Chapter 4
Trish locked the door at ten and turned to find Stockton still sitting in his plastic chair, watching her with eyes that saw too much.
"You promised me answers," she said.
"I did."
She grabbed two cups of coffee—the last of the pot, bitter and lukewarm—and crossed the empty laundromat to sit in the chair across from his. The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead. The dryers had finally gone silent. In the stillness, she could hear her own heartbeat.
"So talk."
He didn't. Not right away. Instead, he looked at her with that steady, patient gaze, like he was waiting for her to go first.
Fine. She could do that.
"Warren Zielinski," she said. "That's the man running this operation. Got out of Stateville six months ago after twelve years for armed robbery. He's got a crew of about sixteen men—all ex-cons, all did time with him. They trust each other because prison does that."
Stockton's eyes sharpened. "You've done your homework."
"I've had six weeks with nothing to do but watch my business die." Trish wrapped her hands around the coffee cup, more for the warmth than the caffeine. "He approached me about two months ago. Nice suit, polite smile, very reasonable. Said he had a business proposition."
"Money laundering."
"Cash-heavy business, minimal paper trail. He wanted to run dirty money through my books—inflate my revenue, take his cut, make everything look legitimate." She laughed, and it came out bitter. "He even offered me a percentage. Said I'd never have to worry about repairs again."
"And you told him no."
"I told him to go to hell."
Something flickered across Stockton's face. Approval, maybe. Or recognition.
"He didn't take it well," she continued. "First it was just pressure. His men parking outside, watching. Making sure my customers knew they were being observed. Then the machines started breaking."
"Sabotage."
"Three at a time. Always the front row, always where everyone can see. He's not trying to hide what he's doing—he wants the neighborhood to know that refusing Warren Zielinski has consequences." Trish's grip tightened on the cup. "Then his boys started beating my customers."
Stockton went still. "What?"
"Not here. On their way home. Two of my late-night regulars got jumped last month. Nothing serious—black eyes, bruised ribs—but serious enough." Her voice hardened. "They don't come anymore. Nobody comes after dark anymore."
The silence that followed was different from before. Heavier. Charged with something that felt like anger held on a very short leash.
"The cops?" he asked.
"Useless. Warren's too smart to do anything himself, and his men never threaten anyone directly. It's all implications and coincidences." She shrugged. "I've filed six reports. Nothing happened. Nothing's going to happen."
"So you've been fighting this alone."
"Who else is there?" Trish met his gaze without flinching. "My customers are scared. My neighbors are scared. Half the businesses on this block have already made deals with Warren just to survive. I'm the last holdout."
"Why?"
The question was simple, but it cut deep. She felt it land somewhere in her chest, in the hollow space where her reasons lived.
"Because my aunt built this place." Her voice came out rougher than she intended. "Because she spent twenty-three years keeping these lights on, and she didn't do that so some prison gang could turn it into a cash laundry. Because—"
She stopped. Swallowed.
"Because it's mine," she finished quietly. "And I don't give up what's mine."
Stockton was looking at her differently now. Like she'd said something that mattered. Like she'd passed some test she hadn't known she was taking.
"Warren's crew," he said. "How do they move? Schedules, patterns?"
"The sedan shows up at eight every morning, different men every day. They watch until about ten at night, then leave. The big one—the guy who came in tonight—he's the main muscle. Does the dirty work when dirty work needs doing."
"Name?"
"They call him Big T." Trish took a sip of her cold coffee. "He's the one who beat my customers. I can't prove it, but I know."
Stockton filed that away—she could see him doing it, cataloging information like a man who'd done this before.
"Counter-surveillance?" he asked.
"What?"
"Do they watch for people watching them? Run patterns to check for tails?"
"I... yes." She'd noticed it but hadn't known what to call it. "Two more of Warren's guys park at the end of the block around midnight. They drive the perimeter for about an hour, then leave."
"How many total have you seen?"
"Eight or nine different faces. But Warren's supposed to have sixteen, so there are more I haven't identified." She studied him across the plastic chairs. "Why do you know to ask these questions?"
"Because I've been taking apart operations like this since before these boys went to prison."
There was no boast in it. Just fact. Just the quiet certainty of a man stating what he was.
"Your turn," Trish said. "Who are you? Really? Because a biker who does fake laundry for four nights and scares off prison muscle with a look isn't just some random guy."
Stockton leaned back in his chair. In the fluorescent light, the gray at his temples looked silver, and the lines around his eyes looked like maps of everywhere he'd been.
"Twenty years ago, five men sat in a garage in Bridgeport and decided this neighborhood needed protecting.
" His voice was low, steady—a voice for telling stories that mattered.
"The stockyards were gone. The factories were closing.
Gangs were moving in, cartels were pushing product, and nobody was doing a damn thing about it. "
"So you did something."
"We started hunting." His eyes held hers. "We rode through Back of the Yards and Bridgeport and Pilsen, and we found the predators, and we put them down. One by one. Block by block. Until people started to understand that this territory had protectors."
Trish watched his face as he spoke. She'd expected swagger. Bravado. The kind of puffed-up machismo she'd seen from every tough guy who'd ever walked through her door.
This wasn't that.
This was something older. Heavier. A man carrying twenty years of blood and loss and stubborn refusal to let the darkness win.
"You're one of the five," she said. "The founders."
"My name's on the charter. First one after Alpha." He looked at her, and something in his gaze felt like being seen. "I've been fighting this fight since I was twenty-two years old. I've buried brothers. Buried my wife. Watched this neighborhood try to die a hundred different times."
His wife. The words landed with weight, and Trish filed them away for later.
"Why this?" she asked. "Why my laundromat? There must be a hundred businesses getting squeezed by crews like Warren's. Why do you care about this one?"
Stockton was quiet for a long moment. The fluorescent lights hummed. A car passed on the street outside, headlights sweeping across the windows and disappearing.
"Because Mae Callahan was the first person who told me my mother's clothes were ready when I was sixteen and too broke to pay," he said finally.
"Because she let me sleep in the back room one winter when I had nowhere else to go.
Because the lights being on at ten o'clock at night mattered to a kid who was trying not to become another statistic. "
Trish's throat tightened. She hadn't known that. Aunt Mae had helped half the neighborhood at one point or another, but she'd never talked about it. Never kept score.
"She never mentioned you," Trish said.
"She wouldn't have." Almost a smile. "That wasn't Mae's way."
The silence between them felt different now. Less like strangers and more like two people standing on the same side of a line.
"So what happens now?" Trish asked. "You keep showing up with your fake laundry until Warren gives up?"
"Warren's not going to give up. Men like him don't know how." Stockton leaned forward, and the intensity in his eyes made her breath catch. "But neither do I. And neither does the pack."
"The pack."
"The Wolves." He said it like a promise. Like a vow. "We were founded to stop exactly this. Predators moving into our territory. Preying on people who can't fight back. Taking what doesn't belong to them."
The weight behind his words settled over her like armor. Like protection.
"This is our neighborhood," he said. "It has been for twenty years. And we don't let outside crews shake down the people who keep the lights on."
Trish looked at him—this man with gray at his temples and twenty years of war in his eyes—and felt something shift in her chest.
Hope, maybe. Or the first loosening of a grip she'd been holding alone for too long.
"You sound like a man who's made this speech before."
"I've lived this speech." Stockton stood, the movement easy despite the hour. "Get some rest. I'll be back tomorrow."
"With more fake laundry?"
"With a plan."
He headed for the door, and Trish watched him go—the way he moved, the way he held himself, the weight in his shoulders that looked like it had been there for decades.
"Stockton."
He paused, hand on the glass.
"Thank you," she said. "For... for giving a damn."
He looked back at her. In the fluorescent light, his face was unreadable, but something in his eyes felt like warmth.
"The Wolves were founded to stop exactly this," he said again. And this time, the weight behind his words sounded like a man who remembered why he started fighting twenty years ago.
Then he was gone, and Trish sat alone in the humming silence, holding a cold cup of coffee and the first real hope she'd felt in six weeks.