Wolf Elite, Tome 2: Operation Wolf: Eli

CHAPTER 1

Eli

I LOOKED OUT THE window of my apartment, brooding as I gazed at the woman passing through the courtyard three stories down. The moonlight gleamed softly against the silky tresses of her auburn hair, illuminating the skin of her forehead and hands. Her head was bent down as she adjusted the textbooks she carried in one arm, so I couldn’t get a good look at her face, but that didn’t matter. I’d know Olivia Giordano anywhere—whether she was dressed in a pink T-shirt and jeans, as she was now, or wearing nothing but mud and grass and her father’s silk bathrobe, as she had once long ago when we were in love and high school sweethearts.

I smiled faintly at the memory. Those days had been good, even the rough ones, because Olivia was always around to brighten my life. Her father had been furious with her that day for ruining his favorite bathrobe. But Olivia had never sought to be anything other than what she was. That was why everyone loved her, had been drawn to her, like butterflies to a pool of nectar.

Just as I was then. Just as I am now.

I watched as she climbed the stairs, briefly disappearing and then emerging on the third-floor walkway on the other side of the courtyard. I wondered how she would react if she knew that I was standing here, observing her. That I’d tracked her down and moved in to the apartment across the complex from hers when I returned to Chicago three months ago. That I’d kept tabs on her ever since.

Would she welcome me with open arms and ask me where I’d been? Or would she be angry at my intrusion?

Sighing, I tried to step away from the window, but I couldn’t. I knew Olivia was an obsession I needed to let go of, but my eyes remained glued to the window as she stopped in front of her apartment door and fished for her keys in her coat pocket. I admired the way her tight jeans accentuated her curves. Curves that had become more defined since I last saw her a few years ago. She’d grown from a spring bud into a summer blossom, and more than once, I’d wished I could take her in my arms and see just how much she’d grown up.

But that’s impossible. I can’t go back to Olivia. I can’t even let her know I am back in town. If I did, I would get sucked back into the mob life again, and that’s something I swore I’d never let happen.

Loving a mobster’s daughter came with a high price. And Olivia and I had decided years ago that it wasn’t worth paying. So, now, I had to be content with only looking after her, even if it was from a distance.

She closed the door behind her, and I turned away from the window and wandered over to the kitchen to grab a beer from the fridge. Normally, I’d be at the shifter club on Rush Street, working as a bouncer, but I’d been given the night off. I loathed the long nights off. I never seemed to know what the hell to do with myself. I liked being at the bar. It gave me comfort to be with others of my kind. A sort of camaraderie I never felt anywhere else—at least, not since I’d returned from war.

It was funny how I felt like such an outcast in the city where I’d grown up. The city I’d thought I’d known like the back of my hand. Now, a few years later, I wondered if I’d really known anything at all.

Slipping my hand into my pocket, I drew out the gold pocket watch Dad had given me before he died many years ago. It was the most valuable thing he had ever owned, a Civil War relic, and consequently, it was now the most valuable thing I owned. Though Dad and I’d had our ups and downs, I’d held on to it all these years, and it gave me solace every time I pulled it out to look at it.