Page 123 of Shadow Of Sin

Tonight I will walk through all of them at once. Every account will be frozen. Every connection will be severed. By morning, Dmitri won’t be able to touch a single dollar.

Lochlan’s job is the evidence. His team will hit Hoxha’s businesses in Revere, a couple of cleaning businesses and a construction company that are nothing more than fronts for Dmitri’s operation. They’ll grab hard drives, financial records, phones, cash, anything that proves what those businesses were really being used for. Then they’ll lock the doors so nobody can come in and destroy evidence before the Feds arrive.

The third piece is the anonymous tip package I put together for the FBI. Transaction records, account histories, proof that the Hoxha lending operation has been bleeding Eva’s neighborhood dry for over a year. They’re set to send automatically once Lochlan confirms his team is clear. When the Feds check their email Friday morning, they’ll have everything they need for a slew of indictments.

There are three critical pieces to this operation—money, evidence, and law enforcement. We will hit them all at once and Dmitri will wake up tomorrow with nothing but a pair of handcuffs slapped on his wrists.

The whole thing is automated. I built a program that runs through the financial targets one by one. My job is to sit here, watch the screen, and step in if something stalls.

Lochlan’s team hits the first Revere location at 10:15. On schedule. Then they invade the second target at 10:22. Clean hits. No surprises. The financial accounts start dropping off the grid one by one on my screen. Everything is running the way it’s supposed to.

Then my phone buzzes with a message from the surveillance team on Sal’s block.

Eva is inside Rosario’s. Sal is with her. Restaurant is closed and mostly dark, but there are people moving inside.

I read it twice. Then a third time because my brain refuses to accept what my eyes are telling it.

She’s at the restaurant, at the exact spot I spent two weeks making sure would be empty tonight. And Sal is with her.

She knows Dmitri or his guys are coming tonight. But because she doesn’t trust anything I’ve done anymore, she put herself between Sal and whoever she thinks might show up because protecting her brother is the only thing she thinks she has some shred of control over right now.

Which she doesn’t. Not at all.

I pull up the tracker on my car. It’s still parked near Sal’s building. So she walked to Rosario’s out in the open, in the same neighborhood where Dmitri’s people operate.

My phone rings again. I grip the phone tight as I read the message.

Two men approaching from the east end of the block. On foot. Heading toward the restaurant.

Everything inside me goes cold.

Fuck. Dmitri’s guys. They don’t know the meeting was rescheduled because the text came from me, not from Dmitri. They’re still running the original play where they show up after close and grab Sal.

But Sal isn’t alone. Eva is with him. And Eva is worth more to Dmitri than her brother could ever be.

I jump to my feet, grab a burner phone, and text Eva’s number.

Stay inside. Lock the back door. Don’t move.

Then I turn to Gavin. He’s been sitting across the room on his phone because his role tonight was backup.

“I need to go.”

He looks up, his expression pinched with confusion. “Go where? We’re in the middle of⁠—”

“Eva’s at Rosario’s. Dmitri’s guys are heading there right now.”

He springs up from his chair. “Shit. What about the operation?”

“The system is running on its own. All you have to do is watch the screen.” I point to the monitor. “See that progress bar? If it keeps moving, don’t touch anything. If it stops or you see an error, press this button right here. It restarts from where it left off.”

“That’s it?” he asks.

“That’s it. The FBI packages are set to send automatically after Lochlan checks in. You just need to be in this chair. And if anything blows up, call me. I’ll walk you through whatever you need to do.”

“Go.” He nods and drops into the seat. “I got it.”

I grab the keys to Lochlan’s truck in the driveway and run out the door.