33. Eva
EVA
It’s been two weeks. Fourteen days. Three-hundred-and-thirty-six hours since I watched Wolfe Molloy bleed on my brother’s floor after taking the bullet that might have ended my life.
Not that I’m counting.
Dammit, I’m absolutely fucking counting.
I picked up that habit from him and I can’t shake it no matter how hard I try.
I count the steps from Sal’s bed to the bathroom.
I count the cracks in the ceiling over his bed, ones I’ve memorized by now.
I count how many times a day I pick up my phone, stare at it, and shove it back in my pocket.
Eleven times. Today it was eleven.
I’m still at Sal’s because going back to my apartment feels wrong.
Dmitri’s people were in there. The operation may have taken Dmitri down, but I don’t know where every one of his guys ended up or whether there’s a bounty on my head for defecting and then causing him a world of shit courtesy of my affiliation with the Molloys.
No way am I going back to my apartment now.
I’m not making money, either. That’s a fun little detail I try not to think about much.
My bank account is running on fumes from the last job I did before Dmitri recruited me.
Adriana mentioned legitimate forensic accounting work a while back, but reaching out to her means reaching into Wolfe’s world and I’m not ready for that.
So I help Sal at the restaurant. I chop things. I wipe things down. I carry plates to tables and smile at strangers and pretend my life isn’t a complete dumpster fire that I can’t seem to extinguish.
Sal and I are in a weird place. It’s not bad.
We’re just… I guess careful is the best word to use.
He goes to work. I go with him. We talk about the specials and the bread order and whether Marco is ever going to stop complaining about the rising price of olive oil.
We don’t talk about Dmitri. We don’t talk about “that night.” We don’t talk about the man who bled on his floor for me.
But he puts coffee in front of me every morning without being asked, exactly the way I like it, which I very much appreciate.
Last Tuesday he made Mom’s meatballs for the dinner special.
The second the smell hit me, I was ten years old again, standing in my parents’ kitchen watching her fry them on the stove while Dad set the table.
My world was whole and safe and hadn’t gone up in flames yet.
The memory so vivid at the restaurant, I had to lock myself in the bathroom for five minutes just until I could breathe again.
He’s angry. He has every right to be. But he’s also still here for me, with me. That’s the Moreno way. You don’t leave. Even when you’re pissed as hell.
In the middle of the second week, things start to shift between us.
Sal comes into the kitchen after the lunch rush clears out and tosses his towel over his shoulder, his forehead creased.
“So something happened with the Garcias,” he says.
My spine stiffens. “What did you hear?”
“They had debt with the Albanians, too. Their debt. Mrs. Garcia came in today and told me the whole thing got wiped. Like, completely. She got a letter saying the account was closed and the balance was zero.”
My fingers freeze on the napkin I’m rolling. “What?”
“Yes, you heard me.” Sal nods, leaning in closer.
“And it’s not just them. Marco told me the Nguyens got the same letter at their restaurant.
So did the Patels. And the family that runs the dry cleaner on the corner.
Everyone who owed money to those Albanian guys... it’s all gone. Every last dollar.”
I clench the napkin tight in my hand. “How?” I whisper, even though I already know the answer.
“Nobody knows. Everything was done by letter. And the accounts just closed. It’s like the whole lending operation disappeared like it was never there.” He looks at me, a smile playing at his lips. “You know who did this, don’t you?”
I don’t answer. I can’t. Because if I open my mouth, I’m going to say his name, and I haven’t said his name out loud in thirteen days, and I’m not sure what will happen to me when I do.
Sal must read the disbelief in my expression because he nods slowly. “Yeah. That’s what I thought.”
A few days later, Sal slides his phone across the bar during a slow afternoon.
“Look at this,” he says. “You’re not gonna believe it.”
It’s a news article in The Boston Globe about how federal investigators have opened a case involving corporate data theft connected to several technology firms in the Boston area. New evidence suggests the original conviction in a related case may have been based on falsified digital records.
I stare at the black and white print on my brother’s phone screen until it swims in front of my eyes, blurring the words.
My pulse jackhammers against my throat. My name isn’t in the article, but I know it’s about me.
The language matches exactly to what I read on Wolfe’s laptop.
The same inconsistencies he flagged eighteen months ago.
The same digital trail pointing to a second person in the system who was never fingered.
“Is that about you?” Sal asks quietly. He knows about my conviction. He lived through the horrors on the outside while I lived them behind bars.
“Yeah. I think it is.”
“Someone opened that case back up,” he says.
“Yeah.” I swallow, but the growing lump makes it damn hard to speak. Hell, even to breathe.
“Someone who had evidence that you were innocent and decided to finally do something with it.”
My knees buckle and I have to grab onto the edge of the bar for balance. “Yeah.”
Sal just looks at me, letting it all sink in. “Remember what Mom used to say about Dad?”
I look at him, my eyes stinging. We almost never talk about our parents. It’s a door we keep closed because opening it hurts too much.
“She used to say that Dad showed love by doing, not saying,” Sal continues.
“He wasn’t the kind of guy to say ‘I love you’ all the time.
But he’d fix the sink at two in the morning and shovel the driveway before she woke up and spend three hours driving across the city to find the exact brand of coffee she liked.
” He puts a hand over mine. “She said the words would’ve been nice, but the doing was what she trusted most. The actions always spoke louder than the words ever could. ”
“Sal—” I croak, shaking my head. “It’s not that easy. In fact, it’s really freaking complicated—”
“You know what your problem is? Ever since we lost Mom and Dad, you decided you’re the one who has to hold everything together.
Me, the restaurant, your whole life. And you won’t let anyone help because every time you trusted someone to carry their share, they dropped it. So you just stopped trusting.”
“Yeah, and what’s your point? Everything blew up and I got sent to prison. And then it blew up again with Wolfe.”
“That’s where you’re wrong. Things blew up with Daniel because Daniel was a piece of shit.
Not because you trusted the wrong instinct.
You trusted the wrong person. But you didn’t trust the wrong guy this time.
” He folds his arms on the bar. “I watched you with Wolfe. At this bar. In this restaurant. The way you looked at him, E? That wasn’t you trusting the wrong instinct.
That was you finally trusting the right one. ”
“You don’t know what I found on his laptop.”
“No. You still won’t tell me and that’s fine.
But I know what I’ve seen over the past two weeks.
” He gestures around the restaurant. “This neighborhood is different. People aren’t scared anymore.
My customers are coming in smiling instead of checking over their shoulders.
Someone is cleaning up the mess that Dmitri made, and they’re doing it without taking any credit. ”
“That still doesn’t erase what he did,” I grumble.
“Maybe not. But it might tell you something about why he did it.” He gives me a long look.
“You spent three months lying to me to protect me. I hated finding that out. It made me feel stupid and small, and like you didn’t trust me enough to let me help.
But I also know you did it because you love me and wanted to keep me out of harm’s way.
So if I can sit here and accept that from you, maybe you can accept that the guy who bled on my floor might have had reasons you don’t know about yet. ”
“When did you get so wise?” I say, tracing my finger along the cracked wood grain on the bar.
Sal chuckles. “I’ve always been wise. You were just too busy being the tough one to notice.”
I wrap my arms around him and bury my head in his neck, the familiar scent of his cologne filling me with comfort. He hugs me back. Tight, like he wants me to remember he’s never going to leave me. That he’ll always be here for me.
I stand behind the bar the rest of the afternoon, my mind working through everything: the cleared debts, the reopened case, the rescheduled meeting text, the bullet.
And then I remember it’s been two weeks of radio silence from a man who could track my every move through the car parked outside this building but hasn’t once shown up or called or texted.
He’s letting me choose. That’s what this is. He’s not chasing me. He’s not begging. He’s doing everything he can to right the wrongs he can control, leaving the door open, and waiting to see if I walk through it. Almost like when he left that timestamp in my files.
I hate that it’s working.
Around four o’clock, Sal catches me staring at my phone again.
“Just go, Eva.”
“Go where?”
Sal throws his hands into the air. “Wherever he is. Go yell at him. Make him explain. Do whatever you need to do but stop moping around my restaurant looking like your dog died because you’re upsetting the customers.”
“Nobody is upset.”
“Table six asked me if you were okay. Twice.”
I look at table six. It’s an elderly couple eating tiramisu. The woman gives me a little wave and a sympathetic smile. I force a smile in response.
“I don’t know if I’m ready,” I say.
“You’ve been ready for a week. You’re just too stubborn to admit it.” He takes the dish towel off his shoulder and snaps it at me. “Go. I’ll close up tonight.”
“Sal—”
“Eva Marie Moreno. Get out of my restaurant. Now.”
My full name. He only uses my full name when he’s completely done with my shit. I guess two weeks is my limit.
I grab my jacket off the hook near the kitchen. “I don’t know where he is.” Which is a total lie.
“Yeah, you do,” Sal says.
He’s right. I know Wolfe isn’t at the Molloy house.
He doesn’t need constant oversight now for that bullet wound, I’m sure.
And he’d never willingly want to be in Ronan’s airspace.
He’s definitely at the cabin, the one place he’d go when his brain needs to stop.
The one place where nobody can find him.
The place he brought me to because he said I was the only person he wanted there with him.
“But I don’t have a plan,” I protest again.
“Good. Plans are overrated. Just go talk to the man.”
“He might not want to see me.”
Sal rolls his eyes. “The guy took a bullet for you two weeks ago. I’m pretty sure he wants to see you.”
I walk to the door then stop with my hand on the handle. I shoot Sal a glance over my shoulder. “Thank you, Sal. For everything. For letting me crash here and giving me a distraction and not kicking me out and putting up with my—”
“Get out.” He points at the door. “Before I throw a spatula at you.”
I chuckle softly, pull open the door, and walk outside.
The car is where it’s been for two weeks, right outside Sal’s building. I dig the keys out of my bag and unlock the door. Then I get into the driver’s seat. I sit there for a long while with my hands on the wheel, my heart thundering so hard I can hear it roar in my ears.
He’ll know I’m heading to the cabin. The second I move this car, the tracker will show it. If he’s watching—and he’s always watching—he’ll see the dot headed north.
Good. Let him know. Let him have however many minutes it takes me to get there to figure out what he’s going to say. Because I sure as hell don’t know what I’m going to say either.
I head north toward the only man who ever made me feel safe, and the same man who shattered that feeling in forty-three minutes of me looking on his laptop.
One of them is the real Wolfe.
I’m about to find out which.