18. Wolfe
WOLFE
I need to hit something.
It’s been three days since the Albanian breakthrough. Three days of mapping Dmitri’s network with Ronan breathing down my neck, Lochlan running security scenarios, and Eva sitting across from me at the conference room table being brilliant and focused and completely walled off.
I need to hit something, or my brain is going to eat itself alive.
Cillian texts me at six in the morning.
Gym. One hour. No excuses.
I don’t make any.
I need to hit something that badly.
The MMA gym is a converted warehouse in Dorchester that smells like sweat, rubber, and old leather.
There’s no sign out front. No website. You get in because someone brings you, and the someone who first brought me and my brothers here was our Uncle Patrick, who trained Golden Gloves fighters in the eighties and believed that every man should know how to take a punch before he learns how to throw one.
Uncle Patrick’s been dead for six years. We still come here every week.
Cillian’s already warming up when I walk in. Doing crazy shit with a jump rope. He’s fast with it, too. Way faster than he should be for a guy who owns a bar and drinks his own inventory. He sees me and grins, whipping it around like Rocky Balboa.
“Look who decided to grace us with his presence,” Cillian says, dropping the jump rope. “You look different. Rested. Almost human. It’s freaking me out.”
“I slept.”
“You don’t sleep. You stare at screens until your eyes bleed, and then eat Cheerios at four in the morning. Something changed.” He walks toward me with narrowed eyes. “Fuck me. You’re getting laid.”
“I’m not discussing this with you.”
“Holy shit. You are getting laid. Look at your face. You have a face right now. You never have a face.”
“Everyone has a face, Cillian.”
“Not you. Yours is usually buffering. Right now, it’s fully fucking loaded.” He tosses me a roll of tape. “Wrap up. I’ve been waiting to kick your ass for two weeks and you’re not ruining it with your creepy new glow.”
I tape between the knuckles, around the wrists, tight enough to hold, but not enough to restrict my movement. The routine settles my brain the way it always does. Step one, step two, step three. The same every time. It’s predictable and controlled.
Unlike everything else in my life right now.
We step onto one of the mats. Cillian circles left because he always circles left.
He leads with his right because his left shoulder has been tight since he separated it two years ago and he compensates without realizing it.
His footwork is good, but he drops his guard about half an inch when he throws the hook.
It’s the same way every time.
And I see all of this in the first ten seconds because that’s what my brain does. It reads systems. Doesn’t matter if the system is a network architecture or a person standing in front of me with their fists up. Patterns are patterns.
Cillian throws a jab. I slip around his fist. He follows with the hook, and then his guard drops, just like it always does. I step inside and slam him with a body shot that makes him grunt as he doubles over.
“Shit,” he says, resetting. “You’ve been practicing.”
“I’ve been hitting the bag. It’s not the same thing.”
“Clearly, it’s working.”
We go again. Cillian is stronger than me. Faster, too, in short bursts. But I’m more efficient. I don’t waste energy on movement that isn’t necessary. Every step has a purpose. Every punch is aimed at a gap I already identified before my fist leaves my side.
That’s how I fight. Not with power. With information.
Until Cillian catches me off guard with a cross that snaps my head sideways. I taste metal.
Fuck.
“There it is,” he says. “You dropped your shoulder.”
“I know.”
“You know because I just hit you in the face.”
“I know because I felt my shoulder drop before you threw. I just didn’t correct fast enough.”
“That’s a very Wolfe way to justify getting punched.”
We reset. Go again. Three rounds, three minutes each. He wins the first one easy because he landed more shots. I win the second round because my shots were cleaner than his sloppy ass ones. The third one is ugly and close. By the end we’re both sweating, panting hard, and grinning like idiots.
It feels good. The Molloy way of blowing off steam and channeling all our unresolved shit into our punches.
“Not bad,” he says, pulling off his gloves. “Not bad at all.”
The door bangs open. Gavin strolls in wearing basketball shorts, a tank top, and an expression that says he’s been awake for twenty minutes and is looking to fight someone.
“Who’s next?” he says, bouncing on his toes. “I’m feeling dangerous.”
“What, you didn’t find anyone’s ass to kick when you were out last night?” Cillian asks with a chuckle. He takes a long gulp of his water. “Still need to scratch the itch?”
“I always have energy for a good ass kicking.” He points at me. “Wolfe. Let’s go.”
“You sure?”
“Oh, fuck yeah,” he says. “This is happening.”
Cillian and I exchange a look. He rolls his eyes. I just shrug and do a quick stretch. Cillian never wears me down too hard because he’s predictable. For the most part.
We step onto the mat. Gavin is loose, aggressive, and completely unpredictable, unlike Cillian. He throws combinations that don’t follow any pattern I can identify because there is no pattern. He just swings.
The problem with fighting someone who has no pattern is that my brain can’t predict what’s coming next. So he makes me work harder. But the advantage is that someone with no pattern also has no defense.
Gavin throws a wide hook to start. I duck it, step inside, and sweep his front leg. He hits the mat flat on his back.
The sound he makes is somewhere between a groan and a laugh.
“Okay,” he says from the floor. “That was fucked up, bro.”
“You left your base open.”
“I left my—dude, you just leg-swept me like a goddamn ninja.”
“It’s a basic takedown.”
“For who? Bruce Lee?” He rolls to his feet and slams his gloves together. “Again.”
We go again. He lands a shot to my ribs that actually hurts. Gavin hits harder than you’d expect from the kid who spins pens and lives on fatty deli meats and Italian spuckies. But thirty seconds later, he throws a cross that’s too wide and I catch his arm and fling him on his ass again.
“I hate you,” he says in a cheerful voice because he thrives on this shit. “I hate you and your stupid pattern-reading brain.”
“My brain isn’t stupid. It’s the one thing about me that works.”
“Everything about you works, asshole. You just don’t know it yet.”
That lands weird. I don’t have time to process it because the gym door opens again.
I swallow a groan. Ronan.
He walks in the way he walks into every room. Like he owns it. He looks at me and Gavin on the mat and Cillian leaning against the ropes.
“You got room for one more?” he asks.
Gavin scrambles off the mat. “I’m out. My pride can only take so much abuse in one morning.”
Cillian raises an eyebrow at me. I give him a nod. He and Gavin move toward the bench.
Ronan wraps his hands, keeping his eyes on me. His movements are slow and methodical. The same way my father used to do it, which I try not to think about right now.
He steps onto the mat.
Ronan is different from Cillian and Gavin.
He’s properly trained. Uncle Patrick spent more hours with Ronan than with all of us combined because Ronan was the one being groomed to take over the family, and leaders need to know how to fight.
His stance is tight. His guard doesn’t drop. His footwork is patient and controlled.
He’s also watching me the way he watches everything. Always looking for the weakness.
We circle each other. Luckily, Gavin tapped out before I had to expend too much energy on him, so I’m fresh. Kind of.
Ronan throws a jab to test my range. I slip around it and counter. He blocks my punch. We reset. And over and over.
“You’ve been distracted,” he says.
“I’ve been working.”
“No, you’ve been distracted by the work. There’s a difference.” He throws a combination, and my forearm catches his hook. Fucking punch rattles my bones. I shake it off and keep going.
“The Albanian connection,” he says, circling. “That was good work.”
“Eva found it.”
“I know who found it.” He throws another punch. I block his fist, but barely. “That’s not what I’m talking about.”
“Then what are you talking about?”
He stops circling and drops his guard about an inch.
It’s an invitation.
I don’t take it because Ronan’s invitations are traps.
“You’re in deep with her,” he says.
“She’s part of the operation.” Sweat drizzles down the sides of my face. I wipe it away with the back of my arm.
“She’s in your apartment. She’s at your desk. She’s in every decision you’ve made since this all started.” He puts his guard back up. “I’m not blind, Wolfe.”
I throw a jab. He slips around it easily.
“She’s good,” I say. “She’s the best asset we’ve ever had.”
“She’s also a convicted felon who was working for the man trying to destroy our family.”
I wipe the sweat from my forehead. “She was coerced.”
“Everyone’s coerced by something.” He throws a body shot that I don’t see coming.
It connects hard enough that I double over for a second, the wind knocked out of me.
“The question is what happens when Dmitri puts pressure on her. Real pressure. The kind that makes coercion look like a little nudge.”
I wince as I straighten up and reset. My ribs are throbbing, my breaths ragged. I blink fast, my eyes burning from the sweat.
“She won’t fold,” I rasp, circling him.
“How do you know?”
“Because I’ve watched her stand in your office and tell you things without flinching that could get her killed.
Because she walked into a room full of Molloys knowing we could destroy her, and she sat down and did the work anyway.
Because three days ago she found out Dmitri engineered her entire life, and she didn’t fucking cut and run.
She sat back down at the desk and helped us map his operation. ”
Ronan stares at me. We’re both breathing hard.
“You sound like you’re defending more than an asset,” he says.
“Maybe I am.”
His expression turns curious. He watches me for a second before laying into me one final time. But I’m ready for him now.
He throws one more combination. I block the jab, slip the cross, and catch the hook before it lands. I hold his fist for a second. He lifts an eyebrow at me.
“Don’t let her be your blind spot,” he says. “Everybody’s got one. Dad’s was power. Don’t let her be yours.”
“It’s a little late for that.”
He pulls his fist back and nods once. “Then you’d better make damn sure she’s worth it,” he says.
We tap gloves. He heads out of the ropes, and I follow, my entire body aching from being my family’s punching bag du jour.
Cillian and Gavin watch from the bench. Gavin’s mouth hangs open. And there’s something in Cillian’s eyes that I recognize. It’s pride. He doesn’t need to say anything, but I feel it.
I unwrap my hands. My knuckles are red. My ribs are sore. My brain is finally, mercifully quiet in the way that only happens after someone hits you hard enough to reboot the system.
Eva’s face flashes through my head anyway. Her voice. The way she said, “I was the weapon” three nights ago, her voice cracking. And how it broke me to hear the pain in her voice.
Cillian was right. My head’s not fully in the game. Part of it is always with her now, whether it’s on the mat, in the gym, or in a room full of my brothers. Part of my brain belongs to a woman who’s back in my shitty apartment over the dry cleaner, and I can’t get it back.
I’m not sure I want to.