34. Wolfe
WOLFE
I check it every day, multiple times a day. Just like I have for the past two weeks. Every morning I open the tracker app and stare at the dot sitting outside Sal’s building, willing it to move. Then I try to convince myself that today might be the day.
But every morning it stays exactly where it is.
Until now.
And my heart jumps into my throat when I see it, damn-near choking me.
The dot pulls away from Sal’s block and heads north through the city. It moves past the neighborhoods and toward the highway on-ramp that leads out of Boston.
Toward me.
I suck in a breath and sit back in my chair. Then I close the laptop and stand up for some reason. I don’t know where I think I’m going, but my body just needed to take some kind of action.
I just stand there, though, because I don’t know what to do with myself. My brain runs scenarios for everything. It builds backup plans while I sleep. It maps out conversations before they happen and predicts responses and prepares arguments for and against things.
But it doesn’t have a setting for this.
I pace the cabin. I straighten the spines of books on the shelf that don’t need straightening.
In the bedroom, I run my fingers over the worn wool quilt that I haven’t washed because it still smells like her hair, and I feel like it’s the only connection I have left to her.
Yeah, that may be pathetic, but I don’t care.
I walk past the bathroom and cringe at my reflection in the mirror.
Jesus, I look rough. Two weeks of crappy sleep, my arm still in a sling, a beard I haven’t bothered to deal with because there was nobody here worth shaving for.
My face is thinner than it should be because cooking for one is depressing as hell, and it makes my brain forget that eating is a requirement.
The drive from Boston is about an hour. That’s how long I have to figure out what to say to Eva when she shows up at that door.
One hour. My brain keeps trying to build a script, and the script keeps erasing because there’s no version of what I have to tell her that sounds good.
There’s only the truth. And the truth is damn ugly.
I sink into my chair on the porch, a deep sigh slipping through my lips. My eyes flicker toward her chair. The empty one. The way it’s been for two weeks.
I fold my fingers together, sit back, and wait.
Just like I have been for the past weeks.
The sun eventually drops behind the trees and the sky turns orange and then purple and the temperature drops. But I don’t go inside because if I go inside, I’ll start pacing again, and the pacing isn’t helping. It only makes me more anxious.
I grasp the arms of the chair and shoot up when tires crackle over the gravel on the dirt road.
My car appears out of the trees. The one she drove away from this cabin two weeks ago at 12:34 AM. She parks and turns off the engine.
She doesn’t get out right away. She sits there with her hands on the wheel, staring straight ahead.
I can see her through the windshield. Her hair is down, dark waves falling around her face.
Her jaw is set. She looks like a woman who drove all this way arguing with herself about whether to turn around and is still not sure she made the right call.
I don’t move from the porch. I don’t walk to the car. I don’t call out because this has to be her choice. Every step from that car to this porch has to come from her.
She won’t have it any other way.
Eva finally opens the door and gets out. I let out the breath I didn’t even realize I’d been holding as she stands there, staring at me across the driveway. I feel a little like a bug being smoked under a magnifying glass, if I’m being honest.
But I deserve it. So I’ll keep standing here, letting her singe me with those accusatory eyes. I search her face for something I can read, but her expression is locked down tight, and the fact that I can’t get a read on her right now makes my stomach drop because I can always read her.
She walks toward the porch, her steps slow. Her eyes rake over me and I watch them catalog the damage. The sling. The beard. The weight I’ve lost. Her mouth pulls into a hard line as she closes the distance between us.
“You look terrible,” she says from the bottom of the steps, her arms folded over her chest.
“I got shot.”
“That was two weeks ago.”
“Still counts.”
“You’re not eating, either.”
“I’m eating.”
“Not enough.” Her voice is sharp, but there’s something underneath the sharpness that she’s working so hard to keep buried. Something softer, and it’s enough for me to grasp onto.
I don’t push. I let her stand there on her terms.
“Can I come in?” she asks.
“You don’t have to ask.”
She walks up the steps and past me. Her scent teases my nostrils as she goes by, and every nerve in my body fires at once. I follow her inside and close the door, resisting the urge to pull her into my arms and bury my head in her sweet-smelling hair.
Eva walks around like she’s on alert. She doesn’t sit down.
She moves through the cabin, eyeing everything as if she’s cataloguing any changes I’ve made since she was last here.
Her fingers trail along the edge of the bookshelf until they come to one particular book.
She takes The Count Of Monte Cristo off the shelf, turns it over in her hands, then slides it back into place.
She runs her palm across the wood grain tabletop where we ate shitty pasta a couple of weeks ago.
Then she moves toward the bedroom doorway and stands there looking at the quilt on the bed.
Her shoulders tighten, her hand gripping the doorframe.
She’s trying to reconcile this place with what she found on my laptop. The disparity between the cabin where she felt safe and the cabin where everything collapsed around her. They’re one and the same, and now she’s standing in the middle of it all trying to figure out which version is real.
When she whips her head around, her eyes blaze with anger. “Talk,” she says through clenched teeth. Her fists are balled so tight, her knuckles go white. “Every single thing I found on that laptop. Explain it all. Right now to my face since you didn’t bother with bullshit excuses on my voicemail.”
I lean back against the kitchen counter, the throbbing in my shoulder making my lips twist.
“Where do you want me to start?” I ask.
She lifts an eyebrow. “The case file.”
I take a breath and nod. “Almost two years ago, your case got flagged in a routine scan I run on federal convictions in the Boston area. I run it to make sure nothing connects back to our family’s operations.
Yours came up because there was a link between the company you worked for and a shell company in our financial network. ”
“I saw that part. I recognized the company name from the work I did for Dmitri. After completing my prison sentence,” she bites out. Her jaw tightens. “Keep going.”
“I dug into the prosecution’s evidence and found holes. The digital trail that pointed to you was manufactured after the fact. Someone else was in the system at the same time as you. I traced their signature and confirmed you were set up.”
“And you buried it.”
“Yes. I buried it because following it would have sent investigators straight to our business.” I hold her gaze even though everything in me wants to look away.
“You were a stranger. I didn’t know your name beyond a court record.
All I saw was a risk to my family, and I made the choice to protect them over you. ”
Her nostrils flare. Dots of pink pop into her cheeks, a vein throbbing in her forehead. “And you’re telling me this like it’s an explanation?” she hisses.
“It’s not an explanation. It’s the truth. It’s ugly and it’s selfish and I’ve hated myself for it every day since I met you. I can’t undo the fourteen months you spent in prison because of a choice I made. But I’m doing everything I can to make it right now.”
“The Globe article.”
“That’s me. I took the analysis from the case file and built a trail that would lead investigators to the person who framed you. It’s in federal hands now, and your conviction is going to be reviewed.”
She’s quiet for a long moment. Her fists loosen slightly. She’s still standing. Still pissed as hell. But she hasn’t walked out.
“The relocation plan,” she says. The words come out like they taste like shit on her lips.
I don’t dare look away now. “Ronan told me he wanted you gone after the operation. He said he’d handle it himself if I didn’t.
And I knew exactly what that meant coming from him.
” My good thumb taps against the tabletop.
“After you fell asleep that night, my brain started spiraling. What if Ronan forces the issue? What if the only way to keep you alive is to get you far away from my own family? My brain wouldn’t stop churning, and the only way I know how to deal with a scenario is to plan for it. ”
“So you built a plan to ship me out of your life seventy-two hours from then.”
“I built a plan to keep you breathing if my brother tried to make sure you weren’t. Every detail in that document was designed to get you somewhere safe and fast if Ronan came through on his threat. I was never going to execute it.”
“But you never told me your brother wanted me dead.”
“Because I thought I could handle him. I thought I could win the fight, and it would be over.” My voice drops. “I didn’t want you carrying that fear. And I was wrong to make that call for you.”
Her chin trembles for just a second before she locks it down. She presses her hands to her face and lets out a shaky breath.
“The texts,” she says without opening her eyes. “She won’t be a problem. I’ll handle it.”