Page 57 of Shark’s Rise

She is pretty great.

I’m sorry about this morning, Bas.

You stole my line.

What are your thoughts about telling

Rio about the baby? I’m going to have to

explain why I’m missing so much work.

Up to you.

I’ll make sure she doesn’t tell

anyone else except Sean.

Wouldn’t you rather tell your

family yourself, though?

You have a point.

Of course I do.

“Ugh.” I tossed my phone into the covers. I knew he was joking, but even this was complicated. With Sebastian being a high-profile person in the city, announcing the fact that he was about to become a father—unwed to the mother, at that—came with a mile-long list of complications.

“What’s wrong?” Dori queried after opening the shutters and walking back across the room. “The tea not agreeing with you?”

“No,” I replied at once. “No; it’s not that. This is great, Dori. Really.”

“Which is why you still look like the bed’s about to become quicksand?”

She’d picked a pretty perfect metaphor. I attempted a smile, fighting the feeling that I was sinking faster than I could fight, and stated, “I…I just didn’t think all of this through yet.”

“All of what?”

I rolled my shoulders. “It’s not a big deal. Listen; I’ll get ready, and then we can head to my work kitchen. Is that a good plan?”

“Okay. But if you want to talk something through, just know that I’m here, okay?”

“I appreciate that. But this is definitely one I need to work out with my baby daddy.” I laughed at the terminology while scooting out of bed and heading to my closet.

I finally saw the wisdom of Dori’s words about driving, and we had Joel drive us to Abstract’s Inglewood prep kitchen. We walked in to a scene that seemed more like the three-minute warning on a timed Food Network show, with activity happening everywhere—all generated by just two people. Rio was barking orders like Gordon Ramsay turned into a badass goddess, with Grant Twombley as her fast-moving minion. But after just a few minutes, I realized the man could hold his own around my sister-in-law, giving just as good as he got from her smart mouth and short-fused temper.

“This is oddly entertaining,” Dori remarked in a discreet whisper. She slid in to serve as cover while I snapped a few surreptitious pictures of Bas’s tall friend, decked out in a full apron decorated with the Gumby and Pokey cartoon characters. Sebastian would beg me for copies of the pics to use as blackmail with his bestie.

Cartoon apron and sarcastic shouts aside, I noticed that the pair were, strangely, functioning as a finely tuned creation machine. They already had the lunch orders done and were frantically finishing an emergency add-on for one of our more prominent downtown clients. I glanced at the order sheet, breathing an instant sigh of relief that said client wasn’t Viktor Blake. While Bas and Elijah had carefully kept me removed from the gritty details of their ongoing investigation, I’d heard remnants of Viktor’s name enough to know a wide berth from the man was a wise idea these days.

And that was more than enough brain space surrendered to that mess today. Instead, I focused on the main attraction in front of me, walking over to peek at what was simmering in the pots and pans atop all three of the industrial stoves. “You guys could give a girl an inferiority complex,” I said to Rio, dipping the back of a spoon into the sauce she was working on.

“You, my love, will never be replaced by that tree. Don’t even go there.” She snorted Grant’s way with the first sentence and then hip-bumped me with the second.

Across the kitchen, Grant answered with a scathing laugh of his own. “What did I tell you about calling me that, Blaze?”

“Something similar to what I told you about calling me that,” she fired back, adding a careless shrug.

“Hey.” I returned my sister-in-law’s hip nudge, though with gentler force. “Can we talk for a minute, Rio?”