Page 23 of Queen's Ransom

Hawes choked on his whiskey. “What?”

“How’d that go over?” Chris asked, a smirk in his voice.

“She was miffed at first. Remy is not a woman who is used to hearing ‘no.’ But I bought her a bottle of Dom and got her the hot server’s number. He’d been checking her out all night.” Helena drained the rest of her gimlet. “And I told her I was off the market.”

Hawes’s brow lifted in sync with Chris’s “Oh really?”

Rather than answer either of them, she flipped over her phone where it lay on the table. Still no reply to her text to Celia. She hoped that meant Celia was asleep. They’d had a good time over dinner, Hawes eventually arriving home and finishing the pasta dish with Gloria. Helena had even managed to get Holt to eat a plate while running over the op specs.

Just being at the club, though, should have cautioned her against texting Celia. The part of Helena that wanted to keep Celia safe and apart from all the swirling chaos remained strong. Despite Hawes’s encouragement, Helena’s instinct to protect, to withdraw, had welled up as the day went on, keeping her away for most of it, but the counter-instinct to get closer had brought her back to Celia’s side at dinner, had led her to reach out in that text message, hoping for a response, hoping for fucking hope. She glanced again at the text thread, her insides aching at the nonresponse, then flipped the phone back over, screen side down on the table.

“She’s here,” Holt radioed. “Bay entry in three, two—”

The glass door in the wall of windows swung open, and Remy Pak entered alone, her smooth skin and long black hair a palette the club lights favored, accentuated by the little black dress that hugged her curves. Helena wondered where her weapons were; she always liked to pick up new tricks.

“Backup?” Hawes asked.

“She left one outside,” Elisabeth radioed.

“The other is rounding the bar,” Victoria added.

“Ballsy of her to enter before they cased it,” Connor, a junior captain, said.

Avery chuckled. “That’s got nothing to do with balls.”

No, it didn’t. It was all about confidence, or in Remy’s case, arrogance. There was no denying she was a beautiful woman… and the second most deadly in the room tonight. She knew it. Probably thought she was the deadliest, but that was a cage match for another day.

Helena flicked her hair, knowing it would catch Remy’s attention. Dark eyes shot their direction, then moved on, sweeping the entire club before landing back on their table. Satisfied, she wove through the crowd toward them, and over the comms, Chris hummed “Hungry Like the Wolf.”

Helena glared at her brother. “Can we go back to the days when he was the enemy so I can kill him?”

Hawes laughed out loud, just as Remy reached their table. “Something funny?” she asked.

“Family squabbles,” Hawes said.

“You Madigans do have a lot of those.” She slid into the booth next to Helena, extending an arm behind her and scooting close. “You reconsider my offer?”

Helena made a mental note to check the collar of her shirt where Remy’s fingers flitted, likely dropping a bug. “Good to see you too, Remy.”

“Didn’t expect it to be so soon.” She glanced across the table at Hawes. “Where’s your pet fed?”

A server appeared at the side of their table, a bottle of Stoli Elit and three shot glasses full on his tray. “From the gentleman at the bar.”

He stepped out of the way enough for Chris to be visible, lifting his own shot of top-shelf vodka.

“I take it back,” Helena said to Hawes. “We can keep him.” She liked the ex-fed’s humor much better when it wasn’t directed at her.

“Happy to help solve that domestic,” Remy said, having clearly caught on to the squabble. She claimed one of the glasses the server had left in the center of the table with the bottle. “You can invite him over.”

“I like him there,” Hawes said.

She tipped her glass Chris’s direction, then threw back the shot. “His ass always did look good in jeans.”

“And that ass is off the market too.”

“Shame.” She refilled her glass. “What about your brother? I hear he’s available now.”

Helena snagged a glass and pushed the other in front of Hawes. “Chief of police might have something to say about that.” Regardless of Holt and Brax’s tiff, there was no way she or Brax would let Holt get tangled up with Remy. And it was good to remind Remy where they had connections.

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