Which begs the question:
Who the fuck sent him?
Because this isn’t random. This isn’t a junkie trying to score or a carjacker making the wrong turn. This was a job. A contract.
And the mark? Mary Catherine Sullivan.
Iwasn’tsupposed to know her name.
Boris was the one who flagged her. The bank—Brightside National—came up dirty when he started tracing the money trail back to Viktor Kozlov. A thousand moving parts. Layered transfers. Shell LLCs. Most of it circled back to the same branch.
Same manager. Dave Thornton. Washed-out prick with a history of debt and a gambling problem. Two offshore accounts and a wife who thinks he’s just underpaid. He’s been helping Viktor move Bratva money out the back door for months.
But that wasn’t the surprise.
The surprise wasMary.
Boris sent me CCTV footage—lobby feed from the branch. I wasn’t paying much attention until I froze the frame and saw her. That face.
That same woman from the night before, half-drunk and pressing her hand against my cock like she owned it.Mary. The one who, in that stupid half-mumbled haze, told me where she worked.
She looked professional in the footage, clean, composed, handing a deposit slip to some greasy little runner. But my gut twisted, anyway.
I watched footage from three different angles, and it’s always her. The money gets dropped, and it’s her hand that takes it. Thornton keeps her close. Too close.
Boris ran the prints on the deposit slips. Hers.
Either she’s part of it… or she’s the perfect fucking patsy.
I tell myself I need her alive. She might know more. She might lead me to Kozlov.
But that doesn’t explain why I’m still parked outside the quiet little house.
Or why my cock twitches when I think about the first time she touched it. Drunk, sloppy, with no clue who she was grabbing. White blouse buttoned high, like she’s some modest little church girl. But it hugged her body like a second skin. Those tits. That ass. That black pencil skirt rode her curves like it wanted to fuck her too.
No heels. Flats. Sensible, tired, plain. She swapped them for sneakers before the bus ride, and I watched her do it.
I followed the damn bus.
In a car. My car. A man with access to GPS hacks, traffic cams, and enough manpower to tail a senator without breaking a sweat—and I’m crawling through traffic behind a city bus like some broke-ass stalker.
She gets off at Elm Street and Desert Rose Boulevard.
Then walks two more blocks to a rundown cul-de-sac with chain-link fences and sun-bleached gnomes.
I could’ve sent Lev or Dima to keep eyes on her while I did something more productive. Like, I don’t know… find the man stealing millions from myPakhan.
But I didn’t.
I followed her.
And now there’s blood on the gravel, a body in my trunk, and I’m more tangled in this shit than I ever meant to be.
And someone wants her dead.
Either she’s part of this… or she’s in the middle of something she doesn’t understand.
A screen door creaks across the street. Old man in a sweat-stained tank top steps out, trash bag in hand, staring too long at my parked Charger like he’s trying to memorize the plates.
