Chapter 16 Rafe
RAFE
"They raided the warehouse on Elm Street."
Feodor's voice comes through the car speakers, and I feel my grip tighten on the steering wheel.
I'm twenty minutes outside the city, heading back to the safehouse after a meeting with Sal and the advisors that lasted three hours too long.
The highway stretches ahead of me, snow piled along the shoulders, and I keep my eyes on the road while my mind processes what he just said.
"When?" I ask.
"An hour ago. Federal agents and local PD. They had a warrant, said they had reason to believe Riley Maddox's vehicle was on the premises."
I exhale slowly. Deciding not to just leave the car on the side of the highway was the right call.
The car had too much evidence in it after the guys stripped it down.
It had to be burned. We'd planned to abandon it somewhere, make it look like Riley had car trouble and disappeared, but burning it was cleaner.
"What did they find?" I ask. We knew this was coming.
It's why I had a lot of product moved away from that warehouse.
It took them a few days to get their little warrant but it gave us all the time in the world to be clean when they showed up.
The problem is it'll connect to other things, which will have a trickle effect and we have to get ahead of it.
"They connected Lombardi to the company.
His name showed up in old payroll records.
The Feds are treating him as a person of interest in Riley's disappearance, and they're building a case that ties his death to organized crime.
" Feodor sounds as annoyed as I am about this whole thing.
I just want it all to go away and for my life to be peaceful again.
Marco's paranoia kept us safe for years, but his death has turned him into a liability.
Every thread he left behind is unraveling, pulling the entire operation into the light.
It's like he fucking planned this even without his stupid dead man's switch.
He knew what would happen and he wanted it to happen.
He's paying me back from the grave. It's a wonder his fucking ghost isn't haunting me at night too.
"How bad is it?" I ask.
"Bad enough the boss wants us to shut down the Newark warehouse. Move everything out in the next eight hours. He gave us the order himself, Rafe… He's bypassing you now."
"Eight hours?"
"He thinks the Feds are going to hit it next. If they do, and they find what's inside, we're done."
I take the next exit off the highway and pull onto a side road.
The Newark warehouse holds millions of dollars in product—pharmaceuticals mixed with street-grade drugs, all packaged and ready for distribution.
Moving it on short notice is risky, expensive, and guaranteed to piss off every crew working the supply chain.
But leaving it there is worse.
Uncle Sal is right to want it gone. If they connect things and start searching our properties one by one, we're fucked.
"Tell the crews to start loading," I grumble. "Everything out by midnight. Reroute the shipments to the secondary locations in Pennsylvania and Ohio. And make sure no one leaves a trail."
"They're not gonna be happy about this."
"I don't care if they're happy. If Sal says it, we do it," I grunt. Not following orders means punishment. For me that's a stern lecture, but for men who report to me it's a certain death sentence. He expects full loyalty without hesitation. No exceptions. We have to do what he wants.
I hang up and toss the phone onto the passenger seat.
The highway blurs past, and I feel the anger building in my chest. Every day brings another problem, another leak, another threat.
The Feds are closing in. Enzo's circling.
And I'm running out of time to stop Marco's dead man's switch from detonating on Christmas Day.
Riley's been working nonstop for weeks, rebuilding the financials, filling in the gaps Marco left behind.
She's made it all the way to October, but that's not enough.
I need her to finish. I need those records clean before the Feds get their hands on anything that can tie the pharmaceutical company to illegal operations.
Because that's definitely what's coming next.
All it takes is a single shred of evidence that Lombardi may have been a hit. It doesn't matter that someone else killed him. They'll pick through everything and they'll have an army of forensic analysts to do it. Riley won't be able to keep up. She has to finish the work now before that happens.
By the time I pull into the safehouse driveway, my frustration has turned into full-blown rage.
I park the car and walk inside, slamming the door behind me.
The guard I left with Riley—a younger guy who's new to the family—is sitting on the couch, his gun holstered at his hip, and he stands when I enter.
"Where's she at?" I ask.
"Bedroom. She's been working all day."
I nod and walk down the hallway toward the bedroom where Riley's been working.
The door's open, and I see her hunched over the laptop, typing quickly.
It's such a common sight now that I almost expect it to be that way, but her concentration, the furrow of her brow, makes me pause for a moment to look at her.
She is working so hard for me and I haven't reminded her of her sister's impending potential death in more than a week. I think she's doing this for me now, not just herself. But that doesn't mellow my frustration at all.
She doesn't look up when I walk in.
"We need to talk," I say.
"I'm in the middle of something."
"I don't care. We need to talk now."
She stops typing and turns to face me. Her expression is tired, her hair pulled back in a messy ponytail, and I can see the dark circles under her eyes. She's been working herself into the ground, and it shows.
"What happened?" she asks.
"The Feds raided one of our warehouses. They were looking for your car. And they connected the banker to the pharmaceutical company. They're building a case, and they're getting too close."
Her face goes pale as she closes the laptop and stands, pushing her sleeves up. "What does that have to do with me?"
"It has everything to do with you. You're supposed to be cleaning the records, making it impossible for them to trace the banker's work back to us. But they found connections. Old payroll logs. Transaction histories. Things you should have scrubbed."
I'm letting my frustration out and I shouldn’t be.
I see what she's doing. I know who she is and what skills she has.
It's not her fault. This is all Lombardi’s fault but he's not fucking here and I'm too upset and feeling out of control to remind myself of that or stop myself from lashing out at her. My temper is flaring.
Her eyes narrow. "I'm doing everything I can, Rafe. I'm not a professional hacker. I'm a bank teller who happens to know how to write some code. If the Feds are finding connections, it's because the banker left them there, not because I missed them."
"Then find them and fix them."
"I am finding them. But there are thousands of entries, and every time I dig deeper, I find more holes. Marco built this system to be impossible to untangle. It probably took him years, and you're asking me to do it in a matter of weeks. It's not realistic."
"I don't care if it's realistic. I care if it gets done."
She takes a step closer to me in her defiant way and I am ready to punch something. "Then maybe you should've hired someone who actually knows what they're doing instead of kidnapping a random woman and forcing her to clean up your mess."
God, I could smack her. I'm so angry, and I know I'm not angry with her. I just want so badly to make all of this chaos stop. When my temper flares like this, there's no stopping it, and she's just the person in front of me taking the brunt of it.
"Then let me go. If I'm such a burden, if I'm so useless, just let me go." Her finger pokes into my chest and I grab her wrist hard.
"I can't."
"Yes, you can. You just won't."
I step forward, gritting my teeth, and she backs up until her shoulders hit the wall. I plant my hands on either side of her head, caging her in, and see the defiance in her eyes, the refusal to back down even though I tower over her.
"You don't get to talk to me that way," I growl at her, and I know where this is going. I need a release, a way for all this rage to vent and blow away before I make stupid choices.
"I will talk to you however I fucking want to. You're not my god." Riley's shouting now, staring up at me with her eyes burning with fury.
Her chest is heaving, and I watch her tongue draw over her lips. This is how it always starts. It shouldn’t be, but it is. I get pissed. She gets mouthy. I get stiff as a board and she doesn't realize she’s turning me on.
"Are you as turned on as I am?" I ask as I stare down at her, and I see the flush creeping up her neck, the way her pupils have dilated.
Riley doesn't have to speak. The simple way she tilts her chin up, like she's expecting me to make the first move, is enough.
I lower my mouth to hers and the contact is explosive, all the frustration and anger and tension pouring out in a single moment.
Her hands come up to grip the front of my shirt, pulling me closer, and I press her harder against the wall, claiming her mouth with an intensity that leaves no room for doubt.
She kisses me back with the same desperation, her fingers tangling in my hair, and I feel every ounce of the fight between us transform into something hotter I can't control.
My mouth devours hers while my hands tear the sweater over her head and fling it away. The bra snaps free next, lace ripping under impatient fingers, and her breasts spill into my palms. She arches hard, gasping into the kiss as I roll her nipples between my thumbs and forefingers until they ache.