spent a few weeks investigating during my free time. ”
“How did you find out?” I think I even manage to sound mildly amused this time, but fuck, this could be really bad.
“Wow, you’re really intense about your sweets, huh?”
“What do you mean?” I might need to work on my poker face around Colby.
“You’ve just got this hyperfocused look right now.
But anyway, I went and looked at the city records first, and saw the building used to belong to the Crawford trust, which is not a lead at all since basically everything used to belong to them at some point.
” I’m so glad he focuses on the last couple of bites of his cupcake instead of me.
“And now it belongs to the same company that owns the bakery.
So then I looked into the tenants of the building, because a few people who own buildings in Manhattan live in them, but no dice there, everyone had jobs I could verify.
“Then I canvased the building for a few nights, trying to see if anyone came in or out multiple times, but that was a bust too. Until I went in one day, and who was there but a very famous athlete. I got in line and overheard him talking to the employee at the counter. And that’s how I found out the baker is the athlete’s partner. ”
I breathe easier when he doesn’t say either Mike or Theo’s name, or the word husband. That would be close to a dead giveaway, because even now there aren’t many athletes with husbands.
“You won’t tell me who it is?” I ask, feeling like testing him a little, and with the safety of my family on the line, I don’t feel even a little bit sorry.
“No, I won’t,” he says, his voice going higher-pitched, but he laughs a little when his eyes clash with mine. “I don’t want you to threaten the baker’s family and kidnap her to come live here so you can get treats twenty-four seven.”
Sneaky, sneaky, Colby.
I can’t help but smile.
“I like that you know when to keep a story in the dark.”
“Well, duh.” He shoves the last bite of his cupcake into his mouth. “I’m in the business of ruining only bad people’s lives.”
“Then why don’t we dig in?”