Queen's Ransom: A Fog City Novel

by Layla Reyne

  The front door opened, and a gust of cold air whistled through the mansion’s foyer and into the kitchen, swirling around Celia’s ankles where she sat in the built-in breakfast nook, two padded benches with a hand-carved table in between. She played a mental guessing game with herself: Who would appear around the corner? The house had been a whirlwind of activity all day, despite the stormy weather outside. She was happy to stay indoors, out of the wind and rain, but not the Madigans it seemed.

  Disappointingly, through all the comings and goings, she’d only caught brief glimpses of Helena. A smile here, a parting wave there, in and out she went. Between their banter and the interrupted moment last night, Celia had been both excited and anxious to spend some time together today, had debated suggesting another training session so she could turn the kiss-fueled fantasies that had helped her get off in the shower last night into reality. She wanted to try that ankle move Helena had used, except Celia would use it to yank Helena closer and haul her leg over Celia’s hip, bringing their bodies together so she could feel the heat and curves against her own.

  But as the day had gone on, Celia grew more worried than curious—about her friend’s seemingly breakneck pace and about being the cause of it. If Helena appeared around the corner, Celia had a mind to box her into the kitchen booth and make her take a breather.

  But it was Chris who stepped into the dining room from the foyer, rain dripping from the ends of his hair and the tails of his leather duster. He strode toward the kitchen, and if Celia didn’t already know something was up, if she didn’t know her brother so well, she might have missed the moment, after Chris hung up his coat and tied back his hair, when he forced down his shoulders and wiped the wrinkles from his forehead. But she knew both things, and it was as if those wrinkles transplanted themselves inside her, creating uneasy waves of apprehension.

  She tried to ignore them, focusing instead on her family, whole and safe here, thanks to the Madigans. Mia was curled in a blanket on the chaise in the glassed-in back patio, her e-reader and the cats in her lap, while Marco sat across from Celia working on his homework.

  Until he caught sight of his uncle and slammed his textbook shut. “Uncle Dante! Where you been all day?”

  “Had some work to take care of, then hunting down parts for your mom.”

  Parts she needed not for a repair but for answers. Using her connections, she’d tracked the serial numbers on the nose badge and brakes to two shops in the city. Chris had thought he’d have better luck getting the receipts for those parts, finding out who they’d been sold to, if he visited the shops in person. “You get them?” she asked.

  “I did.” The forehead wrinkles briefly reappeared, then smoothed out again as he came to stand next to Marco. “Whatcha working on?”

  “English,” Celia said. “If it wasn’t obvious by how fast he slammed the book closed.”

  “I’m done,” Marco squawked.

  “With the grammar part.” She eyed the paperback on the corner of the table. “You’ve still got a chapter to read.”

  “Suck it up, champ,” Mia teased from the patio.

  “We can’t all be speed readers,” Marco shouted back.

  Behind them, at the kitchen island, Gloria clicked her tongue against her teeth. “You’re cutting it close for dinner, Christopher. So is your soon-to-be husband.”

  Celia rested her chin in her hand, pressing her fingers against her lips to hold in her laughter. Another benefit of Chris’s return, plus a new son-in-law… not being the primary focus of their mother’s attention. God love her—Celia couldn’t ask for a better mom—but sometimes the heaping helpings of Italian-Catholic guilt were too much to stomach alone.

  Chris rounded the island and pecked Gloria’s cheek. “He’s on his way.” He eyed her stained hands. “Should I warn him you murdered someone?”

  Marco raised his own hands, palms and fingertips the same purple-red as his grandmother’s. “I had nothing to do with it, Agent Perri. I swear.”

  Chris chuckled. “Evidence to the contrary, Plato.”

  “Beets.” Gloria dug her fingers into the magenta ball of dough she was kneading. “A local farm box came today, and the beets looked amazing. I’m making fettuccine noodles.”

  “Murder pasta,” came the voice Celia had wanted to hear all day. Helena sauntered in from the kitchen’s hallway entrance on the other side of the booth. “She got the recipe from Hawes.”

  “You two might be dangerous,” Chris said to Gloria.

  “No might about it.” Helena circled around him and slipped into the booth beside Celia. “He’s already made a list of all the pastas he wants to make with Mama Perri.”

  Chris patted his belly. “I see no problem with this.”

  “I don’t either,” Helena said. “So long as some of that pasta stays in the freezer here.”

  Celia nudged her shoulder. “If he doesn’t share, I will.”

  Helena grinned, her smile chasing away any lingering chill in the air. It morphed into a smirk that she aimed at Chris. “I don’t think you’re needed here anymore.”

  Gloria laughed out loud, and across the table, Marco snapped his fingers with a hissed “Burn.”

  Chris thumped his head. “You done with your homework?”

  “Yep.”

  Celia nudged the paperback. “Not all of it.”

  Chris picked up the book and held it out to Marco. “Why don’t you take this out to the patio and read with your sister?”

  “But I’d rather—”

  “Let it go, bro,” Mia shouted from the other room. She’d shifted on the chaise, turned half-toward them. “That’s code for ‘The adults need to chat.’”

  Celia had figured her daughter’s future involved copious amounts of flour. She was a gifted baker, as clear as it had been the day their cousin Angelica had first picked up a rolling pin. But moment’s like this made Celia wonder if she’d follow in her uncle’s investigator footsteps.

  Marco grumbled a protest as he slid out of the booth.

  “Fifteen minutes.” Chris gave him a push toward the patio. “Then you can help with dinner and go back to avoiding Gilgamesh.”

  He raised his arms in victory. “Deal!”

  “Not helping,” Celia chided, then to Mia, “Make sure he reads the assigned chapter. Quiz him. I’m sure you remember the material.”

  Mia’s dark eyes gleamed with older-sister delight, and Celia thought Marco might balk. Mia didn’t give him a chance, pushing closed the French door before he could reverse out of the room.

  “I like her,” Helena said. “More and more every day.”

  Laughing, Chris grabbed two mugs from the drying rack next to the sink and the half-full coffee pot and brought them to the table. He topped off Celia’s cup, filled his own and Helena’s, then retrieved a bottle of Irish whiskey from one of the cabinets.

  “News is that good, huh?” Celia asked as Chris poured a generous shot into each mug.

  “Ma,” Chris said. “You want to take a break?”

  “I’m loving family weekend,” she said as she continued to knead the pasta dough. “I’ve never had such a big kitchen to work in. But I know that’s not all there is to it.”

  “There was an incident at the shop yesterday.”

  “I figured.” She paused her work to glance at Helena. “Thank you for keeping her safe.” Then to Chris, “And all of you for having us this weekend.”

  He tipped the bottle toward her. “You sure?”

  She waved him off. “Get on with it.”

  “I see where you get the no-nonsense from,” Helena said, nudging Celia’s shoulder. “And, Gloria, you’re welcome to use our kitchen anytime.”

  “Oh, I plan too,” she said with a wink.

  Chris sank onto the bench Marco had vacated. “First,” he aimed his gaze at Helena, “tell me about August Ferriello.”

  “I knew you couldn’t let that go.”

  “Tell me why I should.”

  “He�
�s not a threat,” Helena said. “To you or the family. That’s all you need to know.”

  Chris stared Helena down for another few seconds, and when she didn’t flinch, he lowered his shoulders and shifted his gaze to Celia. “I got the receipts for the parts. It was Lenny who bought them.”

  “Of course it was Lenny.” Celia braced her elbows on the table and raked her hands through her hair.

  “The same Lenny you two went to school with?” Gloria asked.

  “Yep,” Chris answered. “Still worthless.”

  Celia clasped her hands behind her neck, gathering her hair into a ponytail. “I told Dex that guy was bad news.”

  A gentle yet reassuring hand landed on her back. “You put him on your list,” Helena said. “General bad vibes or something specific?”

  Celia closed her eyes and swayed lightly at the touch, letting it ground her as memories flitted through her mind. “There was always a bad vibe there.” She opened her eyes again. “But last year he started skulking around the shop more, asking when Dex was gonna be back. I’d tell him never, but he didn’t believe me. He knows Dex’s MO too.”

  Helena removed her hand, and Celia instantly missed her touch. Shifting, Helena pulled out her phone, tapped the screen a few times, then laid the phone on the table in front of Celia. “Do you recognize him?” She stretched her arm across the top of the booth behind Celia. Boxing her in but comforting, unlike how Dex used to use the same position to intimidate her. “Was he ever with Lenny at the shop?”

  Celia examined the picture of the dark-eyed, dark-haired, suited man. He looked like an extra straight out of American Psycho. Good thing for him the eighties were coming back in style. “Never seen him. Who is he?”

  “His name’s Francis Ferriello,” Chris said. “Goes by Frank. Lenny’s been hanging out with him lately. Not a good guy.”

  “Figures, if Lenny’s hanging out with him. And the August you mentioned earlier, he’s related to Frank?”

  “Augustus, technically, but never call him that to his face.” Helena swiped her finger across the screen. “Frank’s estranged older brother.”

  Handsome, in a gruff sort of way. His brown eyes were a shade lighter than his brother’s, his brown hair a shade darker and sprinkled with gray, and if Celia had to guess from the worn jeans and frayed Henley he wore, August hadn’t donned a suit in years. Someone she’d remember. “I’ve never seen him either.”

  “You probably wouldn’t anyway,” Helena said. “He’s a master thief. He’s not doing his job right if you see him.”

  “Like an Ocean’s-level thief?”

  Helena smiled. “Better than.”

  “So not likely him yesterday?”

  She shook her head and swiped her finger across the screen again. “What about this guy?” A shiver raced up Celia’s spine, noticeable enough Helena again laid a hand on her back and slid her leg next to Celia’s under the table. “You recognize him?”

  Celia picked up the phone and peered at the man onscreen, making sure he was the same one she remembered. He was a bit older than them with a round face, beady black eyes, and blond hair. A striking, unsettling combination, especially with the naked malice that swirled in the stranger’s dark gaze. In the picture and in Celia’s memory of him. Same guy, and the same shiver Celia had experienced both times he’d visited the shop. “I didn’t catch his name, which is why I didn’t put him on my list.”

  “I added him,” Chris said. “He and Dex crossed paths.”

  “He came by the shop—twice—with Lenny.”

  Chris jolted forward. “He was with Lenny?”

  Celia nodded. “Who is he?”

  Helena removed the phone from her shaking hand. “That’s what I’m going to find out tonight.”

  Celia whipped her gaze to the side, worry cascading through her. “He’s dangerous. I don’t know how I know it, but I do.”

  Helena caught a stray tendril that had come loose from Celia’s ponytail and tucked it behind her ear, her hand lingering close enough Celia could feel the warmth. It was a powerful antidote to the chilly words Helena spoke. “Good thing I am too.”

  Chapter Eight

  “Mom! Emergency! HALP!”

  Celia lifted her torso off the bench press and eyed her daughter standing at the opening to the basement gym. Mia looked a tired, bedraggled mess as she juggled her phone and the ends of the comforter wrapped around her shoulders.

  “What’s going on?” All had been quiet upstairs when she’d given up trying to sleep and had come downstairs to work out. She was too keyed up knowing Chris, Helena, and Hawes were out there doing something dangerous.

  “Holt needs you,” Mia said. “Lily’s pitching a fit. I called up and offered to help but he said he could handle it.” She cinched the comforter tighter and stared at the mats like she wanted to pass out right there. “Narrator, he can’t. I tried to text you from upstairs.”

  Celia stood from the bench, checking the floor on either side and then the top of the mini fridge. No phone. “Sorry, I must have left my phone in the kitchen.” She grabbed a towel and wiped down her face and arms. “He’s all the way upstairs?”

  Mia nodded. So Holt had wanted to keep Mia out of the lair—Celia would have to thank him—but he was also too worried to let Lily out of his sight. Or too busy to hand her off. Mom emergency was right.

  Celia nudged Daisy off her hoodie on the floor, shrugged the sweater on, and zipped it. “Let’s go,” Celia said, giving Mia a gentle push up the stairs. Celia followed, Daisy at her heels. “Tell me what the crying sounded like.”

  “Kind of watery,” Mia said, then made a gurgling noise. “Not her usual ‘I’m hungry’ or ‘I want attention’ cries.”

  They crested the stairs and ran directly into Tulip and Marco, the latter of whom was similarly wrinkled and bleary-eyed. “Make it stop,” he groaned.

  Celia ruffled her son’s chaotic hair. “I’ll get it sorted. You two go crash in the living room. The sofas should be big enough.”

  Mia wrapped an arm around her brother, turning him that direction, both cats trailing in their wake. “I don’t know how Nonna sleeps through it.”

  Celia chuckled. “Lots of practice.” Between her and Chris, then Mia and Marco, Gloria could tune out anything when she wanted to. Her kids, however, didn’t yet have that skill. And she doubted Holt did either, which was not good when he needed to focus.

  Instead of heading directly upstairs, Celia diverted to the kitchen. Given Lily’s age and the sounds Mia had described, Celia had a good idea what the toddler’s fussiness was about and how to hopefully make it better. She set the coffee to brew, pocketed her phone before she forgot it again, and washed her hands. She gathered a tray and the supplies she needed—a sippy cup of ice water, a mini-spoon shoved in a ramekin of ice cubes, and once the coffee maker began to drip, the holy bean water—two full mugs. Tray loaded, she carried it past the living room, checking on the kids who were settling down, then hustled up the stairs.

  Celia was at the tip-top when Lily’s gurgling cries erupted into a full-blown wail. She squirmed and wailed in the cradle of Holt’s tattooed right arm, fighting the flannel he’d haphazardly swaddled her in. “Shh, shh, shh. I know, baby girl, I know,” Holt said, struggling to calm her.

  “Tag me in?” Celia said, and Holt’s gaze shot up. He looked impossibly more ragged than he had last night, which, as she thought about it, was the last time she’d seen the middle Madigan. Maybe it was the pale skin or the ratty tee and ripped jeans making it all seem more stark, but Holt looked wrecked. “Mia said you might need an assist.”

  “I’m sorry if we woke them. I’m the only one here who can be here.” He flicked a hand toward his wall of monitors. “She’s so restless and fussy, and I’ve been trying to calm her, but I can’t, and I need to keep an eye on the op, and—”

  “Breathe, Holt.”

  “Can you stay, please?” The panic in his voice was unfamiliar on the quiet, typically confident gian
t, but it was familiar in her own memory, in her own voice, from those early days of parenthood. “She’s never been this fussy before and not even my typing is working. I don’t—”

  “Ba-Ba!” Lily cried.

  He propped his other elbow on the desk and rested his forehead in his hand, eyes pinched closed. “And Brax won’t answer, and I can’t…” The strangled sigh he made was misery personified.

  Celia carefully pushed aside a keyboard, snagged the towel off Holt’s shoulder, and spread it on the desk. “Is she feverish?” she asked as she laid out her rescue tools.

  “Last time I could check, she had a low-grade fever.” He tucked the flannel around her again, trying to pin her flailing arms. “She’s miserable, and nothing seems to work. I just want her to feel better.”

  “Ba-Ba! Ba-Ba!” Lily cried.

  Pain slashed across Holt’s features again, but with Lily’s next cry, he shuttled it aside. “There’s also a rash on her face.”

  The way Holt was holding Lily, Celia couldn’t see her entire face, but she could guess at its location. “Right about here?” She pointed at the corner of her own mouth. “And more drool than usual?”

  Holt nodded and surveyed the items she’d laid out. “What’s all that?”

  Celia pushed a mug of coffee his direction. “Reinforcements for us.” Then gestured at the rest. “And teething reinforcements for her.”

  “She’s been teething.” Holt half rocked, half spun in the chair as Lily’s cries escalated. “This is worse than usual.”

  “Some teeth are worse than others.” Celia wiped her hands on the end of the towel, then swirled her right index finger in the ramekin of ice. With her other hand, she brushed the backs of her fingers over Lily’s cheek. Warm, but not overly so. “You mind if I check?” she asked.

  “Go for it.” Holt shifted Lily in his arms so Celia could more easily reach her. “Though don’t blame me if she bites.”

  “Kind of the point.” Celia withdrew her cold finger from the ice and gently felt around inside Lily’s mouth. “Mia was the same. Best baby, even at the start of teething. I thought I had it made. And then this one tooth, whoo-boy.” Likewise with Lily, it seemed, the toddler clamping down on Celia’s finger as it skirted over the nearly protruding tooth. “Yep, there it is.”