Chapter 10
COLE
“I’m coming home.” I’m holding my phone with one hand and picking up my carry-on bag with the other.
A roped-off corner of my mind is marching through logistics. Prince’s jet is available at the Sun Valley airfield. If he won’t let me take it, I can have my own pilot here in five hours. That’s too long. I’ll fly commercial. The goal is to get home now.
“Don’t do that,” Kate insists. “Everything is fine.”
“You were gassed in front of our house.”
“And the army of men you’ve hired to protect me did their jobs.” She sounds too calm, too quiet. She’s fucking handling me.
“Dammit, Kate—”
“This is how the bratva works.”
“How the fuck did he know you’d be crossing the street?”
“The driver could have watched from a cross-street for hours. The bratva are just throwing their weight around. Making their presence known. This is no different to any thug walking into a shop and saying, ‘Nice little place you have here. It would be a shame if it caught fire.’ Nikolai Tarasov wants you to be afraid.”
“I’m not afraid. I’m fucking livid.”
“Don’t give him the satisfaction of seeing you run home. Think of the text we’ll get the instant you duck behind the gate, tail between your legs.”
I want to argue, but the computer running my brain beneath all my messy emotions tells me Kate is right.
She takes advantage of my silence to press her argument. “I’ve known men like Nikolai Tarasov my entire life. I understand how his mind works. He wins if you come home. Don’t let him win.”
Taking a deep breath, I look out the window of my high-end suite. Now, in the middle of summer, the mountains are green. Ski trails carve their flanks like riverbeds.
I have a meeting in two hours with the founder of SparkChat, the most popular social media platform since TikTok went wild.
Prince is hosting a cocktail party tonight, just the Diamond Ring members.
There’s another tomorrow, where I’ll meet the presidents and CEOs of Silicon Valley’s ten largest corporations.
“You don’t set foot outside that house until I’m home,” I say.
“Agreed.”
“Not for anything. You can go without seeing Granny and Breagha for three days.”
“You’re right.”
“Have anything you need delivered.”
“Of course.”
“I don’t care if Drew Cameron is stapled to your back, you aren’t leaving for any reason, for any amount of time.”
“I promise.”
Part of me worries she’s giving in too easily. Part of me realizes she was just as terrified by this morning’s attack as I was.
“I’ll be home on Thursday,” I finally say.
“I’ll be waiting.”
I want to tell her so much more. I want her to understand how my heart stopped when Jacobson called to tell me about the drive-by.
I want her to know my knees failed; I heard his report from the floor of this luxury prison.
I want her to feel the same crimson rage that blinded me, the absolute certainty that I would rip off Tarasov’s balls and stuff them down his fucking throat if he turned up anywhere within a hundred miles of me.
Instead, I say, “I love you.”
She sighs as if she can’t figure out how it came to this. “I love you too.”
The instant I end the call, I send a text to Tony Jacobson, telling him Kate is not to leave the premises under any circumstances. I instruct him to tell Cameron and every other Sawgrass man on site.
I believe Kate means to stay inside the house. But I also know she has a way of forgetting promises whenever it’s convenient. I won’t take a chance with her safety. Not with Nikolai Tarasov pushing my limits.
Message confirmed by Jacobson, I head downstairs to the bar and order a WhistlePig rye. Checking my phone, I see that I have more than an hour and a half before the SparkChat meeting. I change my order to a double.
Collecting my drink, I head to the outside deck, which offers more of those incomparable views of the mountains. Staring out at the lush green slopes, I can’t help but think of the emerald sheets in my newly revamped dungeon. My fingers tighten on my glass.
“Not interested in hiking?”
Gage Rider comes to stand beside me at the railing. He’s big—not just tall, but broad in the shoulders and thick in the chest. The man played professional hockey for years; he doesn’t carry a single extra ounce. He’s probably smarter than I am—he’s drinking a thirty-dollar bottle of Soma water.
I twitch a shoulder in response to his question. A group has gathered at a trailhead at the far end of the clearing, outfitted in pink and yellow and powder blue. Every stitch of the clothing looks brand new. “Don’t have the wardrobe for it,” I say.
“Fucking newbies,” Rider says, but there isn’t any heat in his voice. His phone buzzes, and he takes it from his pocket. Checking the screen, he shakes his head, then sends the call to voicemail. He sighs as he sets his phone on the railing.
“Trouble?” I ask.
“No more than usual. Security threw someone out of the club last night. It was a third-time offense, so I canned the member’s ass. Now the mayor’s getting involved.”
The club. Rider owns Kynk, the premier sex club on the Eastern seaboard. I’ve never been to the Brooklyn hideaway, but I’ve heard about it. Every Dom has.
“Who runs security for a place like that?” I ask. I’m still waiting for Jacobson’s full report on what happened this morning. I believe Kate; I understand the team acted exactly as they were trained to do. But I want to hire some backup—Army Rangers, maybe. Green Berets. A SEAL team or two.
Rider shrugs. “I keep it in-house. A couple of times, when there’ve been specific threats, I’ve brought in Sawgrass.”
I down a slug of whiskey. It’s a good answer, one that should make me feel more certain Kate has all the protection she needs. But I still want to do more.
Two men walk beneath us, heads close in some intense conversation. It’s not until they round the corner of the building that I realize the president of the world’s largest tech company is speaking with the CEO of the nation’s biggest defense contractor.
“Think we should worry?” Rider asks, nodding toward where the pair disappeared. Despite his current need to fend off New York City’s mayor, he doesn’t look like he worries about much of anything.
“I think we should be updating our stock portfolios.”
Rider laughs. “Is it insider trading if we didn’t hear a word?”
I frown. “I’m looking for business losses these days. Not more gains.”
“The IRS has your balls?” Rider may look like a golden retriever, but he’s one of the shrewdest businessmen I know. Aside from Kynk, he owns several square blocks of midtown Manhattan. And most of the world knows him as the owner of a professional hockey team, the Atlantic City Aces.
“In a fucking vice,” I say.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t help last month. Prince didn’t leave any of us room to maneuver.”
When Trap Prince threw me out of the Diamond Ring, he made damn sure I couldn’t shelter my assets with any other freeport client. As far as I know, he didn’t tell anyone what I did to make his shitlist. He wouldn’t do anything to hurt Alix’s reputation.
“Water under the bridge,” I say. “But if you happen to know of a half-billion-dollar business loss I can take by next quarter…”
Rider whistles. “Ouch.”
I toast him with my half-empty glass. I’m not drunk—it takes a hell of a lot more than a Whistlepig double to do that. But I am aware that Sun Valley sits at more than a mile elevation, which enhances the rye whiskey’s power.
“I know where I’d start,” Rider says.
I wait.
“A minor league hockey team. What’s the old joke? How do you end up with a million dollars? Buy a sports team for ten million. The Albany Empire is on the market.”
“Ten mill won’t make a dent in what I owe.”
“The joke’s out of date. It’ll cost you a hundred to land them. The owner owes a shitload on an arena rehab that’s taken two years longer than it should have. And he’s carrying contracts for a couple of players he traded for younger prospects.”
A hundred million dollars to own a minor league hockey team. There’s potential there. I wouldn’t be setting my cash on fire, the way I would if I just hand it over to the government.
I need to do some research—look into how teams are run, figure out what it would cost to maintain. I won’t need write-offs forever; the potential for profit down the line is mandatory.
I’m willing to bet there are ways to make operating the team more efficient.
Most industries haven’t begun to maximize the potential of technology—carefully applied artificial intelligence, expertly managed pricing models for tickets, for salaries…
And that’s before I even consider the online betting revenue.
Shannon made me an unintended expert on odds before I was ten.
Rider laughs. “You’re thinking about it.”
“Yeah. I am. If the deal can happen fast enough.”
“With that debt, Jean-Luc Fournier is…a highly motivated seller. Plus, he’s on his way to his fourth divorce.”
I wince.
Rider laughs. “I can make the introduction anytime you want.”
“Give me a day or two. But I think I’ll take you up on that.”
He touches the shoulder of his water bottle to the rim of my glass. “Long live Diamond Freeport, huh?”
It’s Diamond Freeport that got me into this mess, but I won’t quibble.
Rider’s phone buzzes again. “Christ,” he said. “The mayor won’t let this rest.”
“Go ahead and take it,” I say. I take out my own phone to see if anyone’s been trying to reach me.
There’s the usual mix of calls and messages, but nothing screams urgently. As I’m paging through the last of the texts, a new one arrives.
It’s from Nikolai Tarasov. It’s addressed just to me, not part of the thread where he’s roped in Kate.
Nikolai Tarasov
Give me a progress report on RedBear
I consider my options, ranging from shattering my phone to telling him to go to hell. I settle on something in between.
Here’s the report: I have three weeks until the project’s due
He writes back immediately.
New rule
I want it done by Friday
Impossible
Do not tell me impossible when you are on vacation in Idaho
His quick reply sends a frozen lance down my spine. Nikolai Tarasov shouldn’t know where I am. He should think I’m back in DC, holed up in the Georgetown mansion.
I stare at the phone in my hand. It’s as secure as the rest of my computer system. He can’t be tracking me through the device. All the same, I start flipping through apps, looking for something he could have broken into.
Even as I’m scrolling, my phone buzzes again.
Friday
I type back like I’m firing my Glock.
You are not my only client
This time, he pauses before he replies. Triple bubbles boil on my screen as I picture the fucker’s black eyes narrowing. I see his thin lips purse inside his gray beard.
He’s not needling me because he wants his cryptocurrency. He doesn’t give a shit about RedBear. He’s pressing because he wants Kate.
So it’s all the more ominous when he finally sends his reply
I will be