Page 88 of Shadow Of Sin

I can’t stop. It’s getting worse. Every day she’s in this house, my brain commits more of itself to her. Where she is, what she’s doing, who she’s talking to, whether she’s eaten, whether she’s slept, whether the line between her eyebrows means she’s focused or stressed. I know the difference now. Focused is smooth. Stressed has a small crease on the left side.

I position myself between her and the door in every room without consciously meaning to. I check the security feeds on her hallway before I look at any other feed. When she leaves a room, part of my brain follows her and doesn’t come back until she’s in view again.

I don’t have a name for what this is. I just know that when she’s not in my line of sight, my chest tightens. When she is, it tightens differently.

And neither way lets me breathe.

Cillian was right. My head’s not fully here. Part of it belongs to her now. And the percentage keeps growing.

“Wolfe.” Ronan’s voice pulls me back. The room is empty except for us. Everyone else has gone and I’m still stuck on Eva. “We need to talk about the counter-play.”

“I’m listening.”

“Dmitri’s going to escalate. The Markham deal was him flexing his dick to show us what he can do. The next one won’t be a dress rehearsal. It’ll be the real thing. We need to be ready.”

“I know,” I say, waiting for what I’m pretty sure comes next.

“Which means I need your full attention. Not seventy percent. Not eighty. All of it.”

And there it is. “You have it.”

His eyes narrow and he flicks his thumb toward the door Eva walked through.

“No,” he says. “I don’t.”

I don’t argue. Because he’s not wrong.

“Get your head right,” he says. “Whatever you need to do. Because what’s coming is going to require every Molloy at the table. Including you. Especially you.”

“I hear you.”

“Good.” He pulls his phone out of his pocket. “Now get out.”

Classic Ronan. What a dick.

I walk into the hallway and head for the conference room. Eva is at the table, already deep in the data. There’s a pencil in her hair and her fingers are flying across the keyboard as she mutters something under her breath.

I stand there for about ten seconds watching her while my thumb taps against my leg.

Ronan wants my full attention. He’s right to want it. Dmitri is escalating and the counter-play needs every functioning brain cell I have.

But fuck, I’m in trouble. The deep kind. The kind where the smartest thing I could do is create space between me and Eva, and the one thing my brain absolutely refuses to do is that.

I sit down across from her. She doesn’t look up.

“You’re staring again,” she says.

“I know.”

“Your brother is going to notice.”

“He already noticed.”

“And?”

“And he told me to get my head right.”

She looks up, a crease between her eyebrows. It’s the focused kind, not the stressed kind.