Chapter 21
THE WOLF
Matteo
The afternoon sun bleeds across the towering glass of the first-floor atrium in Gemini Tower like a warning flare. I’ve been standing here, in front of the clear walls for the past half hour like a sitting duck.
Where are you, Donal? I couldn’t have made your job any easier, asshole.
Slipping my hand into my pocket, I pull out my phone. The high-tech Gemini tracker shows Cat’s burner drifting north. Relief loosens something tight in my chest.
“Good girl,” I whisper.
Finding her phone number in my slacks hours after she’d left me in that alley was a gift I never saw coming. And I can’t reflect on what it means. Not right now. Or I’ll lose sight of my objective and fuck up everything for both of us.
A voice crackles in my earbud. It’s Leo, one of the Gemini guards. He used to be my personal bodyguard as a kid. “We’ve got rooftops covered to the east and west. Two cars on the curb. You step outside, and we’re there.”
“Copy,” I murmur, then step through the revolving door and into the bright cut of afternoon.
The city noise hits: horns, heels, and a bus releasing a tired sigh. And under it, I feel the pressure. That familiar prickle along my spine that says someone is writing your obituary.
I don’t look back. I move south with the crowd, phone in one hand and jacket undone, the picture of a man who believes he’s invincible. The reflection in a restaurant window reveals what I want: a tall shadow pacing me half a block back. Dark coat. No hurry. No interest in being subtle.
Donal McKenna.
I angle off the avenue into a service lane that dead-ends between a hotel loading dock and a cinderblock wall.
The trap is textbook: one exit, overhead scaffolding, and two of my guys already posted as construction workers, hard hats hanging low.
A black van idles with the engine off. Leo’s in there with a tranquilizer and a canvas wrap in case this turns messy.
I walk to the far wall, pocket my phone, and wait.
Donal rounds the corner and the temperature drops.
He’s broader than I remember, beard thick and shot with auburn, and eyes as flat as pond ice.
A scar runs along the ridge of his knuckles like punctuation.
He takes in the scene, first me, the blind wall, the dock door, and the scaffolding.
Then he smiles like we’re about to play a game of cards.
“Rossi,” he hisses.
“McKenna.”
We regard each other like old colleagues at a wake. Even though I’ve only seen the man once in my life… four years ago. Or at least that’s what I remember. He could have been at the Quinlan compound that day, but it was utter chaos.
“What brings you to Manhattan on this lovely spring day?”
“I think you know why.” His eyes darken.
“Why don’t you enlighten me?”
“I’ll tell you one thing, you sure like to be seen.” He glances at the glass tower behind me. “Makes the hunt so civilized, polite even.”
“I figured I’d save you the trouble of shooting me in the back.”
He tuts, amused. “In my line of work, we don’t call that trouble.”
“You’re welcome then.”
He lifts a nonchalant shoulder. “Let’s cut the bullshit, Rossi. The first trigger failed so I’m here to make things right.”
I let the grin slice across my face. “Don’t be so hard on your wee little sister. Killing me isn’t that easy.”
Something mean glints in his eyes. Surprise and anger. “Not my little sister. My blood, yes, and my business, always.”
“So business sent you to clean up her mess then.”
“Business sent me to end yours.” He rolls his shoulders, gaze flicking once to the roofline. He clocks the hard hats, then glances back at me like it doesn’t matter.
Leo’s voice is a thin thread in my ear. “He’s alone. On your word.”
I keep my hands loose at my sides. “You came all this way to shake my hand, Donal?”
“No, to tell you something before we finish this.”
“By all means.”
He steps closer, boots whispering on grit. Up close he smells like stale beer. “While you’ve been staging your little theater in the atrium of Gemini Tower, I set my table elsewhere.”
“Meaning?”
“I don’t know what you did to her, how you got in her head… But it doesn’t matter anymore.” He grunts. “Tiernan didn’t trust you to sit still.” His smile widens, now wolfish. “Quinlan isn’t a patient man, nor one to take failure lightly. He’s trailing her down even now.”
Cold drops into my gut like a stone through ice. My pulse kicks so hard my vision tightens at the edges. “Bullshit,” I snarl, but it doesn’t land. Cat’s dot on my map blinks across my vision.
Donal watches the math scrawl across my face and laughs without a sound.
“You thought you were clever. Get me to look one way while she slips the other. Now, I’ve got to wonder why?
Why would you go through all that trouble to try and save someone who was sent to kill you?
” He eyes me, a vein pulsing across his forehead.
“I can’t quite figure it out, but I will. ”
“You’re so off the mark it’s pathetic,” I bark.
“Like I said, it doesn’t matter to me anymore. But a man like Tiernan, he doesn’t delegate family problems. He acts.” He flicks his gaze to the rooftop again. “If I don’t call him to confirm you’re dead in the next five minutes, my wee little sister will be.”
“You’re a fucking piece of shit, Donal,” I hiss.
Leo again, urgent now. “Matteo, you want me to take the shot or not? Call it.”
“Hold,” I grit out.
Donal lifts his palms like a benediction. “Run after me if it makes you feel like a hero. But while you chase the old dog, the wolf is hot on her heels.”
I take one step. He takes none. The van door whispers open behind the dock ramp, then a shadow shifts above on the scaffold. We are seconds from the net.
He sees it all and still doesn’t blink. “Last chance, boy.”
“For what?” I snarl again.
“To decide who you’re saving.”
The word boy lights a fuse, but panic drowns anger fast. I picture Cat turning north, the wind at her hood, her phone buzzing.
I see Tiernan in my head with that razor smile and old-world patience closing a hand.
I see a narrow street that smells of trash and old laundry and a copper-haired woman who thinks she can outrun a dynasty.
I lift my chin like I’m about to lunge and Donal’s weight shifts to meet it. In the microbeat his eyes cut to my shoulder, I drop mine and reach for my gun. His hand finds the holster, and my shot rings out. It hits his arm; he flinches, only a fraction, but it’s enough. My men move.
Donal’s faster.
He slams back into the wall, thumb already on a black fob. A disguised service panel leaps up from the brick wall, metal shrieking, and two warehouse workers I didn’t see—his, not mine—drop smoke canisters like they’ve rehearsed it. The alley fills with a gray bloom.
“Back!” I cough, choking, and eyes burning before dropping to the ground. The world reduces to silhouettes and coughs, boots on the pavement, and a volley of gunshots. By the time the dark cloud thins, Donal’s gone. He either climbed over the wall or up through a warren of loading bays.
Leo appears at my elbow, a scowl carved into his jaw and eyes pissed. “Sorry, capo. He came with backup we didn’t clock. We lost him.”
“I heard,” I rasp, wiping grit from my mouth.
“Orders? Ale is going to want—”
“No.” My voice steadies. The wrong call here costs me everything. Donal is a threat. Tiernan is an extinction event.
I yank the phone from my pocket with a hand that won’t stop shaking and pull up Cat’s dot. Still north, moving. I don’t have proof Donal told the truth, but I don’t have the luxury to doubt it.
“Pull the teams off me,” I shout at Leo. “Split up. One crew keeps eyes on the Irish’s known bars, stash houses, and the pier by Gansevoort. The rest stay south searching for the female trigger. Quiet. No uniforms, no Gemini insignia.”
Leo’s brow furrows. “But Ale—”
“I’ll handle Ale.” I’m already moving toward the mouth of the alley, lungs still burning. “Tiernan and Donal are in play now and trust me, they’re much worse.”
Leo swears under his breath. “Got it.”
The light outside has gone hard and narrow between the buildings. Traffic surges, oblivious to the panic surging in my gut. I dart into the chaos, thumb flying over the screen as I figure out a route to intercept that blinking dot.
Me: Tiernan is here. He’s coming for you.
I wait for the reply, my heart a manic drumbeat kicking at my ribs. Nothing.
There’s a ringing in my head where her gun butt kissed my skull. It keeps time with a thought I can’t quiet: If Tiernan gets to her first, I’ll lose her. Forever.
Midtown opens ahead of me, a maze of business suits I’ve always known how to cheat. I take the first corner at a sprint.
Hold on, Kitty Cat, I’m coming.