Love Among Thieves

by Katrina Kwan

Genres: General Fiction; Romance; Multicultural & Interracial Romance; Romantic Comedy; Romantic Suspense

Synopsis

In this spicy heist romance from the author of Knives, Seasoning, and a Dash of Love, a feisty hacker sets out to steal from a wealthy mark, but when he shows up at her apartment, could there be more at stake than just money?

Billions of dollars on the line. One irresistible distraction.

Adelina Choi is a hacker with a heart of gold and a talent for emptying bank accounts. An MIT dropout with Robin Hood tendencies, she funnels cash from greedy marks to those who need it most. It’s a simple gig . . . until she targets the wrong man.

West is a conman-turned-single-dad who catches Adelina in the act. But instead of turning her in, he makes her an offer she can’t refuse. Help him pull off the ultimate heist—stealing billions from an Italian crime boss—and she’ll walk away with an equal cut of the money. The catch? She has to play nice with his eccentric team of thieves.

Dangerous? Absolutely. Tempting? Even more so, because West is infuriatingly charming and impossible to ignore. And as the job heats up, so does the tension between them. Can Adelina keep her head in the game, or will her feelings for her partner-in-crime blow the whole plan sky-high?

Release date: May 12, 2026

Publisher: Random House Canada

Print pages: 368

Sample

Chapter One

Late-Stage Capitalism Would Give Robin Hood an Aneurysm

Adelina

I just made a quarter of a million dollars—and it isn’t even noon.

Of course, when I say made, I really mean stole, but it’s best not to get wrapped up in the semantics.

Today’s payload is courtesy of one Mr. Westley Bartholomew Porter. (Talk about stuffy old money, am I right?) I don’t know who he is, and I frankly don’t care. He’s just a name assigned to the bank account information I purchased off the dark web. It’s both startling and unsurprising just how much personal information you can find floating out there. In this day and age, data breaches happen more often than you think. All it takes is someone with a can-do attitude and questionable morals to put that data to good use.

Exhibit A: yours truly.

The process is called deetsing, and it’s astonishingly simple to pull off. There are entire underground forums dedicated to buying and selling bank account details (that’s where the deets in deetsing comes from), so long as you know where to look and you’re willing to pay the price. Account numbers, card expiration dates, CCVs, home addresses, birthdates, social insurance numbers, phone numbers, and passwords . . . It’s all right there at your fingertips, and more often than not, the rightful owners of this info have no idea they’ve been compromised.

Until it’s too late.

Now, a well-adjusted, contributing member of society will argue that stealing is bad and morally bankrupt and blah, blah, blah. Once upon a time, I would have agreed. But I’m numb to it. I’ve been numb for a really long time and—forgive my French—I’m out of fucks to give. A part of me wonders if it’s an act of rebellion. My way of chas­ing an exhilarating yet fleeting shot of adrenaline after every job well done. Or maybe it’s just a way of getting back at Mom. Whatever the reason, nothing’s going to change if someone doesn’t get their hands dirty, and I’m both capable and willing.

In my humble opinion, doing bad things for good reasons leaves me net neutral as far as karmic justice goes.

I plug away at my laptop in the back corner of the café, soft jazz playing over the speakers while the barista grinds richly scented coffee beans. I shift funds to and from the handful of mule accounts I’ve been operating from. I plucked those off a marketplace on the dark web too, but the crucial difference is that these accounts were willingly given. For a fee, of course.

I pay a 1.5 percent kickback to the owners for every transaction that occurs. Given how much I move in a day, that’s incredibly gen­erous. I’m still a little paranoid that one of them will squeal, but a) if they’re willing to sell their accounts for the use of illicit activities, they’re probably desperate for the money, and b) turning on me is basically the same as self-reporting. I haven’t run into any problems so far, but caution in my line of work is a must. If they screw me over, I can screw them right back.

My fingers fly over my keyboard. Just because I’ve got the money doesn’t mean the job is done. The tiny voice in the back of my head tells me I should feel bad, but I’ve seen how much money the mark had with my own eyes. He’s got another two million just sitting there collecting dust, so I’m sure Mr. Moneybags will be fine to wipe his tears with a couple of loose hundreds.

Keeping just enough of the funds to pay my bills this month, I split the remainder between three different charities. The receipt emails arrive in my inbox in quick succession, addressing me by my online handle.


Dear QWERTY, thank you for your donation to the Vancouver Food Drive Society!

Thank you for supporting the Sunshine Children’s Hospital, QWERTY!

Thank you, QWERTY, for donating to Serenity’s Women’s Shelter!


I sit back with a relieved sigh, flexing my hands. I’ve done more good in the last two hours than most people will manage in their entire lifetimes. That sounds snarky and condescending, but I don’t mean it to be. Honestly, I get it. In this economy, you have to look out for number one—but where does that leave our most vulnerable? Those who need our help but are largely forgotten?

After the Charlie Bower Incident, I figured—why not me? With both the means and the know-how, I can do what many have only ever dreamed about: steal from the rich and give to the poor. Robin Hood was onto something. It’s so simple, so elegant.

The precise amount of money I’ve made in the past six years eludes me. Twenty million? Thirty? It’s hard to say. I don’t keep track because I don’t want to risk inflating my ego. The moment I get cocky is the moment I slip up. That’s what differentiates me from your run-of-the-mill crook and makes me an A-tier criminal. One careless mistake is all it’ll take to land me behind bars. I alleviate just enough from my marks that I can help the charities I’m passionate about, but not so much that my targets realize something’s wrong off the cuff.

Imagine having so much money you can afford to lose a couple hundred thousand and still not break a sweat. It makes them the per­fect targets.

“Addy?”

I look up to find Lily standing on the other side of the café table. We’re identical twins, she and I, though I can boast an entire five min­utes of additional life experience. The only reason people can tell us apart now is because I’ve taken to chopping my hair down into some semblance of an uneven pixie cut. Summer is around the corner, and I hate the sensation of hair sticking to the back of my neck. Other than that, we have the same button nose, full cheeks, plump lips and small dark-brown eyes.

We look like Dad.

Lily tries to sneak a peek at my screen. Out of pure instinct, I slap my laptop shut—because that doesn’t look suspicious as hell, right?

“What are you doing?” Lily asks with a devious little giggle-snort. I laugh exactly like her, though I haven’t had much reason to in a long while.

“I’m committing grand larceny,” I tell her flatly. It’s not a lie.

My sister rolls her eyes and helps herself to the seat across from me, the chair scraping across the brown tile flooring. “Hilarious. Seriously, what were you doing?”

“Fine, you got me. I’m watching clown porn.”

“Why can I never get a straight answer out of you?” She crinkles her nose in disgust. “And please tell me that’s not actually a thing.”

I shrug, swiping my clammy palms over my jeans. Given the sheer size of the internet, I’m sure there’s some small, dark corner where clown porn exists. Out of sight, out of mind.

“How did you find me?” I ask, ignoring her question.
“I stopped by your apartment. The little old lady who lives next door told me I might be able to find you here. Says you come to this spot often.”

I click my tongue. “Mrs. Singh ratted me out? That’s the last time I’m helping her reset her Wi-Fi router.”

Lily pins me with a hard stare. Not quite angry, but certainly exasperated. “I’ve been worried about you. You don’t ever answer your texts.”

“I’ve been busy.”

“Still freelancing?”

“Yep.”

“You look tired.”

“Rude,” I scoff without any real heat.

“Are you still seeing that therapist?” Lily asks with a sigh. The way she says it suggests she already knows, but I answer her anyway.

“Oh, yeah,” I lie dryly, shifting my laptop off the sticky wooden table and sliding it into my backpack. “I love spending a hundred and sixty bucks for her to tell me every week that ‘only time heals all wounds.’”

“She’s a professional, Addy. You should listen to her.”

“I need solutions, not fortune cookie proverbs.”

Lily’s expression hardens. “Now who’s being rude? Therapy is a privilege.”

I deflate in my seat. I don’t like upsetting my sister, even if it’s mildly warranted. She did sort of ambush me, after all. “Sorry,” I mumble. “You’re right. I just . . . Maybe I just need to try someone else. We weren’t a good fit, that’s all.”

“I understand.” Lily nods, casting me a sympathetic look. “Listen, the reason I wanted to see you is because we’re having a family get-together. I tried calling you, but you never answer your damn phone.”

My eyebrows shoot up. “Is something important happening?”

“I wanted you to be the first to hear this, but . . .” Her whole face lights up, bright and warm like the sun. “I got into law school! I’m shipping out to Dalhousie next year.”

A mix of emotions washes over me. Delight—because wow, my little sister’s finally taking the next big step in pursuing her dreams. Disappointment—because shit, Nova Scotia is really far away. Like, literally-the-other-side-of-Canada far. And then I follow everything up with a chaser of self-directed resentment because fuck, she’s moving on with her life and I barely have the energy to get out of bed most days. If it wasn’t for my work, I’d probably be worse off.

But then I swallow the feelings down and surprise myself when I don’t have to force a smile. This one’s genuine. Even though I’m terrible at keeping in touch and we’ve drifted apart, Lily is still my dearest friend. Probably my only one, if I’m being perfectly honest with myself.

“That’s amazing,” I tell her. “I’m really proud of you.”

“Thank you,” she says, reflecting my smile. “Will you come to my celebration dinner? It’s this Friday. We can show up together. I’m sure everyone will be excited to see you.”

“Even Mom?”

Lily pauses at this, confirming my suspicions. “She . . . doesn’t know you’re coming yet. Figured it might just be better to—”

“Show up and ask for forgiveness later?” I interject.

My mother and I don’t agree on a lot of things, and working myself into an early grave is most certainly one of them. She’s a traditionalist. Old-school Hong Kong lower-middle class. Her formula for a com­fortable life is hard work + overtime = financial security. I could have very easily done my duty as the first-born daughter of two immigrant parents and gone the doctor-lawyer-astronaut route, but I realized there was a better, more fulfilling way to get through life.

Most people live paycheck to paycheck, and that, in and of itself, can be a scary thing. All it takes is one tiny setback: a family emer­gency, a blown car tire, a violent bout of food poisoning that causes you to miss a week of work. Now you’re suddenly scrambling to make ends meet. Having to choose between paying rent and the grocery bills. It’s a bitter truth: us regular plebians are closer to financial ruin than we are to being billionaires. It isn’t fair.

Life isn’t fair, Adelina, my mother liked to tell me whenever she wanted to knock me down a peg. The only way to get ahead is to work hard.

Mom would have a cow if she knew what I’ve been up to lately. She just doesn’t understand that sometimes hard work isn’t enough. A person can work themselves to the bone and still have nothing to show for it. Dad certainly did, but the one saving grace was that he actually enjoyed what he did for a living.

“I know things have been really rocky, but I want you there,” my sister says.

That’s putting it mildly. I try not to let my irritation show, but Lily’s told me time and time again that I suffer from a deadly case of Resting Bitch Face. (Arguably the one thing I inherited from Mom.)

“There’s a reason I decided to go no-contact with her,” I mumble.

“I know.”

“You remember what she said to me?”

“I was there.”

“And you said you’d be supportive of my choice.”

“I . . . know,” she mumbles quietly. “But this is a big deal to me. Plus, I’m going to be leaving in a week.”

“Leaving where?”

“I’m backpacking solo across Europe. You know, one last hurrah before I’m stuck in school.”

“Solo? That doesn’t sound safe.”

She waves me off. “It’s fine. People do it all the time.”

“What if you end up in a Taken situation?”

“Oh my fuck, you need to stop watching those movies. You know they make you paranoid.”

“I’m just saying shit happens.”

“Then I’ll put Liam Neeson on speed dial.”

“Be sure to get me his autograph.”

Lily leans across the table and takes my hand, giving my fingers a light squeeze. “Will you please come to dinner, Addy? I miss you.”

I take a deep breath. I would be lying if I said I didn’t miss her, too. But just the thought of sitting across from Mom at the table sends my heart skittering. I clench my clammy palms and will the tightness in my chest to loosen. There’s an invisible hand clamped around my throat, squeezing the air from my lungs, offering just enough give to keep me alive.

Oh, the things I do for family.

“Okay, I’ll be there. What restaurant?”

“It’s at home, actually.”

My chest tightens even more. Great. That means I’ll be stepping into the lion’s den. I already know she’s going to sink her teeth into me the first chance she gets.

“We’re having hot pot,” Lily says in a singsong tone, as if it’s some sort of consolation.

I grit my teeth. I suppose I can suffer through a couple of hours for her sake, but I can already tell it’s going to be like getting a root canal without the mercy of anesthesia.

But damn, I really do love good hot pot.