17. Eva
EVA
Ronan’s orders were simple. Follow the money.
Find out where Dmitri’s funding comes from, where it goes, and who’s connected on both ends.
He wants the full financial picture by the end of the week so he can build a counterplay before Dmitri uses his leverage to force a seat at the table.
He had to have brought in another hacker to analyze the data he stole since he knows I’m compromised, and that gives us a window.
A small one, but at least it’s something.
The orders were simple. But the job is massive, which is why Wolfe and I have been at his apartment glued to our laptops since leaving the compound.
It’s now past two in the morning and I’m running on cold coffee and the stubborn refusal to close my eyes.
We’re shoulder to shoulder at his desk staring at three monitors.
Wolfe’s hair sticks up in all directions from being pulled and tugged.
His Zeppelin shirt is wrinkled, and the muscles in his forearms keep tensing, which means I keep losing my train of thought because I now know exactly what those arms feel like pinning me to a mattress.
His glasses are crooked. The monitor light catches the stubble on his jaw that I felt against my neck about twelve hours ago.
I’m in the same clothes I wore to the compound today, my hair piled on my head with a pencil holding it together.
Focus, Eva. For the love of God, focus.
Right now, we’re in the zone…that place where our brains sync up and the data flows between us. He pulls a thread, I follow it. I find a pattern, he connects it. No wasted words. No explanation needed.
This is my favorite version of us. Working side by side, both of our brains firing at full speed. It’s the hottest non-sex thing I’ve ever done with another person.
Although the actual sex is also pretty damn high on the list now.
Argh! Focus, for fuck’s sake!
“Check out that payment cluster,” Wolfe says, pointing at my screen. “Pull the source accounts.”
I click a few keys and bring up the accounts feeding money into one of Dmitri’s front companies. Two of them are dead ends…offshore shells that disappear into nothing. But the third one has a trail.
I follow it, my pulse thumping hard.
It leads to a business account registered in Revere. The name on the account means nothing to me. But when I pull the business registration, my stomach flips.
A construction company. An import business. Both at the same address.
“Wolfe.” My voice knots in my throat and comes out like a croak. “This address. Have you seen it before?”
He leans over. His arm presses against mine, and normally I’d let it warm me and fill me with the tingles my body has gotten so used to when he’s around.
That doesn’t happen. Not this time.
“It’s the hub I found when I researched the Albanians,” he says. His body goes rigid against mine. “After the collection at Sal’s restaurant. Three businesses with the same address. Hoxha’s operation.”
I stare at the screen. Holy fuck. The Albanians are funding Dmitri. Or Dmitri is funding the Albanians. Or they’re partners sharing the same financial pipeline.
“They’re connected,” I say. “Dmitri and Hoxha. They’re not two separate problems. They’re the same damn problem.”
Wolfe’s thumb stops tapping. Dead still.
“Keep pulling,” he mutters.
A few minutes later, I find it.
Not a shell corporation. Not a transaction log. A file. A plain, simple file in Dmitri’s records, labeled with a name I’d recognize anywhere.
Moreno, S.
Sal.
I click it and balk at the contents. My brother’s name, his restaurant, his debts, his daily schedule. And the date on the file is from ten months ago. Six months before I got out of prison.
Two months before.
Dmitri had a file on my brother while I was still locked up. He was watching Sal, tracking him, documenting his schedule, his debts, his habits. Setting up the play before I ever walked out of those prison gates.
“Eva.” Wolfe sees my face. “What did you find?”
I turn the laptop toward him. He reads it. I watch his jaw clench harder with each second that ticks past.
“He didn’t stumble onto me,” I say. “He found Sal first. He targeted him on purpose and had his people lend Sal the money knowing it would put a leash around my brother’s neck. So when I got out of prison, the trap was already built.”
My voice is climbing but I can’t bring it down.
“I wasn’t recruited. I was built. He picked Sal because Sal had a sister with a specific skillset. He had the Albanians lend Sal the money knowing it would put us both in his chokehold.”
I shove back from the desk and shoot up from the chair on wobbly legs. I grab onto the wall before I crumple to the floor.
“The debt that crushed my brother. The debt that you paid forty-two-thousand dollars to erase.” My throat is so tight I can barely squeeze out the words. “Dmitri’s people created it on purpose. The whole thing was manufactured to get to me.”
I walk to the window and press my forehead against the glass. The street is dark and quiet, the fucking lamp overhead flickering like a taunt. My heart clenches. I hate how normal it looks because nothing about my life has been normal since the night our parents died.
Why should I have expected anything different? Ever?
“I was the weapon,” I whisper into the darkness. “The whole goddamn time. And I didn’t even know I was being loaded.”
Wolfe doesn’t cross the room. He doesn’t rush to fix it or to soothe me. He stands up and waits. Because that’s what he does when I need space. He’s patient. He’s there. He doesn’t push.
And I hate that about him right now because I want someone to push against. I want to be angry at someone who’s in this room instead of at a man in an expensive coat who smiles while he ruins lives.
“He built me,” I say to the window. “He identified the skill, found the right pressure point, and created the circumstances that he knew I’d never refuse. By the time he showed up at my door, I didn’t have a choice.”
“You had a choice,” Wolfe says from across the room. “You chose Sal.”
“That wasn’t a choice. It was a trap. Always a fucking trap.”
“You’re right. It was a trap.” He doesn’t sugarcoat it. “Dmitri spent months setting it up. The Albanians, the debt, the timing. He engineered a situation where your only answer would ever be yes.”
I slowly turn toward him. “So why doesn’t that make me feel better?”
“Because knowing you were manipulated doesn’t undo the fact that it worked. And you’re not the kind of person who forgives herself for being played.”
I close my eyes, a sharp hiss of breath escaping my lips. He’s right. He’s always right. And the worst part is he says it without judgment or pity. He says it as it is…just a fact.
“Come here,” I say, reaching for him.
“Are you sure?”
“No. Come here anyway.”
He crosses the room and stands behind me at the window. He doesn’t touch me until I reach back and take his hand and pull his arm around my waist. He wraps around me, his chest warm against my back. His chin rests on the top of my head, grounding me, and I let myself lean back into him.
Because if I don’t lean into something I’m going to fall.
“Every single person who was supposed to give a shit about me used me instead,” I say. “Daniel used me. Dmitri used me. The goddamn legal system used me. Everyone looked at what I could do and figured out how to point it at someone else and pull the trigger.”
His arm tightens around me. Not a lot. Just enough.
“Not everyone,” he says.
“You’re about to make this about you.” I tilt my head back and gaze up at him.
“No, I’m about to state a fact. I saw what you could do. I didn’t turn it into a weapon. I asked you to use it to fight back.”
Goddamn him.
“That’s a very fine line,” I say.
“I know. I walk it every day.”
I turn fully in his arms to face him. His glasses are slightly crooked, and his eyes are tired, bloodshot, and looking at me like a problem he’s already solved but isn’t ready to say the answer out loud.
I guess I kind of feel that way, too.
“We should keep working,” I say.
“Yeah.”
“We should finish mapping the money trail and put together the counterplay before Ronan loses his patience.”
“Yeah.”
I slide a hand over his stubbly jaw. “But first I need you to kiss me. Because the alternative is putting my fist through your window, and I’d rather not pay for the replacement.”
The corners of his lips lift, and he dips his head. My eyes float closed when his tongue parts my lips and coils with mine. He cups the sides of my face, his thumbs caressing my cheekbones. I taste sugar and honey, and for about ten seconds, my brain shuts the hell up.
Once we pull apart, we stand still together, our foreheads touching.
“Thank you,” I whisper.
“You don’t have to thank me,” he says.
“I know. I wanted to.”
His thumb traces my cheekbone one more time. “My brain just went offline for eight seconds. That’s a new record for when we’re just kissing.”
“Beating the kiss on the couch?”
“By three seconds.” He pauses. “You’re trending upward.”
“Did you just give our kiss a performance review?”
“That’s how I process things.”
“You’re so weird.”
“Yeah.” His eyes drop to my mouth and his lips lift into a lazy grin that makes my heart flip. “But you keep kissing me anyway.”
We go back to the desk and keep working shoulder to shoulder. His hand finds my knee under the table and stays there while we work.
By four in the morning, we have the full picture. Dmitri’s financial pipeline mapped from end to end. The Albanian partnership exposed. The lending network that targeted Sal’s neighborhood. The construction and import companies that laundered the money.
All of it is connected and traceable. And all of it was built on the back of a bartender who borrowed money to save his sister, and a sister who said yes to save her brother.
We lean back in our chairs, our shoulders still touching.
“We got it,” I say.
“Yeah.”
“Now we burn it down.”
I lean my head on his shoulder. He puts his other hand over mine.
Yeah, Dmitri will find another hacker. But bringing someone into a system I built takes weeks. We only need days. By the time anyone spots Wolfe’s fingerprints in there, the whole thing will already be in ashes.
What I said earlier is true…I am a weapon.
He just aimed me at the wrong people.