We kept walking.

I swallowed embarrassingly loud. It felt like there was something stuck on my throat. I wanted to tell Wolfe something, I just didn't know what. The words were right on the tip of my tongue but my mind hadn't gone far enough to know what they were just yet. Wasn't that silly?

"I have to ask you something and I need you to tell me the truth." His voice was hoarse, almost cracking on the last word. Truth. Like I said, Wolfe wasn't a liar. He just withheld information. Saying exactly enough to be considered that word, the truth, but not enough that he could be held to his words if a change occurred. I liked to think myself as an honest person. I just lied when it was necessary. Did that make it right? Absolutely not. Did I care? Absolutely not. Would I ever give up Twizzlers? Absolutely not.

I chewed my bottom lip nervously. "Depends on what the question is."

"Florence."

I rolled my eyes. "Yes, I'll tell the truth."

"Do you trust me?" Wolfe asked.

I was confused. "So, is that the question or just, like, an inquiry before you ask the question-"

"Florence."

"Stop saying my name." I scowled. Trust. A special word, meant so much more to some people than others. I trusted three people with everything: My parents and Clancy. Ade, not any more. Not after what he did. As for Wolfe...he wanted a truthful answer. I was going to give him one, I swear. I just didn't know how to...say it, exactly because I didn't even know the answer myself.

"Well?" He raised his eyebrow.

"I don't know." There. That was the truth. I really didn't know. Had that question been asked to me a week ago, my answer would have been a surefire no. But now, I wasn't so sure. Wolfe seemed to be expecting more so I unstuck my tongue and continued. "I suppose, to a certain extent, yes I do. With some things. I mean, I wouldn't trust you with my life or anything. You did just leave me alone for three minutes. You had many chances, and reasons, to kill me and you didn't take it. I dumped coffee over you, I pushed you, I made fun of you. But you also drove me home when I was lost and I would almost consider you a nice person if it wasn't for the one thousand pounds of meth in the cellar. Trust is a really interesting word but I wouldn't use it to describe the relationship we have."

"Then what word would you use?"

"Harmful. Unhealthy." I said bluntly. "Wrong. Damaging. One-sided. And every other synonym there is for the word 'bad.' What was the question you had to ask me?"

"Oh, right." Wolfe said. He was quiet for a few seconds. "What's the wifi password for the coffee shop?"

"I don't know." Lies, I totally did. It was CatBurglar48.

"Seriously. We need it." Wolfe urged. "Elliot needs to access to the Internet keep track of the shipments that come in. Our entire security system, cameras and such, are monitored on a concealed Internet domain. We can't break through the firewall, for whatever reason and Elliot can't access anything without the password."

"I told you. I don't know." There was no way I was going to tell Wolfe the wifi password. We were already in deep waters by merely associating with the Crowns. The drug shipments that were currently sitting in the cellar was proof of affiliation, in any eyes of the law. Using our property, or rather, my parent's property, for a criminal hideaway was breaking all the rules. The last thing we needed was for the bust to happen from being traced back to the signal coming from the coffee shop. It was practically leaving a breadcrumb trail for the cops. Evidence was a lot harder to erase from online networks.

"Fine." He said huffily. "Don't tell me then."

"I wasn't going to."

"Alright, you don't always need the last word."

I grinned at him even though he couldn't see me. "But I do."

"Oh my God." He growled. "Change of subject. Why'd your parents name you Florence? Have you ever been?"

"To Florence, Italy?" It was so weird think I was carrying a normal conversation with a wanted criminal in the middle of some dark tunnels while clinging to his arm like an octopus for dear life. "No. My mother is from there though, so I guess that's why they named me that. Why did your parents name you Wolfe?"

He was quiet for so long that I began to think he hadn't heard me. Just as I was about to repeat the question, Wolfe said in the softest mumble, "They didn't."

"What do you mean? Is Wolfe just a nickname or-"

"I don't know, Florence." The agitation was clear in his tone. Wolfe Sterling was a very private man. Not many people knew much about him, not even the agencies looking for him. All information about Wolfe could be found online, from leaked reports and inquisitive clickbait articles looking for views, which wasn't much. The public didn't even know what Wolfe looked like. To lay low in Canada for several years, making people think the Crowns were gone for good, had kept the public unprepared for their return to Brooklyn. I don't even think Brice, Jasper, or Daniel knew much about him, either. Wolfe was aloof, distant, and cruel.

But me being the curious monkey that I am, I couldn't help but pry in some more. "But it's such a strange name. It had to have come from somewhere. Did you get too attached to the story The Three Little Pigs and-"

"I told you, Florence." Wolfe's voice was hard. "I don't know my real name. I've been called Wolfe for as long as I can remember. I do not know and I would very much appreciate it if you kept your nose out of my personal business."

"So it's a nickname."

"For fuck's sake." He growled loudly. ''I don't have my birth records, okay? I don't know where I'm from, how old I am, what my name is. I don't even remember my parents, Florence. All I know is that the day I was born was on a Monday, the same Monday that I was put in front of a foster home with a fucking number tag around my wrist. For the first two years of my life, that number tag was what I was referred to. The next year, I saw a grey wolf. It was a rogue, shunned from the pack like we were from society but still survived. Fought it's own way through the world, didn't need anyone for help. I wanted to be like that, to be strong enough to have to depend on no one but myself. So I adopted the name Wolfe and it stuck. Wolfe Sterling. That's me. Does that satisfy your curiosity or do you need a run down my entire life up to this point, too?"

I couldn't find a response and he didn't wait for one. Wolfe began walking slightly faster, almost huffily, so that it was harder to keep pace with him. Somehow, I got the feeling that I pissed him off. Along with that, I was getting real tired of all the walking and even more so from being kept captive from work. At least half an hour had already passed. Or maybe it was ten minutes. Or even five. Who knows? It was hard to tell time in the dark.

The more we walked, the more electricity appeared. Soon, the passageways were lighted with the same bulbs screwed into the ceiling until it became occasional. There were several other underpass entrances along the way, none of which Wolfe entered. He seemed to be headed for something and he seemed to be in a rush to get there. Or maybe he was just too annoyed with me to slow down for the faint of heart.

"Are you memorising the turns we are taking?" Wolfe asked. "It's a life-size maze, literally. The whole point of this is to make sure you can find your way around the tunnels in case you ever find yourself down here alone. Not that I think that's going to happen, but it might be helpful if you paid attention."

I was alarmed, to say the least. "What? No! Wolfe, I can barely breathe down here, let alone create an entire map based solely on my memory. I don't even know how many corners we turned-"

"Eleven."

"Great. Yeah, okay. I'll just, you know, turn right around and walk those eleven corners and end up right underneath the law firm. Sure. Why not? It must be so easy."

"It is easy. You're just making it complicated. All you have to do is go down the trapdoor, take ten steps forward and make a left turn, walk down a corridor, make the exit through the left wing, make a right turn, count up to fifty, turn 37 degrees north, come up on the east corridor and-"

"I'll take your gun, Wolfe. I'll take your gun and shoot you in the face with it."

"This way." Wolfe ignored my threat and helpfully shoved me in front of him and into an opening when I tried to take a left turn instead of a right. The opening lead to a small corridor, about five feet long, and then an actual wooden door. Similar to the one I saw back in the law firm basement, this one had an almost identical control panel beside it. While the one in the basement needed a four digit code to open, this one needed a fingerprint scan. Wolfe stepped forward and pressed his hand down onto a blank screen. Recognizing his prints, the small screen glowed and a handprint appeared. The tips of the animated hand had green rings around to indicate where the fingers should go. A second later, a small buzzing noise came from somewhere behind the door and with a click, it opened automatically.

Wolfe took hold of my elbow and pushed me into the room.

It's very easy to impress me. Anything that has to do with Twizzlers leaves me open-mouthed and in awe. Heck, I even get excited when I have fast Internet access. And I considered magicians as supernatural beings even though I knew it was all sleight of hand and illusions and whatnot.

But this...this was on a completely different level of astonishment. Before walking into that room, I had maybe just a tiny bit of reverence for Wolfe Sterling. The guy was a horrible human being, but he was a genius. Even I could appreciate that part. His crimes were something out of an action movie. Stuff you'd only imagine happening in a fictional world. In books and movies alike, the bad guy always gets caught. Justice prevails, the hero wins, and baby-faced citizens live happily ever after.

But here, in the real world, it's so much for complicated than that. Villains succeed. The good guy turns out not to be so good after all. People get hurt. Wolfe did all of that, he succeeded, he made it onto the top of the food chain. In a dog-eat-dog world, he was the wolf. His influence reached far and wide, his connections granting him the ability to do quite literally anything. Wolfe was capable of a lot of things. He had the power and the money to do what he wanted. Not many people could say that. Not many people, if any, could do what he does. To bring powerful politicians to their knees, bankrupt the biggest corporations in the world, destroy lives and crush enemies, thrive off power and pain, it all made Wolfe Sterling the most notorious man in the country, if not the world. I despised the guy, loathed everything he stood for. And yet, even I had the most inane amount of respect for him.

The tunnels that led past the cellar, I had assumed to be barren. Nothing in them, nothing to see except for dirt and dead animals that got stuck down there. Under the sewer lines of Brooklyn, the tunnels were nothing important. At least, that's what everyone thought. No one ever cared enough to venture in until the Crowns came. That's because there was nothing to see. Until now.

The room we were currently standing in had been turned into the architectural dream of tech nerds. I don't think even the NSA has surveillance quite this good.

Where there had been dirt, there was black marble. Where there had been moss, there was wiring. All of that wiring led to support the massive amount of electricity the spacious room was using.

Computers, many of them, lined two of the four walls. The third one had a giant mural of a window looking out over a galaxy and a moon, with black leather couches and the fourth just kept a tackboard with several newspapers and photographs on it, mostly of blurry people with a red circle around their heads.

Targets.

The lights were intentionally dark, dim to add to the presence of overall finesse. There were strange blue outlines along the tops of the black painted walls, glowing a fiery blue. The plasma TV that hung from the wall also had the same blue outline, with the words 'Kings & Crowns' featured on the screen underneath a white silhouette of a crown. Between the two couches near the mural was a metal grey table with two rectangular protrusions that propped up two tablets. The computers were mostly blank, save for five of them. When I looked closer, I realized they showed a live footage from cameras positioned nooks and crannies near the ceiling. Four of the monitors were blank feeds of the tunnels, each labeled north, east, south, and west. The fifth monitor was of the Espresso House.

The Crowns had been here for a total of five days. Five freaking days and they managed to turn a dirt room into the finest supervision lair a villain could ever hope for. The place looked futuristic.

After I got over my initial shock, I turned to him. "Wolfe! What the hell?"

"Do you like it?" He smirked. "The guys wanted a more permanent hideout. After all, we're going to be here for a very long time. The tunnels access places we could never break into. Did you know that one of the underpass doors comes right beneath the Verona International Bank? Right beneath a bank vault holding millions."

I was too stunned to say anything else.

"Anyways." Wolfe continued casually. He shut the door behind him and moved towards one of the desks in the middle of the room. "The thing I wanted to show you. Come here, Florence."

Numbly I walked to where he stood. Wolfe opened a drawer and pulled out two files, handing me one of them.

"No, thank you." I said politely, sliding the file back to him. The last thing I wanted to do was to be involved with anything that had to do with Wolfe. The file looked like it held my doom. I mean, it was a normal folder and all, a bland vanilla color, but the person who handed me said file was the farthest thing from normal, which in turn, made the contents of the file not normal either. Okay, that made no sense.

He sighed. "Please."

"Okay." I took the folder back, looked inside, realized what it was, and then promptly slid it back to Wolfe. "No thank you." I repeated.

"Look, do you want to know or not?" Wolfe growled, pushing the file back to me again. "I didn't drag you all the way down here for nothing, Florence. At least read what's inside. I'm just as confused as you are about this and I need you to help me clear this up because I don't even understand it myself. Please behave. Read everything and then tell me what you think."

Wolfe pulled out a burner phone and made a call as I hesitantly picked up the file. He began to talk, in a soft, barely audible whisper so I couldn't hear much of anything but a few words without context. While I decided making a run for it, Wolfe turned around and began pacing, but just as I was about to make a break, he turned around as if sensing my plan and froze me with a glare colder than Antarctica. 

I glared warily at him but opened the file once more. Again, the picture of Clancy stared up at me. It was printed off her Instagram account, a post from a Throwback Thursday moment. In the picture, she and my mother were leaning against an elm tree, both in the middle of laughing. Clancy was in her forties now and the picture was taken when she was about twenty years old, my mother the same age. I had no idea what I was supposed to make of this.

"What?" I turned to Wolfe for an explanation but he just pointed to the papers underneath the picture and went to listening to whoever was speaking on the other side of the line.

Shifting through the numerous documents inside, I was even more confused than before. There was Clancy's birth record, along with her medical history. There were several other documents and an obituary for someone's death. Just so Wolfe couldn't say I didn't, I read through everything and after I was done, I was completely lost.

Wolfe handed me the second file.

Wolfe's name on the first line and the NYPD logo was a giveaway. It was his police record and criminal history, all copied from the police database. I noticed, with some uneasiness, that many of the blank lines that asked for things such as weight, height, age, and birth date all had 'N/A' written on them. The only picture that accompanied the record was the blurry candid shot of him again, the same one that was on the news website. Again, I read each document carefully even though I had no clue what they were all supposed to mean as Wolfe hung up and pocketed the phone, turning his attention to me.

"I don't understand." I chewed my lower lip fretfully. "Why are you showing me this? What does Clancy have to do with anything?"

"Look at me, Florence." Wolfe urged. "And then look at your friend Clancy."

Despite the voice of common sense protesting in my mind, I turned to look at him. In the dim light, his face was shadowed but I could make out his features from the close proximity we were standing in. Same as always. Cold blue eyes, a heavy five o'clock stubble, the same color hair as Clancy, the frowning red lips-

I looked down at the picture of young Clancy. Realization dawned on me. For a second, I was so horrified I couldn't speak. When I finally found my tongue and tore my eyes away from the picture and back to Wolfe's sullen gaze, my mouth dropped open. The striking similarities. Same eyes, same hair, same unimpressed look they always had. 

I grabbed Wolfe's face and pulled him down to my height, disbelieving. "She's your mother?!"

"No." He said quietly. "But we are related. Her sister is my mother."

"So-"

"Clancy Devans is my aunt."