Chapter 39
KATE
At the end of the first day, Tarasov remains chained to the boardroom table.
The cubicle crew—including Megan—clocks out at five. Richardson and Bennett leave too; they deserve a good night’s sleep.
When the Sawgrass guards return in their FBI uniforms, they strategically allow Tarasov glimpses of the empty office floor. The whiteboard has been updated, with the day’s date written beside Fiona’s picture. Her name is crossed out in thick red marker.
Tarasov finally speaks, for the first time in hours. “You cannot keep me here for the night.”
Instead of replying, one guard opens a bottle of water and puts it close enough for the pakhan to drink. The other gives him a dry ham sandwich. Together, they shuffle him to the toilet.
Once Tarasov is back in the boardroom, they chain his hands on a much shorter lead. Pulling on his hood, they clamp on the headphones. His entire body tightens in reaction to whatever noise they feed him. The guards test to be certain his bonds are secure, then step out to the break room.
“Go home,” Cole says to me.
I look around the observation room. “Not until we’re through.”
“It could be days.”
“I’ve slept in worse places.”
I’m thinking of the dark, dank room where Tarasov held Breagha and me with the turning corpse of our nanny. That was much worse than a couple of uncomfortable nights in an office.
I’ve brought a duffel bag. I have three changes of clothes. A dozen pairs of clean knickers. A fleece blanket and my phone chargers and a toothbrush.
Cole shrugs, fully aware of how stubborn I can be. “I’ll be back in an hour,” he says.
I spend the time watching Tarasov on camera.
I can’t see his face under the hood, but every muscle in his body screams stress. His fingers curl into tight fists. His shoulders are rough-chopped boards. He sits upright, as if he’s in an electric chair, and his feet seem riveted to the floor.
A normal human being would feel pity for this man. But I’m not normal. And I’m not at all sure he’s a man. All I see is a monster who has earned every punishment he receives.
Nikolai Tarasov issued the orders to kidnap Breagha and me when we were only children.
He sent his shitehawk son Pyotr to manage our release, knowing the unholy appetites he’d stoked in that man.
He undertook the Dogfight for more than a decade, murdering good Canton Crew men in a war for territory he had no right to take.
He runs a human trafficking ring through the Baltimore port, selling girls and women like packs of gum.
He sells Crash to children, addicting innocents who don’t stand a chance against a drug engineered to destroy them.
He seduced my mother in front of my ailing Da.
He forced Ilya Danilov on my sister.
He lured Jeremy Collins into betraying Cole, me, and all his Sawgrass brothers.
He tormented Cole, stealing his money, coopting his coding genius, and ruining his reputation.
He followed Cole and me to Kynk and made us do unspeakable things.
He forced us to file a petition dissolving our marriage, a legal document that will become binding in less than forty-eight hours.
And—worst of all—he means to marry me.
This entire operation can easily go pear-shaped.
Tarasov might escape. We have unavoidable loose ends—our realtor, the carpenters and electricians who got this place ready on a rush basis, and the guards at the security desk downstairs who have seen a whole cast of strangers reporting for work, just to start.
Every day that passes without our getting a confession brings us one step closer to disaster.
And I have no delusions what my life will be like if Tarasov gets free.
He’ll keep me locked up. He’ll keep me tied down.
He’ll hurt me in ways I can only imagine, and I’ll never, ever have any hope of escape.
As long as Cole is alive, he’ll fight for me. But eventually they’ll kill him some way slow and painful, and they’ll make me watch.
No.
They’ll make me do it.
I don’t know how they’ll force me. Maybe they’ll get their hands on Granny, or they’ll drag Breagha back from Indonesia. They could track down Ariadne’s Daughters. They could bring in a hundred innocent girls, a thousand, put them all in the balance and make me choose—those lives or Cole’s.
Going to my duffel, I dig deep to the bottom of the bag. I find a leather case, newly purchased since I executed Pyotr Tarasov, since the dungeon was gutted and rebuilt.
The zip whispers open in the heavy silence of the observation room. Six new scalpels rest in one neat row. There’s a flask of alcohol and soft white balls of cotton.
My need to cut is a physical hunger—worse than my empty belly, worse than my thirst-chapped lips, worse than the stiffness in muscles that have been hunched over camera feeds for far too many hours.
This hunger lives deep inside my cells. Cutting is the only thing that can keep my heart beating, my lungs breathing. Cutting is the only way to forget all the ways Tarasov can make me suffer.
But I’ve promised Cole.
I won’t cut.
I stare through the two-way mirror. I could go into that boardroom right now.
I could sink a knife into Tarasov’s throat.
Into his thigh, like I did to Pyotr. Into his arm and dig deep, let the bleeding out take longer.
I could end his life tonight, end the con right now.
We could send everyone home and be done with the charade.
But there’s one thing I want more than I want to use my scalpel. I want justice. I want Tarasov to suffer for everything he’s done. For that, I’ll wait.
I shove the kit back in my duffel, pushing it all the way to the bottom.
The door to the observation room opens just as I pull my hand free. Cole walks in with a brown paper bag. The smell of Chinese food hits me like a muddy towel before he sits down. “I can’t eat,” I say as he sits beside me.
“You can.”
I shake my head and reach for a keyboard like I have something important to type. But Cole shoves the keyboard out of reach, using the same gesture to tug me onto his lap.
My mind leaps back to the first dinner we shared as a married couple. At least he doesn’t have me in handcuffs this time.
He reaches around me to pull two white cardboard containers from the bag. A pair of chopsticks follows, bamboo wrapped in paper. He breaks them apart with an efficient snap.
“Cole…” I say.
He doesn’t bother answering. He just raises a bite of glistening beef to my lips.
“I’m not—” I start, but he slips the food past my lips.
Hungry. That’s what I was going to say. I’m not hungry.
But that’s a lie. I’m suddenly ravenous. I can’t chew the meat fast enough. I barely manage to swallow it down, and then my mouth is open like a baby bird’s asking for more.
Cole’s chuckle vibrates up my spine. He alternates feeding me beef with broccoli and kung pao chicken, taking occasional bites for himself. His arms stay tight around me. I’m sheltered. I’m safe.
For thirty precious minutes, we’re almost a normal couple sharing almost a normal meal at the end of almost a normal workday.
Then we go back to staring into the boardroom and waiting for our captive to break.