30. Wolfe
WOLFE
There’s a version of tonight where everything goes right. Dmitri’s network burns. Sal is safe. Eva comes back. I tell her the truth, and she believes me.
And there’s another version where I lose everything.
I don’t know which one I’m living in yet.
That thought has been pressing down on my chest all day, getting heavier every hour, and no amount of planning or code can make it move.
But the operation starts in ten minutes, and I don’t have the luxury of falling apart.
My job tonight is the money. Eva spent three months inside Dmitri’s operation.
She mapped every account, every financial connection, every dollar that moved through his network.
She handed all of that intel to me, and over the past two weeks, I’ve been using it to set up access to every piece of his financial infrastructure.
No alarms. No alerts. Just open doors waiting for me to walk through them.
Tonight I will walk through all of them at once. Every account will be frozen. Every connection will be severed. By morning, Dmitri won’t be able to touch a single dollar.
Lochlan’s job is the evidence. His team will hit Hoxha’s businesses in Revere, a couple of cleaning businesses and a construction company that are nothing more than fronts for Dmitri’s operation.
They’ll grab hard drives, financial records, phones, cash, anything that proves what those businesses were really being used for.
Then they’ll lock the doors so nobody can come in and destroy evidence before the Feds arrive.
The third piece is the anonymous tip package I put together for the FBI.
Transaction records, account histories, proof that the Hoxha lending operation has been bleeding Eva’s neighborhood dry for over a year.
They’re set to send automatically once Lochlan confirms his team is clear.
When the Feds check their email Friday morning, they’ll have everything they need for a slew of indictments.
There are three critical pieces to this operation—money, evidence, and law enforcement. We will hit them all at once and Dmitri will wake up tomorrow with nothing but a pair of handcuffs slapped on his wrists.
The whole thing is automated. I built a program that runs through the financial targets one by one. My job is to sit here, watch the screen, and step in if something stalls.
Lochlan’s team hits the first Revere location at 10:15. On schedule. Then they invade the second target at 10:22. Clean hits. No surprises. The financial accounts start dropping off the grid one by one on my screen. Everything is running the way it’s supposed to.
Then my phone buzzes with a message from the surveillance team on Sal’s block.
Eva is inside Rosario’s. Sal is with her. Restaurant is closed and mostly dark, but there are people moving inside.
I read it twice. Then a third time because my brain refuses to accept what my eyes are telling it.
She’s at the restaurant, at the exact spot I spent two weeks making sure would be empty tonight. And Sal is with her.
She knows Dmitri or his guys are coming tonight. But because she doesn’t trust anything I’ve done anymore, she put herself between Sal and whoever she thinks might show up because protecting her brother is the only thing she thinks she has some shred of control over right now.
Which she doesn’t. Not at all.
I pull up the tracker on my car. It’s still parked near Sal’s building. So she walked to Rosario’s out in the open, in the same neighborhood where Dmitri’s people operate.
My phone rings again. I grip the phone tight as I read the message.
Two men approaching from the east end of the block. On foot. Heading toward the restaurant.
Everything inside me goes cold.
Fuck. Dmitri’s guys. They don’t know the meeting was rescheduled because the text came from me, not from Dmitri. They’re still running the original play where they show up after close and grab Sal.
But Sal isn’t alone. Eva is with him. And Eva is worth more to Dmitri than her brother could ever be.
I jump to my feet, grab a burner phone, and text Eva’s number.
Stay inside. Lock the back door. Don’t move.
Then I turn to Gavin. He’s been sitting across the room on his phone because his role tonight was backup.
“I need to go.”
He looks up, his expression pinched with confusion. “Go where? We’re in the middle of—”
“Eva’s at Rosario’s. Dmitri’s guys are heading there right now.”
He springs up from his chair. “Shit. What about the operation?”
“The system is running on its own. All you have to do is watch the screen.” I point to the monitor. “See that progress bar? If it keeps moving, don’t touch anything. If it stops or you see an error, press this button right here. It restarts from where it left off.”
“That’s it?” he asks.
“That’s it. The FBI packages are set to send automatically after Lochlan checks in. You just need to be in this chair. And if anything blows up, call me. I’ll walk you through whatever you need to do.”
“Go.” He nods and drops into the seat. “I got it.”
I grab the keys to Lochlan’s truck in the driveway and run out the door.
The drive to Rosario’s is eighteen minutes at normal speed. I don’t drive at normal speed. The streets are empty, and I blow through every red light between the house and Eva’s neighborhood.
I call the surveillance team from the road.
“Status,” I say through clenched teeth.
“Both of Dmitri’s men are at the front door. One is working the lock.”
“How long until they’re in?”
“Under a minute.”
I slam my hand on the steering wheel. “I’m still six minutes out. Just stand down unless it goes violent. If someone gets hurt, you go in immediately.”
“Copy.”
Six minutes. I count every one of them because my brain won’t let me not count. My hands lock around the wheel. My thumb hammers against it so hard and fast it doesn’t even feel like tapping anymore.
I park one block south. There’s a handgun in Lochlan’s glove compartment because he always keeps a weapon in every one of his vehicles.
I grab it and go through the back alley on foot, my pulse punching a hole in my throat with every step I take.
I’ve been in this alley before. The day I fought the Albanian with the knife.
The back door is unlocked. She didn’t get to it after I sent that text. Thank fuck.
I open it and slip into the dark kitchen.
Voices float in from the front room. Male. Low. Russian accent. Definitely not Sal.
They’re here.
I move through the kitchen. My breathing is steady, hands still. My body runs on the training my brothers hammered into me while my brain runs on something else entirely. Something that has nothing to do with training and everything to do with the woman in the next room.
I reach the doorway between the kitchen and the dining room and peer around the side of the wall.
Two men dressed in black. Both massive and tattooed. One stands by the front door; the other one is near the bar with a gun held low at his side.
Sal stands behind the register, his face completely void of color, his hands trembling on the counter.
Eva stands between the man with the gun and her brother, her chin tilted in defiance. She has a knife gripped tight between her fingers. A kitchen knife against a handgun. Her hand shakes but her feet are rooted and she’s not moving. No way will she let them see how rattled she is.
I have Lochlan’s gun in my hand, but Eva is three feet behind the man I’d be shooting at. I can’t risk it. I tuck it in my waistband.
“We came for your brother,” the man with the gun says. “But you’re a much better find.”
“You’re not touching him.” Eva’s voice is steady even though her hand isn’t.
“Put the knife down. Come with us and nobody gets hurt.”
“Yeah, I’ve heard that one before.” She adjusts her grip and holds up the knife. “Didn’t work out well for the last guy.”
He raises the gun and points it at Sal. “I’m not going to ask again.”
Her expression shifts. I’ve seen that look before.
It’s the one she makes right before she gives up something she doesn’t want to lose.
It happens right before she puts the knife down.
She’s going to go with them because the gun is aimed at Sal and there is nothing Eva Moreno won’t sacrifice to keep her brother alive and breathing.
I step through the doorway.
I don’t think. I barely breathe. There’s no thought behind my actions. No calculation. No scenario planning. My brain is completely offline, and my body is doing the only thing it knows how to do when Eva is in danger.
I put myself between her and the gun.
“Wolfe—” Her voice cracks on my name.
“Get behind me.”
“What are you—?”
“Behind me. Now.”
The man shifts his aim to my chest. “Who the fuck are you? Prince Charming?”
“Not quite,” I say. “More like the Dark Knight who just froze every dollar your boss has to his name. Hoxha’s locations are being raided as we speak.
Dmitri’s network is in shambles and so are all the assholes who work for him.
Every piece of evidence the FBI needs to put you away is sitting in their inbox right now.
So you can walk out the door now, or be here when the police show up. ”
The man by the front door takes a step back. He wants to run. His legs are twitching.
But the man with the gun doesn’t move. He’s doing the math on what he can still take from a burning building.
What can make him whole.
He lunges for Eva.
I grab his wrist. We fall sideways together. The gun is between us and I’m twisting his arm, and his finger is on the trigger.
I know what’s about to happen in the half second before it does.
The gun fires.
The bullet rips through my left shoulder and my whole body lights up with a pain so savage, it nearly drops me. My vision whites out for a second, and every nerve still working screams at me to let go of his wrist.
I don’t let go.
Instead, I manage to gather enough adrenaline to hit him with my right hand. He drops. The gun clatters across the tile floor. My left arm goes dead. Blood soaks through my shirt, warm and flowing fast.
The second man crashes through the front door. Lochlan’s team comes charging through seconds later and puts the gunman on the ground.
I crumple to the floor next to the bar because standing is no longer something my legs are capable of doing.
Eva drops to the ground in front of me. Her hands are on my chest, pressing against the wound. Her blurred face is a wreck of tears and fury.
“You’re shot,” she says, her voice muffled like I’m hearing it from underwater. “You’re fucking shot.”
“Yeah,” I mumble. “Left shoulder. Not critical.”
“How do you know it’s not critical?” she says in a teary voice.
“Because I’m still talking.”
“You’re always talking. That doesn’t prove a damn thing.” Her hands tremble against my chest. I look down at them and the streaks of red that stain her fingers, her shirt, and the floor.
“Why did you come?” she asks, her voice cracking.
“Because you were here.” God, my brain is fuzzy. And my head feels like a cement block.
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only one I have. You were here. So I came.” My head lolls. I just want to lie down somewhere and sleep…
Sal stands behind Eva. His face is pale, and his eyes are wide, and he’s looking at the blood on the floor, then at Eva, then at me.
“What the fuck is going on?” His voice quakes, the vein in his forehead throbbing.
Eva looks at me. I look at her. And I can see everything on her face. The anger that’s still etched into her expression. The fear and exhaustion in her eyes. I caused it. I caused all of it.
I fall over and she catches me before I land on the floor. Her arms lock around my waist as she pulls me close. My face presses into her neck.
“Stay with me,” she whispers. “Wolfe. Don’t you dare.”
“I’m not going anywhere. That’s a fact,” I say, my voice barely a whisper.
Her arms grip me harder. She’s holding me up and keeping pressure on the wound. She’s doing everything right.
My head falls back, my eyelids drooping. But not before I catch a glimpse at her gaze. She’s not looking at me. She’s looking at the blood on her hands.
And I can’t tell if she thinks she’s saving the man she loves, or the man she hasn’t decided whether to forgive.
Then everything goes black.