Carmela sat in the back room of her husband's headquarters and waited for the lieutenant to arrive. She'd let him think this meeting was his idea. Men like him needed to feel bold when they came to her with schemes — it made them sloppy, eager to impress. He arrived at dusk, nervous hands clutching a folder. He ran the cereal warehouse on the east edge of territory — a legitimate front that kept the books clean. The place sat near the hive where the bees worked their flowers, and he'd been making regular trips there for months. Her husband trusted him completely. That was the problem with trust. It made people think they were safe. The lieutenant laid out his plan. He could skim from the den's honey stash if she helped him pressure the bees. They were already exhausted, already vulnerable. A little leverage would turn them into workers for his side operation. He'd split the take with her. His voice shook when he said it, like he expected her to be impressed by his nerve. Carmela leaned back and studied him. He'd just handed her three things her husband would never know about: proof the lieutenant was disloyal, a way to control the honey supply, and a test to see who else in the outfit would betray sentiment for profit. She told him yes. Not because she wanted his cut, but because now she owned him, and through him, she'd own the bees, the stash, and one more piece of her husband's crumbling empire.

A week after the lieutenant left her office, Carmela stood at the tree line and watched the den from a distance. The bears were deep in their winter sleep. The honey was inside, stacked in jars along the den's cold walls. She had the lieutenant's map. She had the bees' silence. All she needed now was to walk in and take it. She slipped through the tarp-covered hole behind the den. The tunnel was narrow and cold. It opened right under the storage room, just as the map promised. Carmela climbed up and stood among the sleeping bears. Their breathing was slow and heavy. She worked fast, lifting jar after jar into her sack. On a low shelf, she found a thick book bound in leather. Paw prints stained its cover. Every jar, every pound, every winter's count was written inside in the boss bear's own claw. She tucked it under her arm. Then she set her decoy jars on the shelves where the real honey had been. The fake labels glowed yellow in the dark. Pineapple jelly. A joke only she would understand. Carmela climbed back through the tunnel before dawn. The honey was hers. The ledger was hers. Somewhere in the den, a bear shifted in his sleep and did not wake. By the time he counted his jars in spring, she would already own what he thought he was counting.