Muriel was waiting for her in the office, reading over a file. When she glanced up, Cain wanted to groan at Muriel’s expression. “Go ahead and tell me.” Cain stared at the ceiling and shook her head, waiting for Muriel’s report. It sounded like a stampede of out-of-control cattle above them, and she smiled at the sound. Hannah knew only one way to move in the world, and that was at full throttle. “No matter what you’ve heard, I seldom kill the messenger.”

“There’s always a first time,” Muriel said and laughed.

She smiled, liking that Muriel was almost back to the cousin she’d grown up with. After the death of her Uncle Jarvis, she’d been afraid she’d lose Muriel to the pain and guilt. Muriel had been hard to reach, but what had cut through all that was the same thing that had saved Cain when she’d lost so much. The love of a woman had finally given Muriel hope for her future. That the union had the potential to bind their family to the Jatibons was an added bonus.

“I understand that life is a bag of shit sometimes, cousin, but we have no choice but to shovel through it. That or throw it back in the yard it came out of.” Cain sighed and lowered her head. “Helping Fin and Abigail wasn’t up for debate, but…” She sighed again. “But it’s going to haunt us until the ghosts of the past are put to rest in a more permanent way.”

Special Agent Finley Abbott of the FBI was now on her payroll, and she’d given her the keys to the kingdom. Fin was her first cousin and someone she didn’t feel any differently about than Muriel or Katlin—her trust in her was absolute. After dedicating herself to hunting down scum who dealt in human trafficking, Finley had retired because of her last case. That’s where she’d met Abigail Eaton and her three children. Fin had fallen in love with Abigail as well as the children, but she’d also taken on Abigail’s problems. Those problems weren’t simple to fix, even with Cain’s inventive problem-solving skills. Getting it wrong would come with stiff penalties.

“Do you honestly think Nicola Eaton is still alive?” Muriel appeared skeptical, but Cain believed Abigail, the one woman alive who knew Nicola best.

Nicola Eaton, or Nicola Antakov, had been Abigail’s partner and also owned the Hell Fire Club in town. Cain had kept an eye on it from the opening, but brothels weren’t her style. There were plenty of supposed bad guys in New Orleans, but the Russian mob was a whole other animal, the kind you never turned your back on. Then again, there were brothels, and then there was the Hell Fire Club.