Page 103 of Once Upon a Lie

I don’t know how the fuck I’ve managed to fall for my mark, but I suppose I understand Dom a little more than I ever did before.

Pulling the door shut behind me and locking it, I step around a guy in a blue jumpsuit with some kind of logo on his chest that highlights the word Movers coming out of the supply closet across the hall and turn the corner to head for the elevator.

Stanley Burrows, my mail-and-carrot-obsessed neighbor, is already in the car and steps to the back corner to make room for me as I move inside. His eyes are fixated on the mail in his hand.

“Morning, Stanley,” I greet him.

He glances up just enough to confirm who I am. “Hey, Shane.”

And then he goes right back to staring at his envelopes.

I almost laugh, but I don’t. Instead, I log the memory and make a mental note to share this interaction with Valentina later.

She’ll love it.

Thumbs hooked into my pockets and back against the wall, I wait outside Cap’s office while Mike speaks with a couple of other agents inside. I scan the bullpen of a place that not long ago was like a second home. I’ve only been gone for a little over a month and half, and yet, in a lot of ways, it feels like forever.

Familiar faces mix with new ones, and both look at me like I have two heads and an alien coming out of my chest for being here in the first place.

I get it. The cover story wasn’t restricted to the public—these guys I worked alongside for years and years think I did some of the most fucked-up shit in the business before running away with my tail tucked between my legs.

I don’t know that it’ll ever be the same for me around here, even when I’m back, and I’m not entirely sure how I feel about that.

“Maddox,” Mike calls from the office door, startling my attention away from the street cops and detectives looking at me and whispering. “Come on in. We’re ready for you.”

Mike takes a seat behind Cap’s desk while I take the empty chair in front and settle in. The chair to my right is already filled, and when I get a look at the face on the person who fills it, I freeze.

“Uh,” I mumble, making Mike laugh and the freaking Cordone sitting next to me smirk.

“Yes. Nico Cordone, Shane Maddox. Shane, this is Nico.”

“Yeah,” I grind out. “I’m aware. His picture was in the fucking file.”

Nico’s hands come in front of his chest and lace together, his elbows on the armrests, as Mike explains.

“Nico’s CIA.”

“Excuse me?”

“His team is responsible for the intelligence that set this whole investigation off a couple years ago while he was on an op in . . .”

“Serbia,” Nico supplies.

I’m sorry . . . what? Valentina’s brother is CIA?

The mindfuck of this information threatens to make my head explode.

“Wait . . .” I pause, looking between the two men before landing my focus on Mike. “He’s been working on the inside the whole time? What the hell was the point of me, then?”

“Good question,” Nico agrees under his breath.

I don’t know, but I’m starting to get the vibe he doesn’t like me.

Mike clears his throat, ignoring both of us. “As of this morning, Valentina Cordone has been cleared of involvement in the criminal side of this case. Tommy and Damon Murphy, along with three accountants that are on their staff, acted alone in the laundering of illegal funds through her shop. Surveillance of her is no longer necessary, so Shane, you are officially relieved of duty for your special cooperation with the federal government.”

“Go figure. What I already told you was the reality about my sister two fucking years ago is the reality,” Teeny’s brother, Nico, says under his breath, driving me to a level of rage I haven’t felt in a good long while. I don’t fucking get what the whole point of this three-ring circus was in the first place if the guy who opened the case has been saying she’s innocent from the start?

And yet we put her through this shit anyway?