Page 38 of Shadow Of Sin

The problem is getting a clean trail to Hoxha. If I send that payment through anything connected to my family, it’ll get traced. Ronan will flip his shit and hit me with questions I can’t answer because the truth won’t be good for anyone, least of all Eva.

So I have to find a different way to get Hoxha the cash. It’ll take me a few days, but I can get it done before his deadline on Friday. When Hoxha’s people get their money, they won’t know where it came from. They won’t care, either. Money is money.

And Sal’s debt will be cleared.

I pull up the security feeds. Rosario’s is closed for the night. Sal’s light is off in his apartment. Good. He’s sleeping, or at least trying to.

Eva’s light is still on.

She’s at her desk. I can see the glow of her monitor through the window. She’s probably thinking about the look on Sal’s face, the desperation in his voice, feeling completely out of control while the only family she has in this world is being threatened by dangerous people she can’t stop.

Or maybe she’s thinking about my hand on her wrist. The three seconds. The way neither of us moved after I let go.

I’m thinking about it. I’ve been thinking about it since it happened and my brain hasn’t fully processed it yet, which is strange because my brain processes everything. No lag time. That’s the whole point of my brain. But her pulse is still in my thumb and my chest is still doing the thing it does when she’s close and none of my usual systems are working the way they should.

I don’t know what to do with that. So I do what I always do when I don’t know what to do. I work.

I open a new file and start building the payment route.

Forty-two-thousand dollars of my own money to protect a man I eat dinner with three times a week and a woman whose pulse I can still feel in my hand.

I’m solving a problem. That’s what I do.

But this time my hands shake while I do it.

And I’m starting to think the problem isn’t the debt at all.

CHAPTER 9

EVA

I stare at my wrist and rub the pad of my fingertip over the area that hasn’t stopped tingling for two damn days.

A frustrated huff that slips through my lips, my eyes wandering back to my laptop screen where I try to make sense of Dmitri’s latest job request. Maybe if my brain wasn’t wrapped so hard around the memory of Wolfe’s hand gripping my wrist, I’d be able to focus.

My phone buzzes on the desk next to me and I gasp, startled. I stab the accept button when I see my brother’s name flash across the screen.

“E.” I sit up straight and hold the phone tighter against my ear, the lightness and ease in his tone almost as jarring as the fact that I still feel Wolfe’s hand on me. “You’re not going to believe this.”

I close my laptop. “What?”

“Those guys. The ones who’ve been coming around?”

My stomach drops. “What about them?”

“They won’t be back. It’s over.”

I narrow my eyes at Wolfe’s burner phone. “What do you mean, it’s over?”

“I got a call this morning. The debt is paid. All of it. Some anonymous payment was made through a business account they’ve never seen before. They said the balance is zero and they won’t be back to collect anymore.”

My mind blanks for a long second. I don’t say anything. I just hold the phone and let his words marinate.

“E? You there?”

“Yeah.”

“Forty-two-thousand dollars. Somebody just paid it. Like it was nothing.” He laughs. The real one. The big, bellowing, full, room-filling one I haven’t heard in months. “I don’t know who did it and honestly, I don’t care. I can finally breathe, E. For the first time in over a year.”