Page 46 of Queen's Ransom

She reversed her grip, squeezing his fingers, sensing Brax needed the comfort, the ally, as much as she did. “Thank you, Chief.”

The door behind them opened, Chris poking in his head. “We need to get back to the house,” he said. “You good?”

“We’re good here.” Brax released her hands and stood, offering her a hand up then circling back behind his desk. “Everyone else safe there?” he asked Chris, and while Celia knew he was asking generally, there were two people she thought he wanted to know about in particular.

Chris nodded. “Everyone else is locked down at the mansion. We’ll keep you posted. Do the same?”

“Of course.”

They slipped out of his office and out a back exit. “Mom and the kids?” she asked as they hustled down the stairs.

“Also at the house.”

“Good.” She waited until they were out of the parking garage, she with Chris in Hawes’s borrowed Benz, Grant and Malik trailing behind them in her SUV, before she asked another of the questions that had been nagging her. “How did she get taken? Wasn’t Avery with her?”

“Avery tried to stop her, but there’s only one person who can best Helena in hand-to-hand combat, and in this case, I’m not sure even Mel would’ve won.” He handed her his phone, a video ready to play. “She was determined.”

By the time Celia finished the video, she was equal parts awed and furious. “She gave herself up?”

“To protect Dex and to find out exactly what is going on.”

“She mentioned the Bratva. As in the Russian mob Bratva?”

At a stoplight, Chris took his phone back and dropped it in the cup holder. “You can’t—”

Anger won out. “Fuck it, Christopher, just tell me what you can.” The full name got his attention, as did her tone no doubt. It was the same one their mother used whenever they got up to something they shouldn’t. When he continued to hesitate, she wound it up more. “I know there are limits, need to know and all that bullshit, but the woman I—”

His face whipped her direction, brow arched.

Fuck it. Helena had traded herself to keep her worthless ex safe. No doubt to keep her safe and to keep her from having to deal with the fallout. The least Celia could do was admit the truth. “My friend, who I would like to be more, just surrendered herself to the person who shot up the shop.”

Once across King Street, Chris sped up, cutting down side streets and up those less crowded than Third, swiftly making his way through SOMA. “Dex and Lenny are idiots,” he said. “They got tangled up with a guy who is low level Russian mob and didn’t even know it.”

“The blond one?”

“Adrian Zima. He’s trying to make a name for himself. Climb the ranks.”

“By going after the Madigans?”

Chris nodded, and Celia propped her elbow on the window, forehead in the palm of her hand, all the pieces finally coming together. “That’s why Helena’s been pushing me away.”

“She was trying to protect you, Cee.”

Fuck, that was all she’d ever been trying to do.

“She has a hard time turning it off,” Chris continued. “Last year, she was the bait on one of our ops, and we had to talk her out of doing it again on another after she became the head of the organization.”

Celia swung her gaze to Chris. “I thought that was Hawes.”

“Not since last summer, and she feels more responsibility than ever. For everyone. Operatives, family, friends she might also like to be more.”

And now she’d gone and put her life on the line, playing the bait again, to protect Celia and her family. From the Russian mob. “Are the Bratva enemies?”

Chris impatiently drummed his thumbs on the steering wheel as they waited at another stoplight. “Relations are actually better than ever, but this situation is unpredictable.”

That sounded ominous. “Meaning it might not matter?”

“Hawes and Helena were supposed to meet with the Bratva tonight.” The light turned green, they turned onto Geary, and Chris gunned the Benz, home free for at least a few blocks on the cross-town expressway. “We were hoping to head this off.”

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