7. Eva
EVA
Dmitri wants me to meet him at a parking garage off Atlantic Avenue.
Level three, ten o’clock sharp.
Parking garages are bad. There are too many blind spots, lots of concrete, and not enough ways out. I check the knife in my jacket pocket before I get out of the car.
Still there. Always there.
It’s been almost a week since I started working both sides, and so far, nobody’s dead, which I’m choosing to count as a win.
He’s already there when I arrive. Leaning against a black sedan that costs more than my apartment building, scrolling through his phone like a man with no cares in the world other than what to eat for lunch.
He’s wearing a different coat this time.
It’s darker, longer. It makes him look taller and more menacing.
How perfect.
“Eva.” He pockets his phone and smiles. “Thank you for being prompt.”
“What’s the job?”
He doesn’t answer right away. Instead, he looks at me…
really looks, the way a person studies something they own.
His eyes move from my face to my hands to the bag on my shoulder and back to my face.
The whole time he has a smug-ass smile plastered across his lips like this is a friendly interaction.
It’s not. And we both know it.
“Hargrove and Associates,” he says. “It’s a property management company in the Financial District. I need their tenant list, any emails between them and city officials, and their financial records for the past year.”
Simple enough. Same shape as every other job.
Then he adds something else, which makes my skin prickle under my clothes. “I also need their security system. Camera footage, door logs, who comes and goes.”
I keep my face still. “Why?”
He tilts his head. Just slightly. His eyes narrow.
“Because I asked for it,” he says. His voice doesn’t change.
His smile doesn’t move. But something behind his eyes goes flat and cold, and for a second, I see the thing he usually keeps hidden…
the part of him that doesn’t care whether I’m alive or dead as long as I’m useful.
The air between us gets very thin and suddenly, it’s hard for me to draw in a breath.
“Fine,” I manage. “I’ll have it by Tuesday.”
“Monday.”
“Monday, then.”
He straightens up from the car and takes a step toward me. It’s not an aggressive move. Just one step, closing the distance between us enough that I can smell his cologne. It’s expensive and makes my stomach turn.
“How’s Sal?” he asks.
There it is. Every single time. My God, I fucking hate the way he says my brother’s name. Like every time we meet, he needs to remind me who’s got a target on the back of his head. My insides freeze.
Fucking bastard.
My spine stiffens. “He’s fine.”
“Good.” He reaches out and brushes something off the shoulder of my jacket. A piece of lint, maybe. Maybe nothing at all. His fingers are on my jacket for less than a second, but the message is clear:
I can touch you whenever I want, and there’s nothing you can do about it.
“The restaurant is busy, I hear,” he says, pulling his hand back. “Saturday nights especially. Sal works hard.”
He knows Sal’s schedule. He knows when the restaurant is busy. He’s telling me he knows, and he’s telling me in a casual way, the way you’d tell someone you like their shoes.
“He does,” I say. My voice is steady. My hands are in my pockets so he can’t see them shake.
“Family.” He shakes his head with a warm expression, like he’s a man who values the people closest to him. “It’s everything, isn’t it?”
I don’t answer. I just hold his gaze and let him see that I understand exactly what he’s saying, even though neither of us will ever say it out loud.
He steps back. The smile returns to normal. The ice behind his eyes melts.
“Monday, Eva.”
“Monday.”
I walk out of the garage and make it two blocks before my knees buckle. I lean against a building and press my forehead into the brick and breathe. In for four. Hold. Out for six. The shaking starts in my fingers and works its way up, and this time it takes five blocks to stop.
The lint. That was the worst part. The casual touch, like he was being helpful, like he was being a concerned friend. Like he wasn’t reminding me that he can crush my life whenever he wants.
The job takes me four hours. Tenant list, city emails, financials…the data pulls are pretty standard.
But the security system is separate, which tells me Dmitri wants it kept apart for a reason. Camera footage and door logs from a specific building. He wants to know who walks in and out and when.
I deliver everything to Dmitri’s drive. Then I copy it all onto a second drive, put it in my jacket, and head for Wolfe’s place.
I still scope out the block before I go in. I still text him from outside. And I still take the stairs. The day I stop doing all of that is the day I deserve whatever happens next.
Wolfe opens the door wearing a Black Sabbath shirt. His hair is doing the thing where one side is flat and the other sticks up, which means he’s been running his hand through it. And that tells me he’s stuck on something.
“Nice hair,” I say, walking past him into the apartment. It smells like dryer sheets and old wiring today. An improvement from the usual toxic chemical cloud, but not by much.
“What’s wrong with my hair?”
“Half of it is staging a revolt.” I slap the drive onto his desk. “Hargrove and Associates. Tenant lists, city emails, financials. And data on their full security system—cameras, door logs, the works. Dmitri wanted that part separate.”
His thumb taps against his leg. I file it away like I do with everything else, but I don’t know what it means. Not yet.
“He asked for the security system by itself?”
“Yep. So I pulled it out like it was a different job. Like the business stuff is the wrapping paper and the cameras are the actual gift.”
“Because they are.” He sticks the drive into his system and starts working. “The business data tells him what the building does. The security data tells him who’s inside and when they’re there.”
“So he’s watching someone.”
“He’s watching specific people in a specific building.” His fingers fly across the keyboard. “Which building?”
“One-forty Federal Street.”
He stops typing. For about two seconds he goes completely still, his shoulders squared. Then he starts again, typing slower this time.
“What?” I say.
“Keep going. What else happened at the meeting?”
“He touched me.”
Wolfe’s hands freeze. He turns and looks at me, a flicker of anger in the depths of his eyes. His jaw tenses, too.
“Not like that,” I say quickly. “He brushed something off my shoulder. It was a power play and lasted half a second. But it was—” I search for the word.
“A reminder. That he does have power over me, that he can cause holy hell for me at any time.” I let out a snort. “As if I don’t already know that.”
He turns back to the screen without saying anything, but his fingers hit the keys harder than before.
“He asked about Sal, too,” I add. “He knew his Saturday schedule and mentioned the restaurant being busy.”
“He’s keeping tabs.”
“He’s always keeping tabs. That’s the whole point. Sal is the leash and Dmitri likes to give it a little tug every time I see him. Just so I keep focus.”
Wolfe is quiet for a minute as he works. Then he pulls up something on the second monitor.
“One-forty Federal,” he says, pointing to it. “That building is connected to one of the two organizations Dmitri is going after. He’s not just collecting information anymore. He’s doing surveillance on specific targets.”
My blood chills. “He’s getting ready to make a move.”
“Yeah. He is.”
That rolls around in my head for a minute. Every job I’ve done has been building toward something, and now the something is taking shape. He’s not just collecting leverage. He’s preparing to use it.
“The tenant list,” Wolfe says. “Look at it next to the Meridian Capital data from last week.”
I pull it up and see it right away—the same company name buried in both sets of records. Different job, different week, same thread.
“Son of a bitch,” I say. “It’s the same people again.”
“Every job connects. Every single one.”
I press my palms flat on the desk and let out a breath. I knew it. I goddamn knew it. I’ve been seeing these connections for months and deliberately not following them because the last time I followed a thread, I ended up behind bars.
“This is bigger than I thought,” I say.
“It’s bigger than both of us thought.”
“What do we do?”
“We keep going. Every job he gives you is another piece. When I have enough, I’ll know what he’s planning and how to stop it.”
“Great. So I just keep handing stolen data to the criminal who owns my freaking life, and then I walk over here and hand over the same data to you…and if said criminal finds out, he will burn me to the ground.”
“That’s the job.”
“That’s a shitty job.”
“Yeah,” he says. “It is.” His blue eyes are steady behind his glasses. And he looks at me like he actually gives a damn about the fact that a man put his hands on me today to make a point.
A shiver whispers against my skin.
Because despite my best efforts to keep him out, he keeps doing these little things that let him creep in.
“Come on,” he says, closing the laptop. “Your brother’s expecting me.”
“What?”
“I told Sal I’d come by tonight. He’s testing a new dish and needs someone to try it.”
“Since when do you make dinner plans with my brother?”
“He asked. I said yes. That’s how it works.”
“That’s how normal people work. You’re not normal.”
“And yet here I am. Making plans.”
“Your social skills are evolving. I’m almost proud.” I smirk at him.
“Don’t be. I’m still going to eat Cheerios when I get home.” Deadpan. As always.
I roll my eyes and follow him to the door. “That is the saddest sentence you’ve ever said. And the bar was already super low.”
A surge of pride rushes over me as we walk into the restaurant. Rosario’s is packed for a Thursday night. Sal is behind the bar in his element, moving between customers like he’s been doing this his whole life, which he basically has.