𝐌𝐞𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐝 𝐭𝐨 𝐓𝐡𝐞𝐢𝐫 𝐌𝐚𝐝𝐧𝐞𝐬𝐬

25 | It's Not What You Know, It's Who

"Sorry, so go back a bit. Dex thinks he can help you with a bot?" Tom asked, cocking his head to the side as he turned the stove off and used tongs to pick up the octopus.

"Yeah, he's a guy that I bring in sometimes to develop system shells for me and then I go in and add my magic to them. But essentially this would let you do all your business calls via FaceTime or Zoom or whatever platform, but completely scramble the server settings and call identification," I said getting off the couch with my beer and moving to the kitchen table where Tom had served us both two plates.

"Fuck darling, that sounds incredible... How soon do you think you'd have that ready?" He grinned widely, sitting down next to me at the table and opening his own beer yet again with his teeth.

I scowled at him. He smiled awkwardly.

"Dex is the type of dude who locks himself in a dark room and pees in a bottle and creates code all day every day so I think I will have his half in my hands by the end of the week. Depending on my work load however, I don't know when I'll finish it off," I sighed.

Priya had been sending me a shit tonne of jobs lately. I mean, I can pick and choose whatever I wanted to take them under my belt but with such high offers of money I couldn't turn them down. When I brought it up with Tom, he would tell me to relax but I knew that I had to make my own money in this world; I couldn't be another woman reliant on a man to get by.

"What else have you been doing? Other than work," he said popping a piece of octopus in his mouth, the juicy herbed marinade filling the air with its aroma.

"I'm working on trying to get that ankle monitor off you," I said casually, scooping some cous cous onto my fork and carefully lifting it to my mouth.

"Fuck off... You can do that?!" He said dropping his fork.

"Well... If we cut it off it'll trip the wires and send alerts to your parole officer. That'll land you straight back into prison. What I'm trying to do in theory, is counteract the location signals so you can wear it outside of your radius. It's really fucking hard though," I sighed, taking a sip of beer.

"Don't stress about me darling, if I can do business from inside the apartment, that's would be an absolute dream come true. I uh, I was talking to Haz about stepping down as the Godfather until then... But the baby is due any day now and he doesn't want the responsibility on his hands as a Dad," Tom huffed.

"Seriously? Wow... I mean I get it... But at the same time he's your number two so he already has a shit tonne of responsibility," I shrugged.

Tom went on to explain how Haz wanted to take on even less than what he was doing and hopefully pass some of it off yo my brothers now that they were getting more experienced. Plus, Paddy was turning eighteen soon so he'd be able to actually be in The Family now.

"If I do manage to figure out how I could fuck with your ankle monitors location, it would only be for like, a few hours at a time... The federal systems are so hard to crack because their algorithm changes it's encryption like every four or six hours... So it would refresh your location when it resets," I explained.

"Darling, you've gotten me out of prison already, you can rest assured I am forever in your debt," he laughed.

"But this is basically just a five star prison. You're killing your mind being cooped up here," I sighed.

"Y/N, people get on house arrest stuck in a tiny one bedroom apartment. I have all of this to my leisure, it's more than luxurious," he said smiling.

Tom is in good spirits still, which is worrying to me because I know that he's going to hit a psychological wall soon and come crashing down. One day he'll realise that the rest of his life is this apartment block and the little grocer down the street and he will put a fucking bullet in his head.

For some people, that's all they need. For most people, Tom has the best possible outcome one on house arrest could ask for. But for Tom, he was used to a life of complete and utter independence. He was used to jet setting around the world and conducting business in multiple countries. He won't last like this.

I got a call from Priya whilst we had finished up dinner, which was rare but not uncommon. Usually she called me whenever extremely urgent news arose. I took it whilst Tom stacked the dishwasher with our dirty plates.

"Hey P, what's up?" I asked.

"How do you know Tom Holland?" She asked bluntly and my stomach dropped. I had done everything in my power to erase any traces of him from my life in the way that could be tracked.

"Sorry?" I said playing dumb.

"Don't fucking lie to me Y/N, how do you know him?" She repeated.

"I've done a few jobs for him in the past, why do you ask? Is there something wrong?" I asked cautiously.

"I'm just curious to know why there's a photo of you two framed in your living room is all... Seems a bit weird to print out an image with an old client don't you think?" She said nonchalantly.

I had no words. She was inside my fucking house and she now knew I was affiliated with Tom. She was inside my house where I kept information on every person I had ever tracked on hard drives.

I felt my heart skip a beat and my lungs felt like they were being crushed from all their oxygen. I reminded myself that my office is always locked when I'm not home and that I have systems to wipe all the data off my hard drives when the password is inputted incorrectly.

I didn't think my past with Tom would be an issue in the grand scheme of things, I just knew it would look bad if I started working for her with a history with him. After all, he controls half the crime in this city.

"I'd be careful who I associate myself with in this town if I were you Y/N... You never know what someone might have on you," she said coldly before hanging up the phone.

I turned around to look at Tom slowly, the colour in my face inevitably gone as I feared for both of us.

"What's wrong Darling?" Tom said with a concerned look, drying his hands on the sides of his sweat pants.

"I- I don't know... I can't tell if my boss is threatening me or threatened by me..."