8. Wolfe #2
“I’m not controlling you,” I say. “I’m asking you not to get yourself killed.”
“Nobody asked you to care whether I live or die.”
“You’re right. Nobody asked.”
We stand there. Not moving. Barely breathing.
Maybe that’s just me. But somehow, I don’t think so.
“I’m going to take care of the debt,” I say.
“How?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s what I’ve got.”
Eva clutches the sides of her head. “Jesus, you’ve got secrets stacked on top of secrets.
You won’t tell me your last name. You won’t tell me how you found me.
You broke into my computer system and nosed around.
And now you’re going to take care of a debt you found out about ten minutes ago?
” She shakes her head. “Who the hell are you?”
“Someone who doesn’t want Sal to get hurt.”
“That’s not enough.”
“It’s all I can give you right now.”
“Yeah.” She bites down on her lower lip. “That seems to be your thing.”
She walks back to the bar and slowly climbs onto the stool. A couple of minutes later, Sal comes out and she puts her hand on his arm without a word. He covers it with his.
I sit back down. The chicken parm is cold.
“Hey, Wolfe?” she says without turning around.
“Yeah.”
“Don’t make promises you can’t keep. I’ve had enough of those.”
“I don’t make promises. I solve problems.”
“Same thing.” She pauses, her mouth twitching for a hot second before it’s back to the tight line. “Just less poetic.”
Hoxha.
It’s Albanian. And the boss’s name, from what I could gather.
Here’s the problem. I came to this neighborhood to track a ghost and figure out Dmitri Kozlov’s operation.
That’s the job. That’s what Ronan gave me a deadline for, and that’s what Eva is risking her neck to help me with.
Everything I’m doing here leads back to one objective: figure out what Dmitri’s building before he uses it against my family.
The Albanians aren’t part of that. They’re something else entirely. A separate crew with a separate operation running a separate shakedown on a bartender who happens to be the brother of my source.
That’s the big problem. Because if they push Sal hard enough, Sal will panic.
If Sal panics, Eva will do something stupid and brave, the kind of thing she almost did tonight when she tried to go after two men she knows nothing about.
And if Eva goes down…if she gets hurt, exposed, scared enough to run…
my pipeline to Dmitri dries up overnight.
Everything I’ve built will collapse. Ronan will get nothing. The ghost will go dark. Dmitri will keep building whatever he’s building, and even with all of my illegal cyber activities, my family won’t see it coming.
All because some crew I’ve never heard of decided to squeeze a bartender for money he doesn’t have.
Jesus Christ.
I can’t let that happen. Which means these guys just became my problem, whether I like it or not.
Squaring my shoulders, I sit at my computer and start typing.
I start with public records. Business filings in the Boston area with Albanian names attached.
There are more than I expected. Construction companies, import businesses, a couple of cleaning services.
Most of them are probably legitimate. Some of them aren’t.
I cross-reference addresses and names, looking for overlap.
It takes me an hour to find the pattern. Three companies, different names, same registered agent. An address that shows up on all three. That’s got to be the hub.
I take what I found and go deeper into the dark web forums where crews like this operate.
You don’t find these kinds of operations by doing a Google search.
You find them by knowing which doors are out there and having the keys to open them.
I’ve spent years building those keys. My brothers don’t know about half of them because Ronan would want to control them, and Lochlan would want to secure them, and both of those things would cockblock me from getting what I need.
The name Hoxha shows up about eighteen months ago. Someone setting up shop in Boston. It looks like a small lending operation, perfect for borrowers in neighborhoods the established mafia families don’t service.
I tap my thumb against my knee. Eighteen months. That lines up with my Dad’s disappearance and the Kozlov negotiations. We were so focused on our own organization that while we weren’t watching our backs, someone walked into the empty space and started building.
Seems like they have a small crew. Maybe a dozen guys based on the forums. They run lending, some construction, and gambling on the side.
They own a handful of blocks that nobody significant in the city ever claimed.
The kind of territory that’s too small for the Molloys or the DiMichelis to bother with.
Sal’s block. Eva’s block.
The block where the people I’m trying to protect live.
I dig deeper into their lending records.
It takes another thirty minutes to find what I’m looking for…
a ledger buried in an encrypted forum post. Sal’s name is on it.
Forty-two thousand dollars, borrowed fourteen months ago.
The interest rate is fucking criminal. He’s been making payments, but the balance barely moves because the interest keeps him drowning.
Forty-two thousand for something—maybe for his restaurant or Eva’s legal fees. Maybe both. He must’ve borrowed it from the Albanians because no bank would touch the brother of a convicted felon, and the Albanians were the only option in his neighborhood.
I lean back in my chair and stare at the number.
I can cover forty-two thousand without blinking. I’ve got my own money, my own accounts, structures I set up years ago specifically to keep distance between my finances and the Molloy name. The amount isn’t the problem.
The problem is getting a clean trail to Hoxha. If I send that payment through anything connected to my family, it’ll get traced. Ronan will flip his shit and hit me with questions I can’t answer because the truth won’t be good for anyone, least of all Eva.
So I have to find a different way to get Hoxha the cash. It’ll take me a few days, but I can get it done before his deadline on Friday. When Hoxha’s people get their money, they won’t know where it came from. They won’t care, either. Money is money.
And Sal’s debt will be cleared.
I pull up the security feeds. Rosario’s is closed for the night. Sal’s light is off in his apartment. Good. He’s sleeping, or at least trying to.
Eva’s light is still on.
She’s at her desk. I can see the glow of her monitor through the window. She’s probably thinking about the look on Sal’s face, the desperation in his voice, feeling completely out of control while the only family she has in this world is being threatened by dangerous people she can’t stop.
Or maybe she’s thinking about my hand on her wrist. The three seconds. The way neither of us moved after I let go.
I’m thinking about it. I’ve been thinking about it since it happened and my brain hasn’t fully processed it yet, which is strange because my brain processes everything.
No lag time. That’s the whole point of my brain.
But her pulse is still in my thumb and my chest is still doing the thing it does when she’s close and none of my usual systems are working the way they should.
I don’t know what to do with that. So I do what I always do when I don’t know what to do. I work.
I open a new file and start building the payment route.
Forty-two-thousand dollars of my own money to protect a man I eat dinner with three times a week and a woman whose pulse I can still feel in my hand.
I’m solving a problem. That’s what I do.
But this time my hands shake while I do it.
And I’m starting to think the problem isn’t the debt at all.