Chapter 4
KATE
Cole Fucking Wolf.
A pathetic little laugh bubbles up in my chest. This miserable day began with Wolf destroying a campaign that was six months in the making. Of course it has to end with the arsehole watching my own mother torment me.
I expect Mam to put on her usual act. She’ll flirt with Wolf.
Run a finger up his sleeve. Lower her chin and blink like she’s some sort of spell-bound virgin.
Then she’ll explain how miserable I’ve made her, how I’ve managed to ruin her life.
She might even say I’m responsible for that scar above her lip, which is a lie, but it’s won her sympathy before.
Wolf seems like a smart guy. Mam will see that too. I give her less than a minute to trot out that old Shakespeare quote, about how ungrateful children are sharper than a serpent’s tooth.
He’ll lap it up. Shitehawks like him always do.
Wolf’s voice cuts through the little courtyard like an earthquake rumbling through the center of the earth. “I said enough.”
Mam loosens her grip on my throat before backing up a full step. Clearing her throat, she offers up a stuttering cough, catching her breath.
I risk a glance at her face. I’ve seen my mother play-act every emotion under the sun—love for Breagha and me, concern, compassion… For a moment, I think she’s adding a new fake to her repertoire: Fear.
But Mam isn’t faking. She’s actually, honestly terrified.
And when I look at the cold fury in Cole Wolf’s face, I understand why.
The man looks like tearing her apart limb from limb is the science experiment he never got to complete in school, and he’s looking forward to the chance to complete his education.
Plus, he clearly overheard our fighting. He knows my money has been shoring up the Canton Crew. Even a whisper of the truth in the wrong ear could ruin Da forever.
Mam wipes her palm against her eight-thousand-dollar dress and starts to stammer. “I— She— Th— this isn’t what it looks like. W— we were just t— talking. I— I was j— just explaining—”
Wolf puts his body between my mother and me. “Let’s go,” he says to me.
It isn’t a question. He isn’t presenting an option, giving me a choice and letting me think about all the places I might prefer to be on a late winter night in Boston. He’s issuing a direct order.
And fuck me. I go.
I march like a soldier, without looking left or right. I don’t study the courtyard. I don’t glance back at Mam.
The spell only lasts until we’re through the gate. Once I’m free from Mam, my brain comes back online with the click and whirl of a computer booting up.
This is where I’d thank Wolf if I didn’t hate the very air he breathes. I clench my fingers into fists because I don’t have another glass of champagne to throw. This man is my enemy. Marching me away from Mam doesn’t change that.
He stops in front of a jet-black BMW. I have to skip a couple of short steps to keep from running into his tuxedo jacket. When he turns to face me, his eyes catch the streetlight—those hunter’s eyes, shrewd and narrowed, making me feel cornered, like he’s seeing a lot more than I mean to display.
“I’m Cole Wolf,” he says. “Which I assume you know, unless you’re in the habit of throwing champagne at random wedding guests.”
I grunt, crossing my arms over my chest.
“And you are?” he prompts, with the exaggerated politeness of a Sunday School teacher.
“Kate,” I finally say. When his eyebrows flicker toward the sky in a silent prompt, I add, “Lynch.”
“Kate Lynch,” he repeats, like he’s checking my name for landmines. “Perhaps you can enlighten me, Kate Lynch. Perhaps you can tell my why I’m a goddamn over-reaching fuckwad.”
And I suddenly realize I’ve played this all wrong.
Sure, Cole Wolf is my sworn enemy. He’s Lone Wolf Enterprises. I’ve vowed to undermine every last one of his defenses, to take down the banks and corporations and princes of fortune he’s sworn to protect.
But Wolf doesn’t know any of that. He has no idea I’m CyberGhost, that Kate Lynch leads the Red Cap Raiders. No one knows the truth—not even the men I campaign with. I’ve kept my real-world identity completely separate from my life online.
Fuck.
Tiny flames lick beneath the kindling in my brain. I need to give Wolf a good enough reason for hitting him with the champagne. Something he’ll accept without question. Some misunderstanding that led to my social faux pas.
“What did you expect me to do?” I ask, in the whinging tone Mam always says gives her a headache. “You fuck my sister, then don’t take her calls? Breagha tells me everything, you know.”
His predator eyes narrow, just a hint, as he ignores my false trail. “Try again,” he says. “Any man who jilted your sister would have the mob to answer to. He’d be left mopping up a lot more than champagne. Tell me another story.”
His smooth reply tamps down the fire of my thoughts. It’s been a while since one of my lies fell that flat. I’m good at making people angry enough to believe whatever I want them to.
With my first attempt having gone so far wide of the mark, it’s hard to come up with a second lie. Some mistake that would make me throw my champagne… Maybe even something to justify my mother’s short temper, her raging at me in the alley…
I offer take two: “You call yourself a designer! Mam paid you enough for her dress, and she expected you to have it waiting at our hotel. Do you have any idea how devastated she was, making a last-minute substitute? You embarrassed her in front of all the other mob wives.”
His lips quirk, dashing water on my argument. “Your mother was sewn into that dress. She didn’t pull it off the rack as her second choice for a wedding. Go on. You get one more try.”
Fuck.
My palms prickle with heat. My scalp blazes where my mother pulled my hair. My throat aches when I swallow, and I wonder if my bruises are already dark in the moonlight.
I can’t believe I’m stuck here, making up stories for a gobshite like Cole Feckin’ Wolf.
But the best lies are ones that track close to the truth. Wolf didn’t buy my story that I was protecting my sister. My mother either. That leaves one last member of my family to try.
“My da was running a deal through some Swiss bank. I don’t know the details; he wouldn’t say. But you did something that shut down his operation cold, and Da lost millions.”
He hesitates as if he can scent truth in the distance. But ultimately he shakes his head, one quick toss like he’s breaking the back of his prey. “Your father has enforcers to make people pay. Not some little girl throwing wine.”
“Fuck you!” The words boil over before I can decide if it’s a good idea to say them out loud.
I’m CyberGhost. I created the Red Cap Raiders.
I’m the coder who figured out how to get past Banque Wagner’s so-called security, even if Wolf saved them at the last possible second. “I am not some goddamn little girl!”
“You looked like one in the side yard. On your knees. Begging.”
My hand moves before my thoughts catch up, and I slap him as hard as I can.
It’s a reflex, a flash fire ripping through my body.
Maybe my brain really is short on oxygen after Mam grabbed my throat.
Maybe I’m frustrated he didn’t buy any of my lies.
Maybe my temper explodes over his suggestive taunt when he says the word begging.
But it feels good to strike him. Good to fight back. Good to finally catch him by surprise, to do something he never, ever expected.
Because I see the animal inside him respond. His lip curls back in a snarl. His own hand flies, heavy as a board, going for vengeance, going for pain, because no one gets away with striking the Wolf.
At the last possible second, he takes something off his blow, flexing his wrist to drain away most of his heat.
Most.
But not all.
There’s a moment when I hear the sound of flesh on flesh, before I feel a thing. There’s a moment when I can’t believe he hit me back, that he’s broken the ancient rule that boys don’t hit girls. There’s a moment before I’m utterly, completely lost.
Heat blooms across my cheek, igniting a firestorm inside my body. The flat of his hand closes a circuit I never knew was open. It lights a fuse that runs straight down my spine to the suddenly aching V between my thighs.
No lover has ever dared to strike me like that, but Wolf’s blow somehow feels familiar. It’s a word that hovers on the tip of my tongue. It’s a dream that disintegrates into mist the instant I try to describe it.
It’s a desire I’ve never even whispered to myself.
Cole Wolf sees all that. He knows. I can tell, because his fingers trail over my jaw, settling over the pulse point in my throat. He must feel the thunder there, under the bruises from my mother. He must recognize the gallop of my heartbeat as an entire new world bursts open inside me.
My knees turn liquid—not from the blow, not from the pain, but because my entire understanding of who I am, of what I want, what I need has just shattered into a million mirrored shards.
And Wolf freezes. All human intelligence washes away from his gaze. He becomes something different, something totally feral. I can see his teeth as he snarls: “Get in the fucking car.”