Chapter Twenty
Matteo
I quickly pull up my bank app while I’m waiting for the elevator, hoping to see movements other than the daily after-lunch expenses.
But there is nothing, not that I am surprised.
I’ve set up notifications and there has been none since noon, like every day this week.
Monitoring the account linked to the card I gave Erin has become my new obsession.
Not to control her expenses but because I’m curious what she does with it.
At first she didn’t use it at all, but then she started to spend in one single place, a ridiculously overpriced coffee shop near The Bastion.
Every day, she surprises me with increasingly imaginative drinks like ‘Limited-reserve Panama Gesha micro-lot, slow-extracted by hand and served in a gold-infused cup to preserve temperature and aroma’ for sixty bucks a cup.
Whatever that shit is, I hope she enjoys it.
Her daily dedication to rile me has me raising my brows in appreciation and admiration every time, and I’ve come to wait for the notification like a junkie craving his next fix.
Because let’s face it, she does it only to provoke me.
And for now she’s used the card only for these sole daily expenses.
She must’ve found another way to some money.
I chuckle as I step into the elevator. My resourceful little ghost .
She doesn’t know that her rebellion only amuses me.
She could buy hundreds of luxury cars, and it would still feel like scooping out the ocean with her bare hands.
Hell, she could fucking buy hundreds of car factories, and my bankers wouldn’t even raise a brow.
What it does, however, is hook me more each day.
Because every monetary middle finger she gives me is proof that she’s thinking about me, unintentionally letting me take care of her, and fuck me if that doesn’t make my wretched heart kick in my chest.
When the elevator dings open and I step out into the private lounge of Second Circle, my club in the underground of The Bastion, D and Luc are already there, sipping whiskey. I sent them a group text last week, requesting a meeting tonight.
I join them and signal the waiter to bring me a glass. They both nod at me as I sit down in the booth. This one is private, tucked away in a room no one except select people have access to. It has been our informal meeting spot since I opened the place.
“Teo, what’s the matter?” Luc goes straight to the point.
I don’t beat around the bush. “I’ve unmasked the Ghost.”
“Motherfucker. No way.” They both say in unison, suddenly leaning forward.
“Who?” D asks.
“Before I tell you, I want you to swear that you won’t intervene or confront them. Let me handle it.”
They cast a glance at one another then D nods.
“Who?” he asks again.
I let out a breath, bracing for impact. “It’s Erin.”
There is a stunned silence. Then Luc lets out an unbelieving laugh.
“That’s not funny, Teo.”
“I’m not joking. She is the Ghost and she hid it well. But I confronted her with proof she can’t deny.”
They remain silent for another beat, then Luc exhales loudly.
“Damn, man, that’s fucked up,” he mutters.
“It makes sense,” D says after a long silence. “She revealed her existence when Lily was in danger. Only someone close to her would risk doing that.”
I nod. “Exactly my thoughts.”
“So what you’re saying is that our sunshine Erin is a hacker tracking bad guys on the dark web?” Luc asks.
“Yeah, and she’s skilled.”
“I can’t fucking believe it,” he goes on. “So, what now?”
“She’s working with me on the Manticore case.”
Luc’s jaw hangs open. “You almost got me until now.” He snorts. “There’s no way she’s working with you, she hates your guts.”
“Fucker.” I send him a withering look. “I had…incentive.”
They both stare at me with alarmed looks. My kind of ‘incentive’ usually involves bleach and a shovel, or at least gasoline and matches.
“I didn’t hurt her,” I grit out, annoyed.
That placates them and they down their drinks with pensive faces, processing the information.
After several minutes of contemplative silence, Luc breaks the quiet. “This came in two hours ago.” He unlocks his phone and taps the screen. D’s and my phones chime at the same time. I take mine out of my suit jacket to read through his email.
Luc fills us in while we read. “Source is solid, from New York. A shipment is being routed through our port. ETA is tonight, around midnight. Unmarked containers, flagged for ‘private logistics.’” He pauses. “Our source confirms it’s human cargo.”
A heavy silence falls.
My jaw tightens. “They’re running humans through our city?”
Luc’s expression hardens. “Looks like it. Doesn’t make sense though. No one’s stupid enough to try that here, not without our say-so.”
D downs his whiskey in one go and slams his glass on the table, eyes dark. “Unless they don’t care, or they think we won’t touch it.”
“Manticore?” I ask.
Luc meets my eyes with a shake of his head. “That’s the question.”
I lean back in my chair, fingers steepled. Everything about this stinks.
“We intercept, of course,” I say.
They both nod.
“I’ll handle it.”
D nods again. “Want backup?”
I shake my head. “I’ll take my crew, I want silence. We go in and out before anyone can so much as blink. If it’s clean, it never happened. If it’s dirty…” I down my glass and stand up, “I’ll want names.”
* * * *
The port is quiet except for the hum of cranes and the slap of water against the piers.
My men move like shadows in the dark, melting between rows of containers until we’re in position.
Three unmarked containers sit near the far end, lit by a single floodlight.
The air smells of sea salt and diesel. My boots are soundless on the concrete as I walk toward the four dockworkers loitering nearby.
I recognize every face. D’s men. Our men.
I don’t slow down, I want them to see me coming. When they finally see me, their faces go ashen and one of them looks ready to bolt. But then he spots my men closing in on them from every side, and he knows that any attempt of escape would be pointless.
They shift uneasily, one of them takes a step toward me with a forced smile. “Matteo—”
I grab him by the collar and slam him against a container so hard the metal groans. “Don’t ‘Matteo’ me,” I growl. “You know whose city this is, you know whose port this is. And yet here I am, standing in front of a shipment you let through.”
He starts to babble incoherently, and I can’t contain my rage any longer. I slam my fist into his gut, folding him in half. One of my men tosses me a crowbar. I catch it mid-air and drag it slowly across the container’s surface, the screech of metal shrill enough to pull teeth.
“Open it,” I order.
My men break the padlock and the doors swing open.
Stale air whooshes out, laced with the stench of fear. I step closer and my blood runs cold. A dozen girls are huddled in the dark, wrists bound and eyes wide with terror.
Ice cold fury runs through my veins as I turn back to the dockworkers. I grab the nearest of them and slam him against the container, the crowbar rammed into his throat.
“Who paid you to keep your mouths shut?”
He gurgles a reply and I ease the pressure to allow him to take a breath.
“Talk.”
He swallows hard. “N-Naples. Shipment’s been coming from there. The transit through this port…” He hesitates and I shove the crowbar harder against his throat before he goes on. “…it was approved. I don’t know who signed off, but it’s cleared.”
I narrow my eyes. “You’re telling me someone high up gave a green light to run girls through my city?”
He flinches but doesn’t answer, which is answer enough.
“I want a name,” I grit out and he knows damn well that it’s not a wish.
“I…I don’t know.” He sounds desperate. “The shipment’s been handled by a private shipping company for a client listed as…Geryon.”
I pause and look at him for several beats and watch him squirm.
“Matteo…I swear I don’t know more. W-we thought this shipment was clean since it has been approved. I swear…” He starts to snivel now.
I take a step back, releasing him and he crumples, coughing and gasping for air.
My crew starts cutting the terrified girls loose, moving them to the waiting vans to take them to our shelter where a medical team is waiting.
We will have social workers question them later, when they’ve recovered enough from their ordeal.
I motion to the other two containers and my men hurry to break them open.
The second container holds weapons. Crates of them. Military-grade rifles, boxes of ammunition marked in Cyrillic, like they came straight off some Eastern bloc black market.
The third’s packed tight with contraband, cases of counterfeit luxury goods, electronics stripped of serial numbers, and enough uncut cocaine to keep a small city buzzing for weeks.
Dark fury coils in my gut. Someone thinks they are smart enough to run their traffic through our city, through our port.
And someone with real weight signed it off.
Geryon. The name sounds wrong. It’s not a name, I muse, but a codename. And if it’s a codename, it could be Manticore.
I whirl around, whipping my phone out of my tactical vest to hit the group call button to D’s and Luc’s lines.
The traitors stay where they are, shaking and knowing that this was their last night working the docks. Or working at all, if it turns out they are involved.