Chapter 17
COLE
Idon’t intimidate easily.
That’s the result of a lifetime spent facing down people who had more discipline, more power, and more money than I did. My warden in the juvenile detention center. Shannon’s various “managers”. Just about anyone with a twenty-dollar-bill in his wallet, the entire time I was growing up.
Now that I run Lone Wolf Enterprises, I’m the most controlled person I know.
I notched my first billion dollars three years ago, and a fortune like that just keeps growing.
My personal wealth would make me the twenty-first richest country in the world, if I was a nation.
I can sway world markets with the click of a few computer keys.
But Barry Lynch thinks he’s well on the way to putting me in my supposed place. Baltimore’s Irish mob boss greets me in his home office. He’s invited me to Sunday Roast—family dinner, served in the middle in the afternoon—now that I’m joining the clan.
Lynch’s chair tilts back so far it’s nearly horizontal, the angle he needs to rest his feet on his desk. His stomach fights his suspenders like a harpooned whale. I wonder if he likes the taste of his cheap cigar, or if that’s the only one he can afford.
He nods to the armed guard who frisked me at the gate. “Go ahead, Lochlann. This one isn’t a threat.”
If he means I’m not armed, he scores one point. But if he means I can’t take him out, he sadly overestimates his safety. The black belt I hold in krav maga isn’t as obvious as Lochlann’s cheap Bryco pistol, but it’s a hell of a lot more likely to incapacitate an enemy.
But Barry Lynch isn’t my enemy. He’s my client. And soon to be—strange as the phrase sounds when I voice it in my head—my father-in-law.
He takes three puffs on his cigar before he gestures to the chair across from his desk. “Take a load off, son.”
I manage to hide my bristle. There’s only one man in the world I allow to call me son, and Mr. A has nothing in common with the underworld boss eyeing me now.
I settle into the leather chair, making a point to spread my knees, to curl my fingers over the edge of the worn armrests. In my experience, short men don’t like it when other people dominate the space around them. Especially short, fat men with criminally bad toupées. Too bad for Lynch.
He fortifies himself with another acrid puff. “I figure this is as good a time as any to show you what you’ll be working on,” he gloats.
“I’m intrigued,” I lie.
“I did my research on you,” he says. Puff. “Read all about that Swiss bank, and what you did for them.” Puff. “I’m sure you understand corporations, with market caps in the billions.” Puff. “But I don’t know if you’re familiar with personal finances that clear a billion dollars.”
I’ve done my research, too. Barry Lynch is lying through his tobacco-stained teeth.
Baltimore real estate isn’t going up in value, at least not the blighted blocks he owns in Harlem Park and Druid Heights.
The Baltimore Port took a huge hit when that bridge collapsed, and the mob has lost millions on its share of routine traffic diverted up and down the coast. Baltimore’s mayor has turned over half a dozen times in the last ten years, corruption scandal collapsing corruption scandal.
It costs a lot to keep politicians bought, and word on the street is both the Italian mafia and the Russian Tarasov bratva pay a lot more than the Canton Crew.
The way I read things, the twenty million dollars Lynch is paying me is his last-gasp strategy. Whatever he’s taking from Kate and her Red Cap raids isn’t enough anymore. Lynch must believe cryptocurrency is the only way out of his spiraling disaster.
In other words, he’s making the classic error of a grifter’s mark. He’s lured by huge numbers he doesn’t begin to understand. He’s over-extending himself to a massive extent, betting on something he doesn’t know how to measure. And like every victim of a con game, he’ll fall. Hard.
Not that I’m going to scam him. My days in the life are over. I provide fair value to every one of my clients. Even the ones who aren’t selling me their daughters.
Lynch is back to bragging: “They say crime doesn’t pay, son, but they don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about. This is the good stuff, young man. The secrets. The crimes. This is what I’ll only share with family.”
He heaves his feet off his desk, cracking a fart into his cloud of cigar smoke. Turning his computer monitor toward me, he brings up a bare-bones spreadsheet. I spend the next hour and a half letting him walk me through files I could navigate in five minutes—theft, extortion, gambling.
Along the way, my mind wanders.
My blackmailer’s noon deadline came and went over an hour ago. I’m fairly confident they won’t release my client names. Not yet. The instant they make their information public, it loses all its market value. I’m certain, though, that another threat will arrive—probably before the end of the day.
I’m curious to see what else my enemy has found.
I’ve reached out to Lyon Momentum and White Apple Systems a dozen times in the past week.
No one’s returning my phone calls, emails, or texts.
While I haven’t been formally fired, I don’t expect to be on either Christmas-card list come the end of the year.
Lynch taps his computer screen, pointing out a new line of business he’s picked up for his crew.
He’s taken over sanitation for Baltimore; his men run the trucks responsible for collecting garbage within the city limits.
He’s sloppy, though. His records are all over the place, assets and liabilities tracked a dozen different ways.
Lynch is trusting, too. He insisted on dragging me into the Canton Crew, on my marrying Kate, but nothing’s official yet.
I could walk away tonight, his retainer in my bank account, his data in my brain, and the only recourse he’d have is his hired guns.
They’d never track me down, if I decide to leave the country.
They might not get me if I stay right in the heart of Georgetown.
But most of all, Lynch is stupid. He’s measured his wealth by dollars and cents, completely overlooking his most substantial asset: Kate herself. There’s no reason for him to pay my outsize retainer. Kate is absolutely capable of doing everything he’s asking me to do.
I know that. I’ve seen her code. I watched, just two nights ago, as she powered through a Snow Star challenge in Winter Reckoning. Kate’s a prodigy; she has a gift for solving the most complex problems in the world.
I created Winter Reckoning specifically to find talent like hers.
It’s taken a couple of years to build the game’s reputation, but now it routinely attracts the best hackers around. They’re lured in by the easy bits, the equations they can solve in their sleep. They stick around for the real challenge—the Snow Stars.
And I get first dibs on acquiring premier programmers. Lone Wolf only has a handful of employees, but I’ve pulled every one of them from Winter Reckoning. I reach out to the players who’ve stuck around the longest, the ones who accumulate the most points.
Kate Lynch currently tops the charts.
I’ve known the Red Cap Raiders were on the game platform for the past three years.
But I only realized that Kate is my number-one ranked Snow Star player after the botched attack on Banque Wagner.
Studying her code from the inside, I finally gleaned her internet address, skipping past all the bells and whistles she used to hide her identity.
Last night, I reviewed her in-game statistics. She’s made more kills than any other player. She’s completed the most Snow Star projects too. And she’s done it all while limiting in-game damage to her avatar. She doesn’t take unnecessary risks.
But Lynch doesn’t know any of that. He doesn’t understand Kate. He just sees a girl he can sell, a bride to foist off on some unsuspecting schmuck—me—so he can build clan connections with his far-more-biddable younger daughter.
Idiot.
Lynch finally finishes guiding me through the computer landscape I’ll be reshaping for the better part of the next year.
I know he’s through because he leans back in that chair, ignoring the squeal of tortured gears predicting that the next time he reclines might be his last. Putting his feet up on his desk, he searches for his cigar, which he’s long-since reduced to a pulpy stub.
“Let me ask you a question,” he says.
I wait.
“This cryptocurrency shite. Someone’s brought me a deal, says it’s a sure thing. A new currency I can buy before it breaks big.”
“Who brought it?” There are a thousand scammers out there. Hell, Shannon would have launched her own coin, if she was still kicking.
Lynch gets a crafty look on his face. “You may be family, son, but I don’t share all my secrets.”
I hold up both hands, letting him have his way. But I ask, “What’s the name of the coin?”
He doesn’t want to tell me, but he likes being the smart guy more. “StarCoin. My source says there’ll only be ten million coins—no more, not ever.”
“That’s how these things work. Early investors make money distributing the coins. Once they’re gone, decades down the road, money’s made on transaction fees.”
I can’t actually blame him for looking confused. Crypto is complicated. But that’s an excellent reason for newcomers not to pour a fortune into it.
Complications make people lose a lifetime of savings to grifters. Folks buy Florida real estate when they’ve never been south of the Mason-Dixon line. They invest in North Atlantic wind farms without learning about seasonal changes in the price of energy.
Lynch squeezes a raspberry sound past his lips. “I don’t care about the details.”
He should.
“I just want to know if it’s a sound investment.”
I think about telling him to give the project to Kate. Let her see what she can find. But I know that isn’t what he wants to hear, and I’m always reluctant to alienate a client the first time we meet in person. “I’ll look into it,” I say.
He nods, satisfied. “Now, there’s one more thing,” he says. “I have some accounts down in the Caymans. But I keep hearing about Georgia—the country, not the state. It’s supposed to be the newest tax haven around, and the best for—”
I know about tax havens. I know about Georgia. I’ve done my research, because that’s my responsibility as a billionaire.
But I don’t get the chance to share that knowledge with Lynch, because his office door suddenly crashes back on its hinges. Kate barges into the room, hurtling across the well-worn carpet and planting both palms on her father’s desk.
Her hair whirls around her face as if she’s wreathed in fire. The sleeves of her hoodie are pushed up like she’s ready to take on a heavy bag in a boxing gym. Leaning into her father’s space, she shouts, “When the fuck were you going to tell me?”