A bomb with multiple detonations.
Captain Rourke murdered my brother.
The club has been protecting me this whole time while I’ve been investigating them.
And Sin’s name is Diesel Moretti—I think that one is hitting the hardest at the moment.
Carefully, I extract myself from Sin’s embrace. He stirs, his arm tightening instinctively before I gently lift it away. A soft murmur escapes his lips, something I can’t quite make out, and my heart cracks a little wider. I freeze, watching his face for any sign he’s waking, but he just shifts, rolling onto his back, one arm thrown over his head.
God, he’s beautiful like this. Unguarded. The hard edges of his face softened by sleep, his mismatched eyes hidden beneath dark lashes. The tattoos that snake across his chest and arms tellstories I’m only beginning to understand. Tales of survival, of loss, of a boy who grew up too fast and became a man too soon.
And that damn poker chip sitting on his nightstand, catching the morning light.
The chip his mother gave him before she disappeared. Before the Hidden Hand Alliance supposedly dumped her body in the desert.
His mother—Maria Moretti.
The name circles in my mind like a vulture, twisting in my stomach like a knife.
Chief Detective Maria Moretti, my superior.
The woman with those sharp eyes and that no-nonsense demeanor. The woman who looked at me yesterday, like she was trying to figure out if I was an asset or a liability.
Could it really be the same person?
The timing fits. The name fits. And when Sin told me about the poker chip, about his mother’s gambling addiction, about being thirteen when she vanished—it all lines up too perfectly to be a coincidence.
My hand moves to my phone before I can stop myself. My fingers shake as I unlock it, the screen brightness harsh in the dim room. I glance at Sin again, still sleeping, thank God, and then I do the most unforgivable thing I’ve done since this assignment started.
I take a photograph of him.
The camera clicks softly, barely audible, but in the silence of the room, it sounds like a gunshot. I hold my breath, waiting for him to wake, to catch me in this violation of his trust.
But he doesn’t move.
I zoom in, making sure his face is clear. Those mismatched eyes might be closed, but his features are unmistakable. Then I shift the angle slightly, capturing the poker chip on thenightstand—red and white stripes worn smooth from years of handling.
Evidence.
Proof.
The key to confirming whether Maria Moretti is Sin’s mother.
The guilt threatens to swallow me whole.
What are you doing, Victoria?
I’m trying to help him.
That’s what I tell myself as I slip out of bed, my bare feet silent on the hardwood floor. I’m gathering information that could reunite him with his mother. A mother he thinks is dead but who might be alive and working in the same department I do.
But I know the truth.
I know that what I’m really doing is taking something sacred—Sin’s vulnerability, his trust, the story he shared with me—and weaponizing it.
I’m using his pain to solve a mystery he didn’t ask me to solve.
I find my clothes scattered across the floor, remnants of last night when he’d peeled them off me with those skilled hands. The memory sends heat flooding through me, but I push it away. I can’t think about that right now. Can’t think about how right it felt to be with him, how for those few hours I wasn’t Victoria the cop or Elizabeth the journalist, I was just a woman with the man she’s fallen for.
