Page 127 of Shadow Of Sin

“Yeah,” Cillian says quietly. “Okay.”

He moves toward the stretcher and squeezes Wolfe’s good shoulder. Wolfe mumbles something I can’t hear and Cillian nods.

Then Cillian turns back to me. He pulls me toward the kitchen, away from Sal and Lochlan’s guys.

“I know what you found,” he says, his voice low. “On the laptop. He told me everything.”

My jaw tightens. I clench and unclench my fingers. “Good for him.”

“I’m not going to stand here and explain any of it because that’s his job, not mine. He fucked up. He knows it.” Cillian’s dark blue eyes hold mine. “But I will say one thing. You’re missing context, Eva. A lot of it. And the context changes everything.”

“Context doesn’t undo what I read.”

“No. It doesn’t. But it changes why those things exist.” He taps his fist against the doorframe the way he always does. “When you’re ready, let him explain. That’s all I’m asking.”

“I’m not ready. And I don’t know if I ever will be.”

“Okay.” He looks at me for a long second. Then he nods once and follows the stretcher out the front door of Rosario’s.

Lochlan’s team clears out. The man on the floor is gone. So is Wolfe.

But the blood is still there.

The reminder of what almost just happened is still there.

Sal hasn’t spoken since Wolfe’s guys carried him out. He’s behind the bar, both hands white knuckling the counter, staring at his streaked floor.

I walk over and sit on the stool across from him. My hands are still caked with blood. I should wash them, but I can’t make myself move toward the sink.

“Sal.”

He doesn’t look up.

“Sal. Look at me.”

He raises his eyes. They’re wet and wide and terrified and angry all at the same time. My big brother, who has never in his life looked at me with anything other than love, is looking at me like he doesn’t know who I am.

That’s the worst thing that’s happened tonight. Worse than the gun. Worse than the blood. Worse than watching Wolfe drop.

“Tell me,” he says in a tight voice. “All of it. Right now.”

So I tell him. Not everything, though. Not about the Molloy operations, or Adriana, or the details that aren’t mine to share. But I give him enough. I tell him about the debt and how Dmitri used it to get to me. I explain what I did for Dmitri and why. How long it’s been going on. Why I lied to him. Why I had to lie to him.

Every word that comes out of my mouth is like a brick being pulled from the wall between us, and by the time I’m done talking, there’s nothing left standing.

“Three months?” he says. “You’ve been doing this for three months and you didn’t tell me?”

“I couldn’t tell you.”

“Couldn’t or wouldn’t?”

“Both. If you knew, you’d have tried to fix it yourself. And Dmitri’s people would have⁠—”

“Don’t.” He slams a hand on the top of the bar. “Don’t tell me you did this to protect me. I’m so sick of people protecting me. You. Wolfe. Whoever the hell those guys were. Everyone running around making decisions about my life, and I’m the last person who gets to know about it.”

“Sal—”

“The investor. Andersen. That was fake?”