Page 75 of Shadow Of Sin

I sit across the table and watch Eva Moreno take the worst morning of her life and turn it into the most complete threat briefing my family has ever received. She doesn’t cry. She doesn’t flinch. She takes every piece of guilt she’s carrying and converts it into information that might save us.

That’s Eva. She doesn’t break. She builds.

Eva leans back in her chair. She doesn’t look at me. She doesn’t need to. She just ripped herself open in front of my family and handed them the pieces without cowering.

But I’m watching Ronan’s face. And the thing I see there isn’t gratitude or respect or even strategy.

It’s calculation.

He’s looking at Eva the way he looked at the warehouse data. Like she’s an asset he can deploy.

And the thing tightening behind my ribs isn’t fear of Dmitri anymore.

It’s fear of what my brother is going to ask me to do with her.

CHAPTER 17

EVA

Ronan’s orders were simple. Follow the money. Find out where Dmitri’s funding comes from, where it goes, and who’s connected on both ends. He wants the full financial picture by the end of the week so he can build a counterplay before Dmitri uses his leverage to force a seat at the table. He had to have brought in another hacker to analyze the data he stole since he knows I’m compromised, and that gives us a window. A small one, but at least it’s something.

The orders were simple. But the job is massive, which is why Wolfe and I have been at his apartment glued to our laptops since leaving the compound.

It’s now past two in the morning and I’m running on cold coffee and the stubborn refusal to close my eyes.

We’re shoulder to shoulder at his desk staring at three monitors. Wolfe’s hair sticks up in all directions from being pulled and tugged. His Zeppelin shirt is wrinkled, and the muscles in his forearms keep tensing, which means I keep losing my train of thought because I now know exactly what those arms feel like pinning me to a mattress. His glasses are crooked. The monitor light catches the stubble on his jaw that I felt against my neck about twelve hours ago.

I’m in the same clothes I wore to the compound today, my hair piled on my head with a pencil holding it together.

Focus, Eva. For the love of God, focus.

Right now, we’re in the zone…that place where our brains sync up and the data flows between us. He pulls a thread, I follow it. I find a pattern, he connects it. No wasted words. No explanation needed.

This is my favorite version of us. Working side by side, both of our brains firing at full speed. It’s the hottest non-sex thing I’ve ever done with another person.

Although the actual sex is also pretty damn high on the list now.

Argh! Focus, for fuck’s sake!

“Check out that payment cluster,” Wolfe says, pointing at my screen. “Pull the source accounts.”

I click a few keys and bring up the accounts feeding money into one of Dmitri’s front companies. Two of them are dead ends…offshore shells that disappear into nothing. But the third one has a trail.

I follow it, my pulse thumping hard.

It leads to a business account registered in Revere. The name on the account means nothing to me. But when I pull the business registration, my stomach flips.

A construction company. An import business. Both at the same address.

“Wolfe.” My voice knots in my throat and comes out like a croak. “This address. Have you seen it before?”

He leans over. His arm presses against mine, and normally I’d let it warm me and fill me with the tingles my body has gotten so used to when he’s around.

That doesn’t happen. Not this time.

“It’s the hub I found when I researched the Albanians,” he says. His body goes rigid against mine. “After the collection at Sal’s restaurant. Three businesses with the same address. Hoxha’s operation.”

I stare at the screen. Holy fuck. The Albanians are funding Dmitri. Or Dmitri is funding the Albanians. Or they’re partners sharing the same financial pipeline.