Page 104 of Shadow Of Sin

I get up, careful not to disturb Eva.

A deep sigh shudders my chest. I sit at the desk, open my laptop, and document everything I’ve been formulating in my mind over the past couple of hours. A whole relocation framework for Eva in a new city. I list out all of the new identity documents she’d need, along with a timeline and logistics. It will be a clean break that starts Friday and has her out of Boston in seventy-two hours. So she will be safe and protected.

I build the plan the way I build everything. Every piece is precise, thorough, and detailed. Every variable accounted for; every step is mapped out.

My stomach knots as I stare at the complete, executable plan for removing Eva Moreno from my life.

I’ll never use it. No fucking way in hell. The plan on my monitor only exists because my brain demanded it exist, not because my heart would ever let me execute it.

I save it to the encrypted folder where I saved the case file I pulled on her almost two years ago—the one where I found holes in her conviction and figured out that she was innocent. The one I closed because chasing it would have exposed Molloy operations to federal scrutiny.

Because I chose loyalty to my family over a stranger.

But she’s not a stranger anymore.

And my loyalties have shifted.

I close the laptop, get up from the chair, and lie down next to Eva.

Eva rolls back into me without waking, the heat of her breath warming my chest. Her fingers curl into my shirt like even in her sleep, she’s afraid to let go.

The strike my brothers and I discussed is three-pronged. First, Lochlan’s team hits Hoxha’s physical locations in Revere. Second, I take down the digital network remotely, and third, anonymous tips hit law enforcement about the lending operation.

By Friday morning, Dmitri’s operation will be in ashes. Sal will be safe. And Ronan and I will have a conversation I’m not ready for, but will win, because she stays.

She stays.

I close my eyes and try to imagine Friday without her. Then Saturday. Then a week.

I can’t. The entire system crashes. There’s no output, no solution for the hole losing her would put in my heart.

Eva is the quiet and the peace I didn’t know I was looking for. Without her, it’s just noise.

And I will fight every person in my life to keep her.

Including the ones who share my last name.

CHAPTER 25

EVA

Two chairs on the front porch. That’s what I notice first. And it cracks my heart open just a little bit.

He wasn’t lying when he said this place was off the grid. The cabin is tucked at the end of a dirt road with rows of trees so thick on every side that the rest of the world could never catch a glimpse of what lies behind them. There are no neighbors or streetlights. And the only sounds are of nature…crickets, birds, and rustling leaves.

I follow Wolfe inside. The cabin is small with only one level. There’s a bedroom and a kitchen that’s actually stocked, which surprises me until I remember that this is Wolfe, and an empty pantry would be an unresolved variable his brain couldn’t tolerate. We pass a bathroom with a clawfoot tub that looks like it belongs in a different century, and then finally a living room with a couch and an entire wall of bookshelves that makes me stop dead.

The books are organized by subject, and within each subject, they’re alphabetized. Coding manuals next to philosophy next to neuroscience next to a dog-eared copy of The Count of Monte Cristo that looks like it’s been through a war.

I pull it off the shelf and hold it up. “The Count of Monte Cristo? Interesting choice for you.”

“Why?” he asks.

I quirk an eyebrow at him. “A wrongly imprisoned man who spends decades planning the perfect revenge using his intelligence?”

He shrugs. “I found it relatable.”

“That’s concerning, Wolfe.”