20. Wolfe
WOLFE
Eva moved the Cheerios.
Not far. About six inches to the left. She was reorganizing the kitchen cabinets in the guest wing because apparently, she can’t function in a space that isn’t arranged according to her standards, and she shifted the box to make room for the mugs she decided needed to be closer to the coffee maker.
Six inches. That’s all. And my brain has been stuck on it for the past twenty minutes.
I know it’s stupid. I know the Honey Nut Cheerios tastes the same whether the box is six inches to the left or six inches to the right. I know that a grown man standing in a kitchen staring at a cereal box because someone moved it is not a great look.
But my hand keeps reaching for the spot where it was. And it’s not there. So every time that happens, my brain sends a small error signal that I have to manually override, which takes about two seconds, which means I’ve lost roughly forty seconds of my morning to a box of goddamn cereal.
Completely fucking irrational.
But it’s how I’m built, so fighting it seems like a waste of energy.
Eva walks in wearing one of my AC/DC shirts and a pair of shorts that drag my eyes to her long, toned legs. Her hair is wet from the shower, her bare feet padding across the tile floor.
She flashes me a knowing smirk and walks past me to reach into the cabinet for a mug and hits the button on the coffee maker.
“You’re staring at the Cheerios,” she says without turning around.
“You moved them.”
“Six inches.”
“I know.”
“And this is a problem?”
“My hand keeps reaching for where they were.”
She turns and looks at me. Then she reaches over, picks up the Cheerios box, and moves it back to its original position. With a quirk of her lips, she lines it up with the counter edge.
“There,” she says. “Crisis averted.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” She leans against the counter and watches me pour cereal into my bowl.
“You know, most couples fight about money or sex or whose family is more annoying. We fight about cereal placement.” She stops, her eyes widening like she just choked on her next words.
Then she spins away from me and pretends to watch the coffee percolate.
“Not that we’re a couple. I didn’t mean…I’m just saying that if we were, hypothetically, which we aren’t, the cereal thing would be—”
“Eva.”
“Yeah.” She peeks at me over her shoulder.
“You’re spiraling.”
“I know.” She picks up her mug, fills it, and takes a long sip. “Forget I said anything.”
How the hell am I supposed to forget she said it? My brain already grabbed that word and is holding onto it. Tight.
Couple.
She said couple. Hypothetically. But she still said it.
“For the record,” I say, “I wouldn’t fight about the cereal.”
“You literally just fought about the cereal.”
“I expressed concern about the cereal. There’s a difference.”
She’s been here for four days. Four days of Eva Moreno in the Molloy estate, and the entire house has shifted around her like she’s got serious gravitational pull.
Gavin brings her sandwiches without being asked because he noticed she likes them.
Tony has started making her a separate breakfast plate because he noticed she doesn’t eat enough.
Ronan still calls her “the source,” which pisses me off, but he’s started directing questions to her before he directs them to me.
That means he trusts her analysis. Not her, but the way her mind works.
Lochlan and Adriana pull her into security meetings.
Cillian texts me every night asking how she’s doing, which is his way of asking how I’m doing without actually asking.
Sneaky little fucker. Like I can’t see right through him.
And I’m standing in a kitchen at seven in the morning watching her drink coffee in my shirt while my heart expands in a way that rattles my brain.
This is the part I wasn’t prepared for. Not the operation, not the danger, not even the sex.
The domesticity. Seeing her first thing in the morning, completely unguarded and finding her place.
Watching her leave her coffee cup on the right side of the sink because she’s right-handed.
Listening to her hum some song I don’t recognize while she works.
Feeling her even breaths against my skin when she falls asleep against me.
My brain absorbs all of it. Every habit, every quirk, every tiny detail of what it looks like when Eva Moreno exists in your space. And the space she takes up in my head is getting bigger every day, pushing out other things. Important things. Things like Dmitri Kozlov.
Which brings me to the actual problem.
“That son of a bitch made his move,” Ronan says later on that day.
We all gather in the office. Ronan sits behind the desk, Lochlan stands by the window, Gavin sprawls on the couch scrolling through his phone screens, Cillian in position by the door. Eva drops into the chair next to mine, our knees almost touching. I’m aware of the space between us. I always am.
“The Markham deal,” Ronan says, his voice tight. “A forty-two-million-dollar property acquisition in the Financial District. Adriana’s been leading it for eight months. It was supposed to close next Thursday.”
“Was supposed to close,” Lochlan repeats, his jaw tensing.
“The buyers pulled out this morning. They received an anonymous package containing internal communications, financial projections, and security assessments from inside the DiMicheli organization. Data that should never have left Adriana’s office.
” Ronan looks around the table. “They’re not questioning the properties.
They’re questioning whether the DiMichelis can protect confidential information.
And if that sticks, every deal Adriana is running on behalf of her company and her family’s organization will have that same toxic cloud hanging over it. ”
“Shit,” Cillian mutters.
“The warehouse data,” Eva says, pressing a hand to her forehead.
Ronan nods. “Dmitri sent it to the buyers to spook them. It worked. They walked away from the deal.”
“Forty-two fucking million,” Gavin says. “That’s a lot of money to lose because of a flash drive.”
“It’s not about the money,” Eva says. Every head in the room turns toward her. “It’s about proving he can do it. He just showed both families that he can torpedo a major deal with a single envelope. That’s a demonstration. Not an attack.”
“A demonstration of what?” Cillian asks.
“Of what happens if you don’t let him in.
” She sits up straighter in the chair. “He’s basically saying that you need to give him a voice, or he’ll burn every deal you try to make.
He doesn’t need to steal from you. He just needs to make sure nobody else wants to do business with you. That’s even more damaging.”
Ronan’s jaw tics. He looks at Lochlan.
“She’s right,” Lochlan says. “This is leverage, not theft. He’s positioning for a negotiation.”
“I don’t negotiate with someone who breaks into buildings and puts people in hospitals,” Ronan snaps.
“Then we need to take away his leverage before he uses it again,” Eva says. “He has data on three properties. We need to figure out which deals are vulnerable and secure them before he can send out another envelope.”
“We also need to figure out how he’s delivering the intel,” I say. “The envelope to the buyers didn’t come through the mail. Someone hand-delivered it. Which means he has people in the Financial District who can walk into an office building and drop a package on a desk without being noticed.”
“The Albanians,” Eva says, her eyebrows flying up. “Hoxha’s construction and cleaning companies. They have crews that go in and out of commercial buildings every day. Nobody looks twice at a cleaning crew, right?”
Ronan points to Lochlan. “I need you to get me a list of every building in that portfolio and which cleaning and maintenance crews service them. We need to cross-reference the list with Hoxha’s companies.
” He looks at Eva. “You. Figure out which of our remaining deals Dmitri can hit next using the same playbook. I want to know where he’s going before he gets there. ”
“Done,” Eva says, shooting up from the chair. She hurries toward the door.
I watch her go, the air around her charged with the next challenge she needs to crack open.
Gavin catches my eye from the couch. He doesn’t say anything. He just raises his eyebrows and gives me a look that says, “bro, you’re staring.”
I am staring.
I can’t stop. It’s getting worse. Every day she’s in this house, my brain commits more of itself to her.
Where she is, what she’s doing, who she’s talking to, whether she’s eaten, whether she’s slept, whether the line between her eyebrows means she’s focused or stressed.
I know the difference now. Focused is smooth.
Stressed has a small crease on the left side.
I position myself between her and the door in every room without consciously meaning to. I check the security feeds on her hallway before I look at any other feed. When she leaves a room, part of my brain follows her and doesn’t come back until she’s in view again.
I don’t have a name for what this is. I just know that when she’s not in my line of sight, my chest tightens. When she is, it tightens differently.
And neither way lets me breathe.
Cillian was right. My head’s not fully here. Part of it belongs to her now. And the percentage keeps growing.
“Wolfe.” Ronan’s voice pulls me back. The room is empty except for us. Everyone else has gone and I’m still stuck on Eva. “We need to talk about the counter-play.”
“I’m listening.”
“Dmitri’s going to escalate. The Markham deal was him flexing his dick to show us what he can do. The next one won’t be a dress rehearsal. It’ll be the real thing. We need to be ready.”
“I know,” I say, waiting for what I’m pretty sure comes next.
“Which means I need your full attention. Not seventy percent. Not eighty. All of it.”
And there it is. “You have it.”
His eyes narrow and he flicks his thumb toward the door Eva walked through.
“No,” he says. “I don’t.”
I don’t argue. Because he’s not wrong.
“Get your head right,” he says. “Whatever you need to do. Because what’s coming is going to require every Molloy at the table. Including you. Especially you.”
“I hear you.”
“Good.” He pulls his phone out of his pocket. “Now get out.”
Classic Ronan. What a dick.
I walk into the hallway and head for the conference room. Eva is at the table, already deep in the data. There’s a pencil in her hair and her fingers are flying across the keyboard as she mutters something under her breath.
I stand there for about ten seconds watching her while my thumb taps against my leg.
Ronan wants my full attention. He’s right to want it. Dmitri is escalating and the counter-play needs every functioning brain cell I have.
But fuck, I’m in trouble. The deep kind. The kind where the smartest thing I could do is create space between me and Eva, and the one thing my brain absolutely refuses to do is that.
I sit down across from her. She doesn’t look up.
“You’re staring again,” she says.
“I know.”
“Your brother is going to notice.”
“He already noticed.”
“And?”
“And he told me to get my head right.”
She looks up, a crease between her eyebrows. It’s the focused kind, not the stressed kind.
“Is your head right?” she asks, tilting her head to the side.
“No,” I say. “It hasn’t been right since the night I sat on your stoop.”
Her mouth twitches. “That’s either super romantic or major red flag raising.”
I shrug. “Probably both.”
“Probably.” She looks back at her screen. “Now shut up and work. If you haven’t noticed, your brother doesn’t like to be kept waiting.”
“Neither do I.”
She smiles. “Then we’re on the same page.”
I open my laptop and start working. Her knee presses against mine under the table. Neither of us moves away.
Ronan wants my full attention.
He’ll learn to share.