5. Eva #2
“It was at a café in Back Bay at ten this morning. He sat at a table with his back to the wall, had a coffee he barely touched, and wore a coat that probably costs more than my rent. He smiled the whole time.” I shrug. “Standard Dmitri.”
“Did he seem different? Suspicious? Anything off?”
“He seemed exactly the same as always, which is the most unsettling thing about him. The man is consistently creepy.”
Wolfe nods and looks at the data. I pull up a chair next to him because there’s only one desk and this apartment is barely big enough for one person, let alone two people and enough equipment to run a small country.
He’s got this way of working that’s different from anyone I’ve dealt with.
He doesn’t narrate what he’s doing. He doesn’t explain his process.
His fingers move and his eyes stay locked on the screen, and every once in a while, he asks a question that’s so specific it makes me realize he’s been three steps ahead the whole time.
“The real estate holdings,” he says, not looking up. “Pull up the property list.”
I pull it up on the second monitor. “What am I looking at?”
“Third page. The address on Newbury.”
I scroll. Stop. “That’s a Colonna Industries property.”
“Which is now run by the DiMicheli family.” He types something fast. “Cross-reference with the client list. Look at who’s been making inquiries on that property in the last three months.”
I do, and it’s a shell corporation I’ve seen before. Different name, different registration, but the same fingerprints as a company that showed up in a job I did for Dmitri two months ago.
“Son of a bitch,” I say.
“Yeah.”
“It’s the same people.”
“Different front. Same operation.” He leans back and looks at me. “Dmitri’s not just gathering random intel. Every job he gives you connects to the same two organizations. He’s mapping them for some reason.”
My stomach drops. I knew this. I goddamn knew this. I’ve seen the patterns for months—the overlapping targets, the connected names. I saw all of it and I looked away because looking is what got me locked up last time.
“How many of my jobs connect?” I ask, my voice tight.
“Based on what I’ve seen so far? All of them.”
Fuck.
I press my fists against the desk and lean into them. The room is too small, and the air is too warm, and the man sitting next to me just confirmed the thing I’ve been trying not to know for months.
“You were coerced,” Wolfe says. “Dmitri gave you just enough to do the work and not enough to see what it was for. That was on purpose.”
“That doesn’t make it better.”
“No. But it’s context. And context matters when you’re figuring out your next move.”
I open my eyes. He’s not trying to comfort me. He’s not trying to fix how I feel. He’s just sitting there, steady, offering a direction instead of a speech.
“How many more jobs until you have enough?” I ask.
“I don’t know yet. But every one you bring me fills in more of the picture.”
“Great. So I just keep feeding the monster and feeding you until you’ve got what you need.” I pause. “Or maybe you and the monster are one and the same.”
“Trust me, I’m the lesser of the two evils.”
“I’d like it if you didn’t consider yourself one of the evils.”
He looks at me for a long minute but doesn’t address my comment. “You’re the only person who can do this. You’re inside his operation. You see the raw data before anyone else touches it. Nobody else has that access.”
“Is that supposed to make me feel better?”
“It’s supposed to make you feel important. Because you are.”
I stare at him. He says it the way he says everything. Matter-of-factly. As if telling me I’m important is the same as telling me the weather. And I can’t decide if that makes it more meaningful or less, but something in my chest cracks a tiny bit anyway.
“You shouldn’t have been doing the work Dmitri was giving you,” he says, turning back to the screen. “It’s like using a scalpel to chop firewood.”
My laugh cracks the quiet. “Did you just compare me to a scalpel?”
“Would you prefer a different metaphor? One that’s a little more cliché?”
“I’d prefer answers to the many questions you keep dodging, but I’ll take the scalpel compliment for now.”
He looks at me and there’s that flicker again. The almost-amusement that shows up and disappears so fast you’d miss it if you weren’t looking.
I’m looking now. I’ve been looking at him since I walked in. I need to stop because every hour I spend with Wolfe, I learn something new about him, and every new thing makes it harder to keep my guard up.
The way he cocks his head when he’s thinking. The way he taps his thumb against his leg when he’s stuck on a problem. The way he said I shouldn’t have been doing Dmitri’s work—not like he felt sorry for me, but like it genuinely offended him that someone wasted my talents.
Nobody has ever been offended on my behalf before. I don’t know how to process that one. Part of me wants to lean into it. But the smarter part…the part that kept me alive in prison…says that’s exactly how they get you. They make you feel seen, and then they use the view against you.
He catches me staring and holds my gaze. For a second neither of us says anything. My pulse ticks up and I hate it.
“I should go,” I say, standing up. “It’s late.”
“Yeah.” He clears his throat. “Same drill next time. Dmitri gives you a job, you deliver to him, then you bring it to me.”
“I know how it works. I’m the one doing it.”
“Right.”
I grab my jacket. At the door I stop and turn around. He’s already locked back into his screen, but his thumb is tapping against his leg again.
I wonder what he’s thinking…and if what he’s thinking about is on the screen.
“Wolfe.”
He looks up.
“The Honey Nut Cheerios thing. Seriously. Get some real food.”
“Cheerios are real food.”
“Cheerios are a cry for help.”
I close the door behind me and walk home through the cold, the drive in my pocket empty now, my head full of shell corporations and property lists and a man who eats cereal for dinner and called me a scalpel like it was flattery.
I just handed stolen data to a stranger for the second time in my life. The first time, it cost me everything.
The difference is, Daniel made me feel safe.
Wolfe makes me feel seen.
And I don’t know which one is more dangerous.