Page 37 of Shadow Of Sin

“It’s all I can give you right now.”

“Yeah.” She bites down on her lower lip. “That seems to be your thing.”

She walks back to the bar and slowly climbs onto the stool. A couple of minutes later, Sal comes out and she puts her hand on his arm without a word. He covers it with his.

I sit back down. The chicken parm is cold.

“Hey, Wolfe?” she says without turning around.

“Yeah.”

“Don’t make promises you can’t keep. I’ve had enough of those.”

“I don’t make promises. I solve problems.”

“Same thing.” She pauses, her mouth twitching for a hot second before it’s back to the tight line. “Just less poetic.”

Hoxha.

It’s Albanian. And the boss’s name, from what I could gather.

Here’s the problem. I came to this neighborhood to track a ghost and figure out Dmitri Kozlov’s operation. That’s the job. That’s what Ronan gave me a deadline for, and that’s what Eva is risking her neck to help me with. Everything I’m doing here leads back to one objective: figure out what Dmitri’s building before he uses it against my family.

The Albanians aren’t part of that. They’re something else entirely. A separate crew with a separate operation running a separate shakedown on a bartender who happens to be the brother of my source.

That’s the big problem. Because if they push Sal hard enough, Sal will panic. If Sal panics, Eva will do something stupid and brave, the kind of thing she almost did tonight when she tried to go after two men she knows nothing about. And if Eva goes down…if she gets hurt, exposed, scared enough to run…my pipeline to Dmitri dries up overnight.

Everything I’ve built will collapse. Ronan will get nothing. The ghost will go dark. Dmitri will keep building whatever he’s building, and even with all of my illegal cyber activities, my family won’t see it coming.

All because some crew I’ve never heard of decided to squeeze a bartender for money he doesn’t have.

Jesus Christ.

I can’t let that happen. Which means these guys just became my problem, whether I like it or not.

Squaring my shoulders, I sit at my computer and start typing. I start with public records. Business filings in the Boston area with Albanian names attached. There are more than I expected. Construction companies, import businesses, a couple of cleaning services. Most of them are probably legitimate. Some of them aren’t. I cross-reference addresses and names, looking for overlap.

It takes me an hour to find the pattern. Three companies, different names, same registered agent. An address that shows up on all three. That’s got to be the hub.

I take what I found and go deeper into the dark web forums where crews like this operate. You don’t find these kinds of operations by doing a Google search. You find them by knowing which doors are out there and having the keys to open them. I’ve spent years building those keys. My brothers don’t know about half of them because Ronan would want to control them, and Lochlan would want to secure them, and both of those things would cockblock me from getting what I need.

The name Hoxha shows up about eighteen months ago. Someone setting up shop in Boston. It looks like a small lending operation, perfect for borrowers in neighborhoods the established mafia families don’t service.

I tap my thumb against my knee. Eighteen months. That lines up with my Dad’s disappearance and the Kozlov negotiations. We were so focused on our own organization that while we weren’t watching our backs, someone walked into the empty space and started building.

Seems like they have a small crew. Maybe a dozen guys based on the forums. They run lending, some construction, and gambling on the side. They own a handful of blocks that nobody significant in the city ever claimed. The kind of territory that’s too small for the Molloys or the DiMichelis to bother with.

Sal’s block. Eva’s block.

The block where the people I’m trying to protect live.

I dig deeper into their lending records. It takes another thirty minutes to find what I’m looking for…a ledger buried in an encrypted forum post. Sal’s name is on it. Forty-two thousand dollars, borrowed fourteen months ago. The interest rate is fucking criminal. He’s been making payments, but the balance barely moves because the interest keeps him drowning.

Forty-two thousand for something—maybe for his restaurant or Eva’s legal fees. Maybe both. He must’ve borrowed it from the Albanians because no bank would touch the brother of a convicted felon, and the Albanians were the only option in his neighborhood.

I lean back in my chair and stare at the number.

I can cover forty-two thousand without blinking. I’ve got my own money, my own accounts, structures I set up years ago specifically to keep distance between my finances and the Molloy name. The amount isn’t the problem.