“Look, this is what I have to do. It’s the only way to protect you guys. Dad’s a fucking asshole, and he made a lot of threats to get me to agree. He brought up C’s liquor license, said he’dmake sure it didn’t get renewed. Threatened to tip off the authorities about Wolfe’s hacking. And Gav—” I look at my youngest brother, my stomach twisting. “He said it would be tragic if no one was there to bail you out next time you got into trouble. Which, knowing you, will be in a few hours.”
My brothers are quiet, my words poisoning the air around us.
Gavin’s jaw muscle tics. He picks up the water glass and gulps it down.
“That heartless prick,” Cillian mutters.
“Same playbook. Different day.” I run my finger over the indentations in the wood. “He also told me my security firm is bullshit. That he’s been feeding me clients, blocking competitors, and sanitizing my background checks.” I pound my fist on the bar. “Everything I thought I built on my own?—”
“Is bullshit?”
“His word. Not mine.”
“It’s not bullshit.” Cillian says. “You built something real, Loch. Whatever strings he pulled doesn’t change the work you put in. You know he only said all that shit to piss you off.”
“It worked.” And while I want to believe my brother, I’m not sure I do.
Wolfe walks in without a sound, without acknowledging us, which is his signature move. He’s twenty-four years old, moves around like a ghost, and has the brain of a supercomputer. He slides into a booth in the corner, opens his laptop, and starts typing.
“Hey, Wolfe,” I call out. “Nice of you to grace us with your presence.”
“I’ve been here for six minutes,” he says, pushing his glasses farther up his nose and not moving his eyes from the screen.
My brow furrows. “No, you haven’t. We’ve been here the whole time. We would have seen you.”
“Would you have?” he asks, his sharp eyes finally peeling away from his laptop and focusing on me. “I came in throughthe back while Gavin was monologuing about the Bloomberg photo.”
Gavin balls up a napkin and tosses it at him. It goes wide and misses him by about three feet.
“I’ve been tracking the Kozlovs,” Wolfe says, returning his attention to the screen. “Viktor Kozlov specifically. He’s twenty-six years old and runs the enforcement arm for his father’s bratva. He’s been in Boston for a year with a crew. And if the Russians are responsible for that attack, it wasn’t a random thing. They were planning this.”
“Any idea why they’d have targeted Francesco specifically?” I ask.
“If I had to guess? Territory. The DiMichelis control the port access the Kozlovs need to expand their operations. With Francesco out of the picture, they probably expected the whole organization to collapse.” Wolfe's eyes lift from the laptop. Blue, like mine. Like our mother's. “I’ll bet they didn't count on Dad swooping in with a marriage contract.”
“Lucky us,” Cillian mutters.
“I'm building a file on Viktor's movements, his people, his patterns. If he makes another move, we'll see it coming.” Wolfe pauses. “Assuming Dad shares what he knows, which he won't.”
“Yeah, whatever intel he had will go to the grave with him,” I say. “Keep digging anyway. Quietly, though.”
“Always.”
I pull out my spoon. The ice cream is melting, and I hate when it gets slushy. But I eat it anyway because the alternative is thinking about Viktor Kozlov, my father and his manipulations, and the fact that the woman I’m about to marry is walking straight into the crossfire without knowing the half of it.
“So what’s she like?” Cillian asks. He’s always been good at diffusing tension. And with a father like Eamon Molloy, tension is like a roommate that doesn’t pay the rent. “In person. Not inForbes.”
I think about the way Adriana stood in that cafeteria with herarms crossed, back straight, a hard glare that could slice through glass.
“She’s…” I pause for a second, trying to think of the exact word to fit her in those moments. “Terrifying.”
Gavin snorts. “Loch thinks she’s terrifying. This is the same guy who dislocated a dude’s shoulder in an MMA bout last month.”
“That’s different. That guy was trying to hit me. She’s trying to out-think me. It’s worse.”
“Worse how?”
“Because she’s winning.” I scrape the last bite from the bottom carton. “She negotiated her own terms for this sham at four in the morning wearing a bloodstained gown while her father was in a hospital bed hooked up to machines that were breathing for him. She didn’t cry. She didn’t beg for an out. She looked our father in the eye and called him out on his bullshit.”
