Page 89 of Viking Vengeance Cruise

Namely, the woman at the far end of the pastry station, looking as though her cake betrayed her.

Sienna stands alone with her plate, the candlelight washing her brown gown down to shadow, and a single slice of princess cake sits on it untouched.

Untouched cake at a party. If that isn’t a cry for help, I don’t know what is. In my world, it’s a full-blown distress flare.

She looks small and tired and thoroughly defeated. Even her headband has given up, letting her auburn curls stage a slow escape.

Marina and I approach carefully, and Sienna glances up with a weary smile. “Trixie, Marina. Are you enjoying the party?”

“It’s quite the event,” I say, keeping my tone light. “Can we talk to you for a minute? Somewhere quieter?”

Her smile falters. “Is something wrong?”

“Not wrong, exactly. Just... we have some questions.”

Just the small matter of a murder.

She glances around the crowded lounge, then nods toward a quiet corner near the windows where the music downgrades from deafening to merely aggressive. We follow her over, and her hands tremble as she sets down her cake.

“What’s this about?” she asks, and her shoulders hitch up around her ears the way they do when a woman is bracing for a wave she can’t outrun.

I take a breath and try to figure out how to approach this gently. Gentle has never been my natural setting, but for her, I’ll dig for it.

“Sienna, at the fortress this morning, you told me about the tea. The blackmail. What Astrid was planning for the costume gala. Everything except what she was actually holding over you.”

“Yes.” Her voice is careful. “And you didn’t push. I thanked you for that.”

“I know.” And I hate what comes next. “But we’re past the place where the not-asking helps anybody.”

“Astrid was going to make an announcement,” Marina adds softly. “About your family. We need to understand what she had.”

Sienna’s hands clench into fists at her sides. She looks at me, and the betrayal in her eyes lands somewhere below my ribs. “I told you it wasn’t mine alone to share.” She gives a sigh of defeat. “It was cruel,” she whispers when neither of us fills the silence. “Astrid said it was about maintaining club standards. That families with certain... issues... didn’t belong in the Velvet Vikings.”

“What issues?” I ask.

She looks between us, her eyes filling with tears. “My daughter made mistakes. Serious mistakes. And she’s paying for them. But that doesn’t mean my grandchildren should suffer public humiliation because their mother—” She stops and presses her lips together.

“Because their mother what?” Marina prompts.

Sienna’s tears spill over. “Because their mother is in prison.”

Knew it.

“There. Are you happy?” she rages. “That’s the secret. My daughter embezzled money from her employer. Over a hundred thousand dollars to feed a gambling addiction. She’s been incarcerated for two years, and I’ve been raising her three children while lying to everyone about where she is.”

The words come out in a rush, and now she’s crying openly, her shoulders shaking. “I tell people she’s traveling for work. That she’s too busy with her career to visit much. The kids believe me because they’re little and they trust me. And every single day I lie to their faces because I don’t know how to explain that their mother made terrible choices and now she’s locked away.”

And the last locked door from the fortress wall swings open. Let’s just say life has taught me more than I ever wanted to know about how embezzlement cases work. She wasn’t being cagey. She was being a mother. Two years of court records and visitation glass taught her exactly where to dig for Astrid’s bones.

I want to hug her. I also want to hand her my champagne and possibly the entire dessert table. Cart and all.

My heart cracks straight down the middle. Whatever else this woman is, she’s a grandmother holding a family together with both hands and a smile she doesn’t mean.

“Oh, Sienna,” Marina says, her voice thick with emotion.

“I’m so sorry,” I quickly add.

“Astrid was going to tell everyone at the gala,” Sienna continues as she wipes at her face. “She was going to stand up in front of the entire club and announce that my daughter is a convicted felon. That I’ve been lying. That my family doesn’t meet the club’s standards.” Her voice breaks, and then something harder moves in behind the tears. “Her standards. My daughter took a hundred thousand dollars, and she’s sitting in a cell for it, sick with shame every time I visit. Astrid took twice that from her own husband, framed an innocent man for it, and got a decade of sympathy casseroles. And that woman was going to stand up in a Viking costume and judge my family.”