Page 118 of Shadow Of Sin

“And now she knows the truth, that you held all that back.”

I lean forward, fisting my hair. “Yeah. But it gets worse. Ronan called me the night before I took her to the cabin. He’s been all over my ass for weeks about how we’re going to deal with her because he doesn’t trust all the inside knowledge she has about our organizations. He sees her as a risk to our livelihood. And he thinks my judgment is shit right now because I’m in deep with her. I told him I’d handle it. But I should have told him to just fuck off, that there’s no negotiation when it comes to her.”

“Okay…” Cillian says, folding his arms over his chest. “So then what else did she find?”

“I put a contingency plan together the other night. I know Ronan, and I needed to make sure Eva was safe from anything he might throw her way. To him, she’s a liability, and I was afraid for her. So I drafted a relocation framework that would put her in a new city with a new identity. But I was never going to use it. I only built it because my brain wouldn’t stop running worst-case scenarios after Ronan’s call. It made me feel better, like I was in control of a situation that was spiraling fast.”

“But she doesn’t know that.”

“She doesn’t know any of it. All she sees is a guy who could have freed her from prison and didn’t, and then built a detailed plan to ship her out of Boston the day after the operation.” I look up and stare at the Cheerios box. “She thinks I’m the same as the last guy who screwed her over. The one who framed her and let her take the fall for that hacking job that sent her to prison.”

“You’re nothing like that guy,” Cillian says, walking into the kitchen.

“I know that. But if I had to guess, she’s sitting in her brother’s apartment right now pissed as hell that she fell into the same trap she was trying to avoid. Guy uses Eva. Guy benefits from Eva. Guy has a plan for getting rid of Eva when she becomes inconvenient.” I put my glasses back on. “From her past experience, I fit the profile.”

“What are you going to do?”

“The only thing I can do. I have to run the operation with you guys so we can destroy every piece of Dmitri’s network. And I’ll make sure Sal is safe and Eva is safe and every threat to her life is gone by Friday morning.”

“And then?”

My jaw tightens. “Then I’m going to find her and tell her everything. The truth. All of it. Every ugly fucking piece. And she’ll either believe me or not.”

“She will.” He claps a hand on my shoulder. “You gotta have faith.”

I let out a snort. “I blew past faith when she hit my encrypted files.”

“Look, I know Eva. And so do you. She’s pissed right now. She’s hurt. She’s probably sitting at Sal’s, plotting seventeen different ways to destroy you. But she’s also the smartest woman either of us has ever met. And smart people eventually look at the evidence again when the anger wears off.”

“And what if that doesn’t happen?”

“Then you show her. Not with words. Let’s face it, bro, words are your weak spot anyway. You gotta show her with your next move.” He taps the doorframe with his fist. “Starting with tonight.”

I look at Cillian and swallow past the lump in my throat. He’s always standing between the bad thing and the person who needs protecting. Always there for me.

“Twelve hours,” I say.

He nods. “Twelve hours. Then we go get your girl.”

“She’s going to stab me when she sees me.”

“Probably. But she’ll feel bad about it afterward.” He grins. “That’s how you know it’s real.”

He walks out. I sink onto a counter stool, still fixated on the Honey Nut Cheerios box. My phone is next to me, quiet. And my chest aches like it was split open with a machete.

I open my laptop and start going through the final details for tonight. My brain does what it always does. It locks onto the work and pushes everything else to the side because that’s how I’ve gotten through every hard thing in my life. One task at a time, keeping my head down.

But she’s still there, underneath all of the distractions. Her voice rattles between my ears.

“I miss you.”

That was eight hours ago.

And now she thinks I was planning to throw her away.

I scrub a hand down the front of my face and try to focus.

I stare at the cereal box again, cleaning and unclenching my fingers.