Chapter 36
KATE
Wolf and I celebrate our one-week anniversary by making sandwiches for dinner because it’s Nilsson’s and Anna’s day off.
I’ve taken a break from my failed coding projects, using the time to study public—and not so public—databases.
My goal was to find new evidence to needle Wolf, and I’ve finally succeeded at something online.
“It must be rough,” I observe over peanut butter and jam. “Never knowing your da. Not even having a name filled in on your birth certificate.”
His answer comes faster than I could have imagined. “Better than having a father sell you to the highest bidder. No. Wait. Your father actually paid to get you out of his house.”
I splutter, angrier with myself than with him. His rebuttal was far too easy.
He thinks so too. Downstairs, he wraps my wrists with nylon rope and hangs me from the hook on the ceiling, hoisting me up so only my toes reach the ground.
He laughs when I swear at him. He studies me like I’m one of his paintings, staring at my bare flesh until I blush. He licks the words I wrote—Fuck You— tasting each letter with the tip of his tongue.
Only after I moan does he use his fingers, stroking and pinching and prodding until I’m embarrassed by the sounds that crack my throat.
His mouth comes next—lips and tongue and teeth driving me wild, making me writhe.
By the time he sucks my throbbing clit, I’m begging him to let me come.
When he finally does, an hour later, I scream so hard I lose my voice.
The following day, a Monday, I wake and take a long, cool shower. After, I study myself in the mirror. I barely recognize the creature who stares back at me.
My lips are raw where I chewed them as I tried to keep from screaming. The contraception matchstick feels like a gemstone buried in my arm. I can’t stop testing the soft map of purple bruises spread across my body, pressing my fingertips into marks until I hiss.
This is what I want. What I crave. I’ve consented to everything Wolf has done to me.
But a panicky feeling tightens my belly. Kaitlín Minola Lynch would never agree to the things I’ve begged for. I’m a mob princess. I belong to the Canton Crew and the Lynch clan, to Baltimore and Athgarven.
I’m losing myself behind Wolf’s twenty-foot fence.
I don’t want to escape, not forever. Here, behind the locked door of the jacks, I can admit I need Wolf’s dungeon. I can’t leave behind the blinding pleasure-pain that only he can deliver.
But I need to remember who I truly am. I need one day away from this place. One afternoon. One hour. I need to get past the forbidden iron gate, if only to gather up the tattering shreds of my self-respect.
Less than an hour later, I’m sitting with Granny in her garden. When she nods off over her knitting, I pull up a map on my phone. I study exactly where I need to go—less than a mile to freedom.
Ms. Sutton brings us lunch, and I make a show of eating an entire egg salad sandwich. I carry in our dishes when we’re done. I help Granny inside for her afternoon nap.
And after my grandmother is dozing again, I start in on Ms. Sutton. I do my best to sound breezy, asking her to let me out the side gate in the garden. She shakes her head, saying Wolf is absolute about the rules.
I lie that today is his birthday. I tell her I’ve reserved a bottle of his favorite whiskey at the nearest liquor store. I say she’s the only one in the world who can help me to surprise my husband.
It takes a few rounds, but she finally agrees to let me go. I stop in the jacks before I go, leaving my mobile by the sink. I’m certain Wolf has a tracker installed on the device.
The instant the gate closes behind me, I head for the subway. I walk quickly past brick houses with their shiny black doors and matching shutters. I catch glimpses of gardens—flowering trees and brightly colored bulbs.
My arms swing at my sides, each step draining an ocean of tension from my shoulders. My stride lengthens. Sunshine warms my face as I reach a wider road.
Everything’s loud. Everything’s bright. I’ve only been locked up for a week, but I’ve already forgotten how busy and chaotic and beautiful the world can be. This break for freedom is exactly what I need to stay sane.
Wolf is waiting at the escalator that leads underground.
“How the fuck—” I start to ask.
He cuts me off by clamping his fingers around my biceps. “Where the hell do you think you’re going?”
The pressure of a good rant boils inside my chest. He has no right to track me. I’m his wife, not his prisoner. I should scream for help, holler to the busy people around me that this stranger is after me, that he’s some sort of pervert, a threat.
But the panicky feeling is back, tightening my belly and narrowing my throat. I want to tell him. I want to use my words: You’re turning me into someone I don’t know. Someone I can’t be. I’m losing myself.
I barely understand my own feelings. I don’t have language to explain it to him. So I finally choke out a meaningless answer, my voice flooded with misery. “Anywhere.”
“Anywhere?” His grip tightens on my arm. He looks so confused that I wonder if I answered him in Irish instead of English.
“Someplace normal. A coffee shop. A restaurant. A drug store. I need to be a regular person.”
“A regular person.” I watch him test the words, trying to force them into the cold logic he knows best. Ones. Zeroes. On. Off.
“I’m scared!” I finally say.
He stiffens, pulling me even closer. “Of what? Who’s after you? What did you see?”
I shake my head, because I’m making such a mess of this. “No one. Nothing.”
“Kate…” he says, coating my name with frustration.
I snag a deep breath and force myself to meet his gaze.
The gold flecks are flashing in his eyes.
His pupils are small in the sunlight. “You make me want things I’ve never wanted before.
You make me do things I never thought I’d do.
” My voice gets thick, and I have to work to swallow. “I don’t know who I am anymore…”
The iron line of his jaw softens. “And someplace normal will help.”
I shrug, the motion constrained by his grip on my arm.
“A coffee shop,” he says, perfectly mimicking my tone from moments before.
I start to snap a smart reply, but I realize he’s trying. He wants to understand. I nod pathetically.
He shifts his fingers to my elbow, and before I can piece together another idiotic reply, he’s leading me past his illegally parked Bentley in front of the subway station. Without a word, Wolf marches me down a crowded city street, past a bank, a pizza parlor, and a post office.
At the far end of the block, half a dozen tables scatter across the pavement. Young people are grouped beneath umbrellas, sheltering from the spring sunshine. They look like uni students, with their George Washington sweatshirts and backpacks. We’re just a block from the college campus.
Every customer nurses a large paper cup. A few are eating cookies. One guy is working his jaw around a massive sandwich.
Pick Me Up says a sign over a large plate-glass window.
The aroma of coffee is so strong I almost lose my footing.
Wolf pulls open the door, holding it while three young women spill onto the sidewalk, more concerned with gossiping to each other than thanking him for his courtesy. We wait our turn to order.
In less time than I thought possible, we’re sitting in that huge window, staring out at the pavement.
I’m sipping a rich black coffee, twin to the one in Wolf’s hand.
An April shower springs up out of nowhere, spattering the umbrellas.
Students clear out, hurrying to take shelter, or maybe even going to class.
A woman at the counter next to me croons into her mobile, “Come on, Mandy. You’re way too good for him.” Mandy must disagree, which brings a torrent of avid support from her friend.
I turn away to find Wolf studying me. “This is what you needed?” he asks.
“Yeah,” I say, before I scald my tongue on too-hot coffee. “More or less.” And then, because I have to say something, I ask, “How do you know about this place? Did you go to GW?”
He shakes his head. “I didn’t go to college.”
“Too busy coding?”
“Too busy serving five to ten.”
I laugh, because it’s exactly the type of lie I tell when people ask too many personal questions. But Wolf isn’t laughing.
“For what?” I ask. There’s hardly a made man in the Canton Crew who hasn’t served some time. But Wolf seems a lot smarter than the average made man in Baltimore. And he has enough money to buy the best lawyers.
“Fraud.” He’s calm. Unruffled. As if he’s telling me a fact no more interesting than his shoe size.
“That’s a stiff sentence for a first-time offense.”
He eyes me steadily, as if I’m the one sharing a secret past. “They let me go when I turned eighteen.”
“You were still a juvenile?”
“Yes.”
“That’s the only time you’ve served?”
“That was enough.” His tone is firm. The topic of conversation is clearly closed.
Two women hurry by outside, holding hands. The taller one has blond hair dyed blue at the tips. That makes me think of something new to say. “Your sister,” I start.
He’s wary, like a wild animal scenting the wind. “What about her?”
I shrug. “You haven’t mentioned her. But you’re close enough that she was your best, er, person at our wedding…”
“We aren’t close.”
“Does she live in DC?”
“We aren’t close,” he repeats, and that’s another topic of conversation locked away for good.
The man is my feckin’ husband. There must be a way to break through the wall he’s built around himself. Some way to know him beyond the toys in the dungeon. I try one more time. “How about pets? Did you have any when you were growing up?”
His fingers tighten around his coffee cup. “No.”
Fuck the shitehawk. I’m done with questions. I stare out the window, trying to make out the title of the textbook some guy is studying beneath one of the rain-spotted umbrellas outside.
“What about you?” Wolf asks after a too-long pause. “Did you have any pets?”
I think about lying: No. About giving him one word: Yes. About telling him to go to feckin’ hell, because conversation is a two-way street, or it’s supposed to be, anyway, and he’s offered too little, too late.
But I’m determined to be better at this than he is.
So I say, “I had a cat named Dubh. Granny gave him to Breagha and me for Christmas. But Breagha thought his food smelled bad, and she refused to clean his litter box, so he really became mine. One night, Da’s Clan Chief left the front door open, and Dubh got outside. I never saw him again.”
Wolf’s face tightens for a moment, just a flash, but I wonder what he’s thinking. What he lost, sometime in the past. His voice is calm, though, as he asks, “You and Breagha are close?”
I have a sudden flash of holding my sister’s hand in the dark, of her falling asleep with her head in my lap, of my stroking her hair when she started to cry in her sleep.
I take a sip of coffee, but now it tastes foul across the back of my throat. Setting down the cup, I say, “Yeah.”
“You don’t seem to have a lot in common.”
Mam’s said the same, more times than I can count. She means Breagha’s beautiful and I’m not. Breagha’s sweet, and I have a tongue like a razor. Breagha’s an asset for the Canton Crew, and I’m a feckin’ liability.
I do my best to strangle my coffee cup. “That’s a shite thing to say. My sister and I have a lot in common.”
Wolf shrugs. “So Breagha codes too?”
Breagha doesn’t know computers can be used for anything other than texting all her friends. “Not exactly.”
“She has a mouth like a sailor?”
I’m fairly certain Breagha doesn’t know how to spell fuck. “No.”
“She breaks rules, as easy as breathing?”
I catch a sharp laugh at the back of my throat. “Not my sister. No.” And then it’s my turn to shrug. “That’s why she’s always been Mam and Da’s favorite.”
“Just as you’ve been your grandmother’s favorite.”
I open my mouth to tell him he’s full of shite. Close it.
Granny took me to Ireland. I’m the one she showed around County Donegal. The one she saw got into Trinity College in Dublin, even though my transcript was dotted with more incompletes than any uni tolerates. The Lynch name still opens doors in the old country.
“Yeah,” I say softly.
“Say it,” he urges. And then he adds, “My dear.” The words should sound like he’s mocking me. They don’t.
I shake my head. Telling the story his way feels like weakness. Admitting the truth is hard.
His fingers close over mine, and I realize I’ve made a fist against the counter. “Go on, Kate. Say the words out loud.”
He’s like a dog with a feckin’ bone. He won’t give up unless I yield on this. “Fine,” I say, like I’m reciting in front of a class. “I’m Granny’s favorite.”
The corners of his lips turn up with satisfaction. “Why was that so hard to admit?”
He doesn’t know me. He doesn’t know anything about me.
I can’t meet his gaze. I know the gold will be shining in the chestnut of his eyes. “I’m through with my coffee,” I say, starting to stand. “It’s time to leave.”
“Kate—” he says.
“I want to go home!” I interrupt.
That’s the first time I’ve thought of the Georgetown mansion as home. The first time I’ve admitted, even in that roundabout way, that this is where I live now. That this is my life.
Wolf collects our cups and deposits them in the trash. He leads the way back to the car, flashing his arm in front of my body to keep me from crossing the street when a car darts through on an amber light.
There’s a ticket on the Bentley’s windscreen, but Wolf hardly seems to notice. He just folds it double and slips it inside his pocket. He doesn’t say a word as he navigates through the city streets, around a traffic circle, and back to the high brick wall that I still have no way to clear.
Once he’s parked in the garage, he heads to his office. Only when I’m sitting in front of my own computer do I think of all the things I could have asked him.
When did you become so good at computers?
Do you ever want, even for a few seconds, to be with another human being, instead of on your own?
How did you learn the things we do in the basement?
Why won’t you let us fuck?
I think them. But I’m not sure I want to know the answers.