Page 115 of Shadow Of Sin

She won’t be a problem.

I read that last line twice, then three times. Every muscle in my body goes rigid. My teeth clamp together. The taste of metal floods my mouth from biting the inside of my cheek so hard.

Not she’s staying. Not back off. Not over my dead body.

She won’t be a problem. I’ll handle it. I’ll manage the situation.

Three weeks of his brother pushing him to get rid of me, and three weeks of Wolfe responding like a man who’s stalling, not fighting against it. He fucking played me like a violin, and I let him. Hell, I gave him the goddamn bow.

My mind trips back to the conversation I overheard at the house the night before we came here. His voice through the door. It was tight and defensive. I thought he was fighting for me. I thought the strain in his voice meant he was pushing back against his brother.

But these text messages don’t sound like a man who’s pushing back. They sound like a man who already agreed and is just working out the timing until he can deliver.

The relocation plan. Starting Friday. The day after tomorrow.

The case file. Closed eighteen months ago, all because his family mattered more than my freedom.

He’s the same man running the same math and getting the same damn answer.

Every time the equation is me versus the Molloys, the Molloys win.

I sit in the silence of his cabin. The cabin he said nobody else had ever been to. The cabin with the two chairs on the porch. The cabin where he laid me down on his mother’s quilt and touched me like I was the most important thing he’d ever held.

Was any of it real? Or was all of it just the long version of a goodbye he didn’t have the guts to say out loud?

I shut down the laptop. The screen goes dark. My reflection stares back at me from the black glass and the woman looking back is someone I recognize from a long time ago. The woman who sat in that courtroom. The woman who festered in federal prison. The woman who learned that trusting people is the fastest way to lose everything you have.

I thought I’d left her behind. I thought the woman in Wolfe’s bed and Wolfe’s cabin and Wolfe’s life was someone new. Someone who could trust again. Someone who got a second chance at being a person instead of a tool.

I was so fucking wrong.

I stand up on shaky legs, walk to the bedroom, pack my bag, and walk back out.

In a daze, I slip my feet into my sneakers, pull on my coat, and grab the keys where Wolfe left them.

Because I’m not leaving you anywhere without a way out. That’s not protection. That’s a prison.

He gave me the keys because he wanted me to feel like I had a choice. But according to the plan on his laptop, the choice was already made for me.

Friday. Seventy-two hours. Contact termination.

I lock the cabin door behind me. I don’t know why I bother, but I guess it’s just a force of habit. The same survival instinct that kept me alive in prison, kept me sane working for Dmitri, and kept me from falling apart every time a man I trusted turned out to be someone else.

The car starts on the first try. The headlights cut through the dark trees. A long dirt road stretches ahead, leading back to the highway, back to Boston, back to a city where my brother doesn’t know he’s in danger, and the man I trusted just turned out to be exactly like every other man I’ve trusted.

Useful until I wasn’t. Wanted until I was inconvenient. Kept until the possession got too expensive.

Daniel didn’t plan it. Daniel was a coward who panicked and let me take the fall. That was sloppy and selfish and pathetically human.

But Wolfe planned it. Every step. Every detail. With the same focus and care he used when he touched my face and told me he’d be back on Friday. He was thorough about loving me, and he was thorough about getting rid of me, and I can’t decide which one is worse.

I wasn’t his person. I was his project. And I just found out that the project has an end date.

Friday.

I pull onto the highway. Boston is south. Sal is south.

Sal, who doesn’t know about Dmitri or the operation or the meeting that’s supposed to happen tomorrow night. Sal, who trusts me the way I trusted Wolfe. Completely, without question, and without considering that the person he loves most might be lying to his face.