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“The fuck he didn’t. Maybe it wasn’t a direct attack on her, but he did nothing to stop it. He asked too many fucking questions.”
The rage on his face must match the look Niko has whenever he thinks about Gabe and his role in Niko’s wife getting hurt — twice.
“Did you pick them up?”
Uncle Salvatore shakes his head. He stops drumming his fingers as he locks gazes with me. He’s as pissed as Gabe, but he isn’t showing it. These men actually took — touched — Uncle Salvatore’s wife. Gabe rarely wears his heart on his sleeve, but he does where Sinead is concerned. At least, in front of us he does.
“Marco and Matteo are going. Once we know who they are, we need you to hack their accounts. Follow every penny. Find out everywhere they go. Find their families. Find other jobs they’ve done.”
“Carmine, I’m going to need your computer. I didn’t bring mine.”
His computer doesn’t run all the financial software mine does, but he has what I need to hack. I can day trade, but my primary job is as a CPA. As part of that, I’ve studied forensic accounting. I don’t want anyone tracing our shit, and I need to know how to find everyone else’s. I can do all the same shit Sergei Andreyev can, even if I “only” went to Rutgers and not an Ivy League for computer science.
I’d already started hacking in high school, but the guy who taught me died my senior year. Rutgers was the compromise I had to make for my family. I got accepted to every Ivy League and then some. But I had to stay close to the city because there were times the skills I had and the ones I was learning were needed. Rutgers was just far enough away in Jersey for me to justify living in the dorms. I just wanted something semi-normal for a few years.
Carmine hands me his computer as I sit down at the end of the sofa closest to him. He’s already logged out of his profile, so I log in to mine. I hear the others talking around me, but I focus on planning where I’m going to look. The obvious place to start is hacking the FBI and DOJ to see if there’s anything in their background.
I’ll also hack the IRS to see what they’ve claimed and to figure out what they are hiding. But I don’t know their names yet, so I can’t find their social security numbers. That means I can’t start checking their bank accounts or their backgrounds. I’m antsy to get started, but I have a very limited amount of time I can spend on each site before I risk their security programs noticing me. They won’t find me because I’ll jump from so many satellites they’ll assume it’s a foreign hacker. But I don’t need to draw attention.
While I wait to find out their names, I think about how much I want to take Chellie somewhere away from all this bullshit. Somehow, she’s connected to this. I’m sure of it. I don’t know how, but I feel it in my bones. I want her far, far away. I want to take her mind off knowing she’s a target and from this world she’s catapulted into. I want us to have time as a couple. So, instead of the conversation going on around me, I pull up travel websites. I’m not browsing flights or even hotels. I don’t need either of those. But I want to come up with a destination.
It’s my phone that buzzes, and I recognize Marco’s number.
“Who are they?”
I launch my question with no preamble.
“Hired guys. Only one of them knows anything about the job that took Aunt Sylvia. He’s also the only one who’s held out. The others know nothing about who hired them. It’s the typical find an envelope of cash in a trashcan as a down payment, then a second one once the job is done. These guys are professionals who don’t ask questions from their employers. They all agreed that the person who contracted them only used email.”
“Email? That’s traceable. Does this person want us to find them?”
“I asked them that, but none had a good answer. They’re just hired muscle. They don’t think for themselves.”
Marco rattles off a list of six names. I type them into a digital notepad that’s so fucking encrypted even God couldn’t see it. Once we hang up, I share the names to see if they mean anything to someone else, but everyone draws a blank. I start digging.
I don’t know how much time passes until I glance at the clock on the computer. It’s been nearly an hour and a half since I arrived. It doesn’t take me long to find everything about these guys from the obstetrician who delivered them to where they got laid for the first time.
Amazing the trails you can find when you have the patience to dig. I filter through their bank accounts and tax returns. I looked up their personal shit in case Marco could use something for leverage. Now I’m ready to roll up my sleeves and really get to work.
Gabe brings me three cups of espresso as I work through the night. I hate the shit, but it keeps me going. While I work, my mind tries to drift to Chellie, but I force myself to concentrate. I crawl through the various government databases until I find what I’m looking for. The one thing that links them together.
It’s six in the morning by the time I have anything. I camped out in Uncle Salvatore’s office while everyone else slept. Only Gabe stayed up with me, getting me coffee and making a couple of snacks. We head into the kitchen where everyone else is making breakfast.
“Everything is coming through Russia. I don’t know if the person who started this is there. If they are, they weren’t careful enough. But my guess is they aren’t, but want us to think they are. That might explain why Maks hired them.”
Uncle Salvatore stands up from his place at the kitchen table and paces.
“Could it be the bratva the Kutsenkos have history with? Could they have gone after Sylvia, hoping to pin it on Maks and his family? Are they who’s targeting Michelle?”
Carmine’s brow furrows. He doesn’t look convinced, and his comment confirms it.
“Maybe. They might not have claimed taking Aunt Sylvia because they failed to keep her. But they know better than anyone that the Kutsenkos don’t involve the wives, definitely notlamadrina.”
The matriarch or the godmother. That’s Aunt Sylvia’s role as the don’s wife. Uncle Salvatore lost his shit in a way I’ve never seen before when he discovered Carmine, Gabe, and Luca’s involvement in going after a Kutsenko woman. He has always said that if we target the women in another family, it opens the door for people to come after the women in our family. Did a bratva from Moscow step across the threshold? It seems unlikely, but that’s what often turns into the most obvious answer.
My dad looks at his older brother and raises his eyebrows.
“What now?”
