Page 140 of Shadow Of Sin

I text back that I’ll be there and pour a second cup of coffee while Eva showers. We left the cabin and moved her into the apartment I own in Back Bay about six weeks ago. I gave her one of the empty bedrooms to use as her office so she can have all of her computing equipment in one space. But we still end up tooling around on our laptops next to one another in my office.

Shoulders brushing, both of us finding the same comfort in each other as we work.

She comes out of the bathroom in my shirt, her dark hair wet and snaking down her back. She takes the cup of coffee I hand her.

“What happened?” she asks, her eyes narrowing.

“Ronan called a meeting. Tonight.”

“About Viktor?”

“He didn’t say. But it’s always about Viktor these days.”

She leans against the counter and takes a sip of the steaming liquid. “Be careful.”

“It’s a meeting at the house, not a raid.”

“With the Molloys, what’s the difference?” she scoffs.

She’s not wrong.

I get to the house at eight. Cillian is already in the dining room spinning a pen between his fingers. Gavin is next to him working through a plate of whatever Tony left in the fridge. Lochlan sits to the right of Ronan’s chair, which is empty.

Interesting. He’s usually the one waiting for us.

I sit down and Lochlan catches my eye. He gives me a look that says he already knows what this is about. Of course he does. If Viktor reached out through Adriana, Lochlan heard about it the second his wife did.

“I’m guessing you already know,” I say to him.

“Adriana told me this morning,” Lochlan confirms. “Viktor wants a sit-down. He’s calling it a realignment.”

“Realignment of what?” Cillian asks. “We already drew the lines. The whole arrangement Adriana brokered months ago was supposed to settle any territory issues between the three families after that contract marriage fiasco.” He winks at Lochlan because that’s the kind of pain in the ass he is.

“Hey, easy with the fiasco bullshit,” Lochlan warns, shooting him a glare.

“Sorry,” Cillian says in a tone that tells us he’s not the least bit sorry. “I know how sensitive you get.” He waggles his eyebrows at Lochlan to taunt him, and I think there’s a solid chance Loch might throttle him when Ronan walks into the room.

“That arrangement was based on a balance of power,” Ronan says, dropping into his chair at the head of the table. “The balance just shifted.”

“Because of Dmitri,” I say.

“Because of what Dmitri knows.” Ronan leans forward, his fingers steepled. “When Eva was working for Dmitri, she gave him three months of intelligence on both families. Finances, operational details, personnel, weak points. Dmitri had all of it. And when we took him down, we assumed Viktor got the full debrief.”

“But we don’t actually know that,” Lochlan says. “We assumed Dmitri reported everything back because we assumed he was Viktor’s probe. But if Dmitri was holding back intel to protect his own position, Viktor might not have the full picture.”

“Which means Dmitri is sitting on a pile of intelligence about all three families,” I say. “And he’s got no money, no protection, and no way back into Viktor’s circle.”

“So what does a desperate guy with nothing left to lose do when the only valuable thing he has is information?” Cillian says, his pen going still between his fingers.

“He sells it,” Gavin says. Everyone looks at him and he stops eating. “What? It’s obvious. The guy is broke and burned. Some third party is going to pay good money for what he knows about us and the DiMichelis and probably the Kozlovs too.”

Fuuuuuck. G just nailed it.

“If Dmitri sells that intel to an outside organization,” Ronan says, “all three families are exposed. Us, the DiMichelis, and the Kozlovs, because Dmitri knows his uncle’s operation from the inside. Viktor might be reaching out because he senses the same threat. Or he might not even realize that Dmitri held anything back; although, that would make him a fucking idiot if he knows his nephew at all.”

“Either way,” Lochlan says, “the biggest danger right now isn’t Viktor or his plans to take over the city, which we already know he’s still hanging onto. It’s Dmitri holed up in some fucking godforsaken place with enough information to burn every power player in the city.”

“A man with nothing and everything to sell,” I say.