Chapter 3
KATE
“Lisichka!” Nikolai Tarasov’s voice echoes in Cole’s office, followed by his laugh. My stomach twists so hard, I have to grip the doorframe to keep from falling.
Pyotr called me lisichka. He said it was his secret name for me—little fox, because my hair was red.
You have a choice, lisichka. Who will I hurt, your sister or you?
Your zhopu feel so good, lisichka. So tight. So hot.
Tell anyone what I did, lisichka, and I’ll kill your entire family while they sleep.
Nikolai clicks his tongue, like he’s chiding a naughty child. “Wolf,” he says. “You should have told me you had company. But what is this, lisichka? You do not want to be called Katie anymore? Then you will be my Katya.”
“I’ll never be yours, you fucking shitehawk.”
“Language, Katya.”
“Excuse me,” I say, my voice dripping venom. “I’ll never be yours, you motherfucking shitehawk.”
His laugh sounds like bones rattling. “Get out all those foul words now. Because once you are a Tarasov bride, your mouth will be filled with something else.”
Part of me wants to fight back, to call him a cocksucking, motherfucking shitehawk, but I know Nikolai Tarasov doesn’t make idle threats. He simply shreds the world until he gets what he desires.
So I try a different tack. I’ve been thinking about this for almost two days, ever since I heard Nikolai’s impossible demands back at the hotel. He wants Cole to pay him. He wants Cole to work for him. He wants me to be his bratva wife.
But I know how to stop him.
I don’t want to tell the world my story. I don’t want everyone knowing I was complicit in what happened, that I chose every single thing Pyotr Tarasov did to me. No one will ever look at me again without seeing a wounded little girl.
But I have the power to stop Nikolai Tarasov in his tracks. I can end his power play now and get him out of my life, out of Cole’s life, out of our marriage forever. My truth—the life I’ve lived—is more explosive than all the documents Tarasov thinks he’ll use to blackmail Cole and me.
“I’ll tell,” I say.
“Tell what, lisichka?”
“I’ll tell the world that Pyotr Tarasov—your son, your brigadier—raped me when I was eight years old.”
I finally dare to look at Cole. I don’t know when he stood behind his desk, when he planted both hands on the polished wooden surface. I can’t say when his oaky eyes went hooded, when the flecks of gold drowned in black waves of fury.
He shakes his head slowly, like my words have fractured something deep inside him. But he already knows the truth; I told him when we took Pyotr captive.
“I’ll swear out a complaint in Baltimore court,” I promise Nikolai. “And I’ll release it to the press. The police don’t know Pyotr’s dead. They’ll come to Butchers Hill to find him. Are you ready for cameras to watch your every move? For reporters and influencers to camp out on your doorstep?”
“Do not open doors you cannot close, Katya.”
“I won’t have to close them. You will. You’ll have to explain how you sheltered a child rapist for years. Or how you were so blind you didn’t know about the crimes of your own son. How can a pakhan possibly lead his crew with a secret like that?”
He laughs again, that hideous sound like a skeleton dancing. “Secret? You think what Pyotr did was secret?”
I feel my blood siphoning away, draining from my face, my chest, the tips of all my fingers. My knees start to buckle, and I have to grab onto the doorframe again for support. If Pyotr’s crime isn’t a secret…
“What do you think is the Tarasov bratva’s most profitable line of work, lisichka?”
The bratva does things the Canton Crew won’t touch. They’ve shipped arms to Russian soldiers fighting in Ukraine. Their corner-boys hold Crash, the most addictive drug ever dreamed up in a lab, targeted specifically to children’s developing brains.
But Tarasov manages to surprise me when he sneers: “Girls, lisichka. From Moldova. Belarus. Russia. Children, served up to the right hungry customer. My Pyotr was the very best at training all our girls.”
Training.
“So tell your story, lisichka. Let my men hear it from you. Give them one more reason to mourn the brigadier they have lost. Because every one of my men got a bonus after I sold three girls last month. One on Brewers Hill. One in Fells Point. And one on O’Donnell Street.”
O’Donnell. That’s the feckin’ heart of Canton Crew territory, just two blocks from the house I grew up in. The Tarasov bratva has no right to set foot on O’Donnell Street, much less to work their filthy trade in flesh.
The Irish grows thick in my throat. “The Canton Crew will have yer guts.”
Tarasov gives one more rattling laugh. “What Canton Crew? Your father is a fat old man, shitting his diapers and drooling in bed. Your mother spread her legs for my Pyotr. And you? You belong to me.”
“Never,” I spit.
“Immediately,” he counters. “As soon as your divorce is final. Hear that, Wolf? I want papers filed by close of business today.”
A scream of frustration rises in my throat—we had until the end of the month before we had to face this threat. But Cole holds up a warning hand. He hasn’t interrupted as I’ve baited the bear but now he says, “That won’t happen.”
“If your lawyers are not prepared, mine are. Your District of Columbia makes things so easy. No legal separation. No need to live apart. Just swear you want your marriage to end, and thirty days later, the court makes it so.”
I don’t want my marriage to end.
Eyeing me steadily, Cole says, “My lawyers aren’t getting anywhere near this. Not if you want to launch your cryptocurrency anytime this year.”
“What does one have to do with the other?”
“Do you have any idea what it takes to establish a valid cryptocurrency? You’ll need a freestanding blockchain network with its own locked-down consensus mechanism.
After you have a genesis block with your basic configuration, you’ll need smart contracts defining your token rules, deployment, and validation.
The network has to be road-tested, because any change after it goes live would wipe out all existing value.
The entire system has to comply with anti-money-laundering regulations, know-your-customer requirements, and securities laws—or at least look like it does, to the average outsider. ”
“What does all that mean in English?”
“Six months of full-time work. Work I don’t think you want me assigning to random employees of Lone Wolf Enterprises.”
“Work faster.”
“There are only twenty-four hours in a day. And I need four of them to sleep.”
“You will find a way to work faster.”
“The only way to work faster is for Kate to help. Together, we can cut the time to four months.”
“Not three?” Tarasov asks with a nasty snort of disdain.
“She needs more sleep than I do.”
I catch a hoot of protest against the back of my throat. Cole’s words are true—I do need more than four hours a night, like any normal human being. But there’s a gloating tone behind his statement, a note of ownership that finally brings blood back to my cheeks.
If Nikolai hears it, he smothers an immediate challenge. Instead, he stays quiet for so long that I wonder if the call has disconnected. But he finally says, “You have one month. Katya will be mine on the sixth of August.”
“One month isn’t—”
“Say it now,” Nikolai interrupts. “Or you will say it in front of Linda Anderson. In the privacy of the Tarasov Fort.”
Fort. The vowel is different, held at the back of the throat, but the meaning is the same in Russian and English. Nikolai Tarasov lives at the top of Baltimore’s Butchers Hill, in a massive home made of red granite, the entire block shielded behind walls of matching stone.
Cole looks at me, shaking his head. His lips form the word no. But he says, “One month.”
“All of it,” Nikolai demands.
Cole’s fingers fold around his letter opener, and I have no doubt he’d use the weapon if the bratva pakhan was standing in this room. “One month,” he grits. “Kate is yours on the sixth of August.”
I expect Nikolai to double down, to demand that Cole use the Russian name, but instead he laughs. “You are a stubborn little boy.”
Cole shudders, visibly fighting the urge to respond.
Nikolai goes on, his tone dismissive. “Call the crypto RedBear. I expect weekly updates on the development.”
I watch Cole weigh the value in fighting. He settles—barely—on the side of discretion. His computer chimes with an incoming message.
Nikolai says, “Account details for the July payment you owe. You are already nearly one week late. Ten million deposited by midnight, or your indictment goes public. Say it, little boy. Tell me you will comply.”
Cole’s throat works, and I think he won’t be able to pull up the words. “Ten million. By midnight.”
He cuts the call before Nikolai can force him to say more. But the computer chimes almost immediately, displaying a new message on the screen across the room.
Nikolai Tarasov
It is a pleasure doing business with you.
He follows the words with a picture of his fist clenched around his dick. His pubes are gray. His knuckles are swollen with arthritis. But his erection is as strong as his message: Nikolai Tarasov thinks he owns Cole and me.