32. Wolfe
WOLFE
I wake up and reach for her, a searing pain shooting through me at the sudden movement.
She’s not there. My hand hits cold sheets and my brain takes too long to figure out why. Whatever they gave me for the pain turned my thoughts into sludge. Everything is slow and thick and wrong.
I’m at the house. In my room. In my bed. My left arm is strapped across my chest, and my shoulder feels like someone shoved a hot poker through it and left it there. Every breath makes it worse. Every small shift sends a jolt through me that makes my jaw lock and my vision blur.
Eva is not here.
I don’t remember much after the restaurant floor. Jagged pieces of memories bounce between my ears. Cillian’s voice. The stretcher. Eva’s hands. The look on her face right before everything went dark.
My bedroom door opens and Cillian walks in carrying a bowl.
“Hey.” He puts it on the nightstand. “You’ve been out for about ten hours.”
“Eva,” I choke out. My voice sounds gritty and rough like I swallowed gravel.
“She stayed with Sal.”
A deep, sick ache spreads through my chest.
She’s not here because she’s taking care of her brother. Sal, who just watched a man get shot on his restaurant floor with no idea why.
But deep down I know the real reason. She’s also not here because of what she found on my laptop.
Because she thinks I was planning to cut her out of my life.
Because eighteen months ago I looked at evidence that could have freed her and closed the file.
She was nobody to me then. Just a case number that threatened my family’s business.
That’s not a defense. That’s the problem.
And she has every reason to think I’d do it again.
I close my eyes and the pain in my shoulder flares so hard I have to bite down on my back teeth to keep from letting out a yell.
“You need to eat,” Cillian says. “Tony wanted to cook you something, but I figured you’d want something basic. So, Honey Nut Cheerios, it is.”
“Thanks,” I rasp.
He places the bowl in my lap. I pick up the spoon and try to eat with my right hand. It’s awkward and slow, and some of the milk drips down my chin, which is humiliating. But the taste is familiar and comforting, and my brain latches onto it the way it always does.
Because right now, familiar and comforting is nice.
“How’s the shoulder?” Cillian asks, dropping into the chair by the window.
“Like someone put a hole through it,” I mumble in between bites.
“That’s very original, Wolfe,” he says with a roll of his eyes.
“I got shot, Cillian. I’m not going to be creative about it.”
He sits there, watching me eat for a few minutes before he speaks again. “The operation went without a hitch. Well, until you showed up at Rosario’s and got yourself shot up,” he says.
I scoop another spoonful of cereal into my mouth, then wipe the milk drizzle from the corner of my lips. “Fuck off,” I grumble. “Tell me the rest.”
“Lochlan’s team grabbed everything in Revere. Hard drives, records, cash. Your program ran all the way through.”
“And Gavin? He handled everything from here like I told him?”
“Yeah. He had to restart the program once. He’s been telling everyone about it all morning like he personally took down Dmitri’s financial network.”
“Not shocking.”
“The FBI packages went out at midnight. By this afternoon, the feds are going to have enough to open investigations on the whole lending operation.”
“And Dmitri?”
Cillian’s face hardens. “He took off. By the time Lochlan sent guys to look for him, the place he’d been staying was cleaned out. He must’ve seen it coming and bolted before the walls closed in.”
I reach over to put the cereal bowl on the nightstand. My shoulder screams at the movement and I have to wait for the pain to pass before I can think clearly again. Cillian jumps up from the chair and grabs it before what’s left of the milk spills over the sides.
I settle back against my pillows with a shuddering sigh. Dmitri is out there with no money, no network, and no muscle. He’s a man standing in the wreckage of everything he built. That makes him very fucking unpredictable.
“What about Viktor?” I ask.
“That’s where it gets interesting.” Cillian leans forward, his elbows on his knees. “Ronan got in touch with Viktor this morning and gave him the full evidence package. He told Viktor all about Dmitri going rogue, operating without authorization, threatening the families. The whole thing.”
“And?”
“Viktor pretty much renounced him. Said he was cutting him loose immediately. He didn’t argue any of what we found, didn’t negotiate for his safety, didn’t take a day to think about it. He just washed his hands of the whole thing.”
My brows furrow. “That doesn’t sound right. It almost sounds like he expected it. And had his responses planned.”
“Yup. He turned his back on everything damn quick. Ronan thinks so too.”
“Did Viktor say anything about what happens if Dmitri shows up again?”
“He said the Kozlov family considers the matter resolved. Those were his exact words. And that any future actions by Dmitri are not sanctioned and will not be protected.” Cillian pauses and lifts an eyebrow.
“He also said the Kozlov family expects the same courtesy from the Molloys going forward. Whatever the fuck that means.”
“It means he’s putting a fence around what happened. Containing it. Making sure we can’t use Dmitri as an excuse to push into Kozlov territory,” I say.
“Or it means he’s already planning his next move and wants us looking the other way while he sets it up.”
“Or both.” I scrape a hand down the front of my face. “None of it is good for us.”
We’re quiet for a second. The pain in my shoulder has turned into a deep, constant burn that I’m starting to think might be permanent. I need more drugs, but more than that, I need my head to function clearly.
“That’s a problem for another day,” I finally say. “Right now, we—”
The door bangs open again and Gavin strolls in with a plate of sandwiches and a grin that takes up his whole face.
“The man lives!” He drops onto the foot of my bed, and I have to grab the mattress because the bounce sends a bolt of white-hot pain through my shoulder.
“Get off the bed,” I manage through my gritted teeth.
“Relax, I barely touched it.” He shoves the sandwich plate toward me. “Tony made these. Turkey and something fancy. I don’t know. There’s arugula.”
“I just ate Honey Nut Cheerios.”
“Honey Nut Cheerios aren’t real food. Not like this,” he says, waving the sandwich in my face. If my body was operational, I’d grab it and throw it at him.
Gavin takes a bite of the sandwich and looks at Cillian. “Has he asked about Eva yet?”
“First words out of his mouth.”
“Called it. Lochlan owes me twenty bucks.” Gavin looks between us. “So, what’s the plan? Are we doing a thing? Like a grand gesture? I’m good at grand gestures.”
“You’ve never made a grand gesture in your life,” Cillian says.
“I could start. I’m a fast learner.” He looks at me. “Seriously, though. What’s the play?”
“The play is I don’t contact her.”
Gavin stops chewing. “That’s a terrible play.”
“It’s the only one. She found things on my laptop that make me look like the worst person in her life. If I show up at her door right now trying to explain, she’ll slam it in my face. And she’d be right to.”
“So what, you just sit here and bleed and hope she comes back?”
“No. I do the things I should have done a long time ago and I let her see the results without me standing there taking credit for them.” I lean back against the pillow and the pain flares again.
I push out a long, unsteady breath. “I’m going to track down the person who actually committed the crime Eva went to prison for.
Not just the digital signature I found almost two years ago.
His real name and identity, and enough evidence to hand to a lawyer who can get her conviction overturned and her record wiped clean. ”
“You can do that?” Gavin asks, his blue eyes widening.
“I could have done it eighteen months ago. I just didn’t.”
Silence stretches between us. Cillian looks at the floor. Gavin stops eating.
“It was complicated back then. There were risks to our family. But the connection between her case and our family’s business is something I can work around now,” I say. “Back then, I wasn’t looking for a way to make it work. I was looking for a reason not to. That’s different.”
“What else?” Cillian asks.
“I’m going to make sure that asshole Daniel McCabe gets what’s coming to him. He’s the man who framed Eva. I have his digital signature from the case file. I can build a trail that leads investigators straight to him without it ever touching us.”
“And Eva? She just watches all of this happen and figures out it’s you?”
“She’s the best hacker I’ve ever met. She’ll put it together. When Daniel’s name shows up in an investigation and the evidence matches the analysis on my laptop that she already read, she’ll know exactly who’s behind it.”
“That’s a long play,” Gavin says.
“Eva is worth a long play.”
Gavin looks at Cillian. Cillian looks at Gavin. Something passes between them that I can’t read. Or maybe my brain is still too damn foggy to grasp it.
“Okay,” Cillian says. He stands up, walks over, and ruffles my hair the way he used to when we were kids. “Get some rest. You’re running on painkillers and cereal and whatever delusion is telling you that you’re fine right now.”
“I am fine.”
“You got shot twelve hours ago.”
“And I’m still here. That makes me fine.”
“That makes you stubborn.” He heads for the door. “Same thing in this family, I guess.”
Gavin follows him out but turns back in the doorway. “Hey, Wolfe?”
“Yeah.”
“For what it’s worth, I think she’ll come back. Anyone who makes you this stupid has to be the real deal.”
“Get out, Gavin.”
He grins and closes the door.
I lie in my bed and stare at the ceiling. The pain is a constant, pulsing reminder that last night actually happened. That I drove across Boston, walked into a restaurant, and put my body between Eva and a gun because my brain shut off and my heart took over.
She’s out there right now. Maybe at Sal’s apartment. Definitely angry and hurt and confused and trying to make sense of a man who buried her case file and built a relocation plan and then took a bullet for her in the same week. I know all of that shit has to have sent her spiraling.
I’m not going to call her. I’m not going to text. I’m not going to show up at her door with explanations she’s not ready to hear.
I’m going to find the man who destroyed her life. I’m going to hand over her freedom on a platter. And I’m going to do it without asking for a single thing in return.
That’s how you prove to someone that you’re not the man they think you are.
Not with words. With what you do when they’re not watching.
I open my laptop with my good hand.
Eighteen months ago, I chose my family over a stranger in a prison cell. But now, I choose her, and I’m going to do everything in my power to make things right.
She’ll know it was me. Eva always finds the fingerprints. But that’s not why I’m doing it.
I’m doing it because it’s what I should have done eighteen months ago. Whether she ever speaks to me again doesn’t change that.