Page 25 of Queen's Ransom

“You don’t.” Remy reached for her forgotten shot and tossed it back. “But seeing as Adrian tried to kill someone important to me, I’d be happy to recruit you to my cause.”

The pieces slotted into place. “The ATF thinks they’re using you, but you’re using them.”

“No one fucks with what’s mine.” Remy looked positively smug, but behind the arrogance, something haunted lingered. Something they could use to their advantage.

“If we need a meet with your boss,” Helena said, “can you make it happen?”

“You better be damn sure before you make that request.”

“If we do,” Hawes said, his voice and patience thinning, “we will be.”

“And no one fucks with what’s mine either,” Helena said, feeding Remy a little more of the truth in return for the truths she’d shared.

Remy poured herself and Helena another shot. “We understand each other,” she said in Russian.

“We do,” Helena replied in the same.

Remy’s answering laugh was full and throaty. “Kiska, if I’d only known.” She leaned closer, pushing back the hair Helena had tossed to get her attention earlier. “I would have tried harder to get you into my bed,” she purred, unfurling a Russian accent Helena had never heard her use before. “Would have loved to hear you panting in my mother tongue.”

A shadow fell over the table. “Just so you know,” Chris said, “I’ve got a vested interest in this too. I won’t hesitate to cause you trouble with the ATF if you double-cross us.”

Remy’s pleasant demeanor vanished. “I thought he wasn’t listening.”

“I wasn’t,” Chris replied. “But I knew what the plan was, and from where I stood, it looked like mission accomplished.”

Some of Remy’s fury mellowed in favor of annoyance. “You ruin all the fun.” She shifted her glare to Hawes. “Are you sure you want to be stuck with him the rest of your life?”

Hawes drew Chris closer by a belt loop and grabbed his ass cheek. “I’m sure.”

Remy smirked. “I bet you are.” She slid out of the booth, taking the coaster with her. She tossed it on the floor and drove her stiletto into the center of it. “Just in case it was recording. I’ll be in touch.”

Helena waited for her to clear the door before speaking to Chris. “She’s playing the ATF for her own purposes. Your call whether to alert Tran.” SAC Tran was Chris’s former ATF boss who’d helped them last year. “I’d rather we not yet.” Her gaze flicked to where Remy had disappeared into the dark night. “We may still need her.”

“We’ll monitor,” Chris said. “You think she could be trying to start something?”

“Start it, no,” Helena said. “Take advantage of the situation? She wouldn’t object.”

Hawes finally claimed his shot and tossed it back. “And shit just went sideways.”

Helena didn’t bother with her glass, drinking straight from the bottle instead. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

Chapter Ten

Head inside one of the bakery’s three full-sized commercial-grade refrigerators, Celia stared at the shelves of plastic containers—quarts, pints, half-pints—and wondered how her cousin or Mia found anything. More than half the containers looked like they were filled with some sort of ricotta or mascarpone goodness. She closed the middle fridge and checked the one on the right. More of the same. The one on the left, nothing but liquids and eggs.

“Ang!” Celia shouted. “Where exactly is the cannoli filling you want?”

“Middle fridge,” Angelica shouted back. “Second shelf. That’s all the fillings. Grab the amaretto one too.”

She let the heavy doors of the right—wrong—fridge swing closed and returned to the middle unit, staring again at the second shelf full of unmarked containers. “That’s not helpful. Which one?”

“Why not all of them?”

Startling at the different, much closer voice, Celia spun on her heel to find Helena standing on the other side of the prep table. How the hell had she come in without making a sound? And how the hell did someone manage to look so good “dressed down” in jeans and an athletic hoodie? The snug teal top made her blue eyes pop and her blond hair shine where it curled over her shoulder in a loose ponytail. “I mean, we’re tasting everything else in the place.”

Celia closed the fridge and leaned back against it, letting the ambient chill cool her rapidly heating blood. “I’m sorry if this turned into more of a production than you all wanted.” Between the sheer number of people—Chris and all of their immediate family, Angelica and her kids, all the Madigans and several of their colleagues—extra guards, if Celia had to guess, though she could tell they were also friends—and the sheer amount of food—at least a dozen cake samples and a full-scale Venetian dessert table—the bakery was packed. From the outside, the place did not look closed, and Angelica, with Victoria on her heel, was constantly greeting eager patrons at the door to tell them so. “We don’t know how to do things halfway.”

Helena rounded the near end of the prep table and her dark wash jeans did nothing to hide the subtle, attractive curves of her strong, petite frame. “My niece’s hands are covered in jelly and frosting, so is Hawes’s suit and Holt’s flannel, and I think there’s some in Chris’s hair too. I’d say it’s been an almost perfect day.”

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