Page 112 of Shadow Of Sin

“Then I’ll handle it myself. And you won’t like how I handle it.”

My stomach freefalls into my sneakers, my heart right behind it. Because I know what those words mean coming from Ronan. They don’t mean relocation. They don’t mean a fresh start in a new city. They mean Eva disappears in a way that’s permanent and clean and never traces back to our family.

“Don’t threaten her,” I say. My voice is quiet. The dangerous kind of quiet.

“I’m not threatening anyone. I’m telling you the reality of our situation. She’s a risk. Risks get managed. You can manage it your way or I’ll manage it mine. But it gets managed one way or another.”

He walks into the office and closes the door.

I stand in the hallway, my hands balled into tight fists. Cillian is behind me. I can feel him there without turning around.

“You heard that,” I say.

“Every word.”

“He means it.”

“Yeah,” Cillian says in a low voice. His hand rests on my shoulder. “He does.”

I glare at the closed door. My brother just told me to remove the woman I love from my life, or he’ll do something worse. And the thing twisting in my gut isn’t just the threat. It’s the fact that I already built the safer version of exactly what Ronan is demanding. A relocation plan. A new city. A timeline. I built it at two in the morning because my brain wouldn’t stop running scenarios and I swore I would never execute it.

But it exists on my laptop. In a secure location that nobody can access. And even if they could, nobody would know what they’re even looking at.

Thank fuck it’s locked down. It’s buried behind encryption that would take anyone who doesn’t know me weeks to crack.

Anyone who doesn’t know me.

Christ.

I pull off my glasses and scrape a hand down the front of my face.

No. She won’t look. She has access to the operation files. That’s what she’ll check. The timeline, the assignments, the strike plan. Everything I set up for her on the surface. Her goal is to monitor Sal and make sure he’s safe. She has no reason to dig deeper. No reason to go looking for things I’ve hidden.

Except Eva always goes looking. That’s who she is. That’s what she does. She finds the things people think they’ve buried.

And she knows me better than anyone ever has.

My brain screams at me to call her right now, to tell her about Ronan and about the plan. To tell her why it exists and what it doesn’t mean. To finally tell her the words my brain can’t form and my mouth won’t say.

I slip the phone back in my pocket.

The operation needs to go off without a hitch first. We save Sal and dismantle Dmitri. Then I’ll battle Ronan and come clean with all of it.

That’s the sequence. That’s the order of operations. My brain needs a sequence or it can’t function.

But the one thing I can’t plan for is Eva being Eva.

And Eva always finds what you’re hiding.

CHAPTER 27

EVA

Sitting still has never been my strong suit. And sitting alone in a remote cabin, away from the outside world while my brother’s life hangs in the balance is goddamn impossible.

I checked the operation files hours ago, right after Wolfe left because I couldn’t help myself. I needed to read every word, multiple times, just to make sure every ‘i’ had been dotted and every ’t’ crossed. Everything looked exactly the way he said it would. The Thursday plan, who goes where, what gets hit. Sal’s meeting getting rescheduled in the morning.

The plan is squeaky clean. I couldn’t find a single hole.