Page 24 of Queen's Ransom

“Greedy lot, you all.” Remy sipped at her second shot. “So, if no one wants to have fun, let’s get down to business. Why am I here?”

Hawes moved his shot out of the way and rested his suited forearms on the table. “What can you tell us about Adrian Zima?”

Remy lowered her glass and retracted her arm from behind Helena. “Tell your ex-fed I appreciated the vodka.”

She moved, as if to exit, and beneath the table, Helena tipped up Remy’s closest leg with her toe, then hooked the heel of her foot around Remy’s calf, locking her in place. “Not so fast,” Helena said. Remy’s opposite arm went to her side, as if to draw a weapon, but Helena’s arm was over her shoulders faster, a hand beneath her biceps, holding her limb out of reach. And bringing them close enough for Helena to whisper low, “There was a drive-by shooting yesterday. Someone shot at me and someone I care about. We’re trying to determine the target, the shooter, and how to handle it.”

“The person who took you off the market?”

It was a risk letting Remy in on the truth, but maybe also the only way to convince her how serious this was. “Yes.”

Remy stopped fighting, and Helena was surprised to see the lick of fear in her eyes. “You better hope it’s not Adrian targeting either of you.”

“He scares you.”

“Fuck yeah, he scares me.”

“Because if he knew you were a CI for the ATF he’d kill you too?” Hawes said.

“Keep spinning your theories.” She relaxed her battle stance, slouching into Helena’s side, close enough to whisper, “Who else is listening?”

Meaning she was willing to talk, on certain conditions. Untangling herself, Helena downed her shot and reached for the bottle, discreetly lifting the coaster beneath it as she lifted the vodka. “Extra privacy,” she said, explaining the metal strip underneath. She refilled her glass, then set the bottle back on the coaster.

Remy angled toward them, a sheet of glossy black hair obscuring the side of her face, preventing anyone from reading her lips. “Yeah, that,” she said, answering Hawes’s question. “And because Adrian is cold as ice.”

“He’s low level,” Hawes said. “Just a soldier.”

“Talk is he’s angling to climb, and fast.”

Meaning the drive-by could have been a test. Or a renegade move. “You took our regards to Dimitri and the Bratva?” Helena asked.

The Bratva were bigger than them. They’d picked off low-level thugs and associates, but never anyone above soldier. That would start a war, which, as good as they were, they could lose, and it would be a war with collateral damage. That was against their rules now, and they’d made certain promises—including to Brax—that they wouldn’t bring that kind of war to San Francisco.

“We’re in a good place,” Helena said. “So are the Bratva as a result. They’re no doubt profiting from our scale back.”

“I did, and they are,” Remy said. “They understand the terms.”

“Would they order this anyway?” Hawes asked.

“A hit on you?” she said to Helena. “The queen?”

Helena suppressed her shiver and nodded.

“Order it, no. Object if it happened…” She shrugged.

Meaning she was the more likely target if Adrian did have a hand in this. Why else would he shoot up Perri Auto Works? Unless it had something to do with the other players potentially involved. She flipped over her phone again and pulled up a photo of Lenny. “You ever seen this guy around?”

Remy shook her head.

Helena swiped her finger across the screen to a picture of Dex. “What about him?”

She shook her head again.

“And you’d know?” Hawes asked.

“Seeing as I’ve been feeding the ATF the Bratva’s recruitment targets the past year, yeah, I’d fucking know.”

“How do we know you’re not lying?”

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