“Of us,” he corrected. “Of the job we left unfinished.”
She looked up from dusting a batch of mille-feuille with powdered sugar. The man who entered was a ghost from a life she’d buried so deep, not even her closest friend knew its coordinates.
“You’re hard to find, Sophia,” he said. His voice was rougher, scraped raw by something more than weather.
“It’s a reminder,” she whispered.
He meant the code from their old life. A SweetSinner special: a cake with a layer of ghost-pepper jelly—not for eating, but for sending a message. A signal to their only remaining ally.
And there it was. The secret she kept. Not a lover, not a crime of passion. Sophia Locke, the unassuming baker with flour on her apron, had been a high-end “extraction specialist.” She didn’t steal jewels or documents. She stole people—targets who needed to disappear before a certain clock ran out. Elias had been her handler. Her partner. The only person she’d ever loved.
Sophia felt the floor tilt. Her secret wasn't just that she used to be a criminal. It was that she still had the skills. The lockpicks were hidden in a hollowed-out cookbook. The silenced pistol was behind a loose tile in the walk-in freezer.
