Twisted Enemy (Diamond Ring Trilogy #3)

Chapter 1

KATE

There’s a moment just before your world is destroyed when you stand in perfect innocence, when you believe you have absolute control over your past, your present, and your future. Then, the universe twists, and everything collapses into a broken, spiky heap.

I’m Kaitlín Minola Lynch, the half-feral daughter of Baltimore’s Irish mob captain. I’ve spent my entire life in the Canton Crew, most of it fighting every last one of my clan’s rules. I’m a tempest, a fury, a shrew, and I bleed Irish green.

I’m Mrs. Cole Wolf, new wife to a mysterious hacker billionaire. I’ve learned to crave my husband’s dungeon, to submit to my Dom because he’s the only man in the world who can force me to lose control, who can devastate my body and my mind and leave me begging for more.

I’m CyberGhost, founder of the Red Cap Raiders, a band of computer hackers. I’ve broken into dozens of banks and corporations, sometimes for money, sometimes just for fun. My computer code is flawless.

I’m Kate.

And on this brilliant Thursday morning in May, I’m staring at a ghost—Brigadier Pyotr Nikolaevich Tarasov of the Russian bratva.

No. Not a ghost. A nightmare.

Tarasov is one of the men who kidnapped me eighteen years ago. I know the bratva tattoos etched into his chest. I know his laugh, pitched far too high for a man his size. I know his cruel smile, wide behind the barrel of his gun.

But more than that, I know the question he’s just asked as he digs that gun into an innocent woman’s side: “Hey there, CyberGhost. Ready to sell your soul for a fortune made of light?”

Time has turned to a river of sludge. My palms are slick with sweat. I don’t remember how to breathe. But I manage to croak to Cole: “He’s MaskedMarauder. From the Raiders.”

MaskedMarauder. The one hacker on my Red Cap team who can rival my coding skills. The only other person capable of mastering all the ones and zeroes, all the bits and bytes. Every time the Raiders launch a new campaign, every time we sell our souls, Mask says the words: A fortune made of light.

I’ve broken laws with Mask. For the past four years, I’ve put money in his pocket, and he’s put money in mine—money I’ve always handed over to my da to keep the Canton Crew running.

And all that time, I was hacking beside a feckin’ Russian gobshite—the feckin’ Russian gobshite who held my sister and me hostage in the dark, beside the rotting corpse of our nanny.

Cole speaks behind me. “What the fuck are you doing here?” His growl chews through the brilliant spring morning, each syllable a separate shard of ice.

I watch Tarasov, waiting for the shitehawk to flinch, because that’s what any sane man would do. But the bratva arsehole only laughs again, sounding like a giant who broke into a tank of helium.

“Cole, please.” It’s the woman pleading, as Tarasov’s gun pries between her ribs. Her name is Megan, and she’s Cole’s sister. That’s why I invited her past my husband’s monolithic security at our Georgetown home.

I opened our gate to the bratva. This is all my fault.

Megan has fresh bruises around her throat, fingerprints where someone—I’m betting all the money I’ve ever stolen it was Tarasov—has choked her into submission.

She pleads with her brother: “He’s the man I told you about.

I warned you. I never would have brought him here if I had any other option.

Please,” she begs. “I swear to God I’m telling the truth! ”

“You’re breathing,” Cole says, without even a hint of emotion. “So I know you’re lying.”

“Cole!” she sobs. But before she can gasp out any more of a protest, Tarasov plants one hand between her shoulder blades and shoves, hard.

Megan shrieks by reflex, barely catching herself from a tumble against the brick drive. I only have a second to register the hard look of disgust on Cole’s face, and then I feel Tarasov’s fingers close around my wrist.

I’m a better hostage than Megan.

But my temper runs hotter than the core of the sun, and I’m not afraid to fight anyone, anytime, under any feckin’ conditions. Especially not the man who has haunted my nightmares for decades. Plus, I learned some dirty tricks, watching my da’s mobster crew.

Ignoring every instinct screaming in my brain—the ones that say to pull free, to run, to get as far from the Russian gangster as humanly possible—I turn into Tarasov’s grasp.

I slam my heel into his instep—a killer move that would be a lot more effect if I wasn’t barefoot and he wasn’t wearing steel-toed work boots.

I bring my knee up to crash into his crotch, but he’s already angling away so I bruise myself against his tree trunk of his femur.

I go for the base of his nose with my free hand, but his grasp on my wrist cuts short my room to swing.

He yanks me around so his chest is pressed to my spine, pulling me close to his rock-hard body with one meaty forearm. I’m panting hard, trying to escape, and I nearly boke at the stink of him.

It’s his sweat, or maybe it’s his breath, maybe his unwashed hair. Every cell in my body goes nuclear when I catch the remembered reek of onions. If I don’t escape, I’ll die.

My fingers have gone as cold as ice, as cold as Larissa’s dead body in the pitch-black hole where the bratva kept Breagha and me for two long weeks.

Fourteen days of hearing Tarasov’s clown-laugh every time he launched a new round of negotiation.

Fourteen nights of breathing that stench when he called me his lisichka, when he…

Eighteen years ago, I was a terrified child. Today, I’m a furious woman.

“Yer such a big man, aren’t ya?” I taunt, rage thickening my Irish accent. “Pull a gun on a girl, so she’ll do as ya say?”

Tarasov moves so quickly I get no warning—not the flex of his arm across my throat, not the pressure of his chest against my back.

Instead, my skull is splashed with fire, and my knees turn to water.

The world tapers to a single bright point against absolute night, and my stomach tries to squeeze through the back of my throat.

I don’t know how long it takes me to realize Tarasov has slammed his gun into the side of my head. When I blink hard enough to clear away the charred darkness, Cole is just a few feet away.

He holds out his hands, as if he’s been caught stealing. “Easy,” he says, and I think he’s speaking to me. But then he says, “We can settle this like grown men. Just put down the gun.”

Cole’s voice is calm, as if he’s deciding what to order off a very long menu.

His shoulders are relaxed. His entire body seems focused on sending one unified message—he’s an ally, a friend, someone who can be trusted.

He grew up running cons with his hustler of a mother.

He and his sister both—they’re experts on convincing people to hand over something of value.

Something like a gun.

Or like me.

Cole continues to talk as if he’s gentling a wild mustang. “You’ve got my attention. I’ll listen to anything you want to tell me. You don’t need Kate to make that happen. You can put down the gun. I’m not going anywhere. Not until you’ve had your say.”

The inside of my head is packed with cotton wool. Someone’s sobbing. I think it’s me, until I realize the sound is coming from several feet away, from near the garage.

It’s Megan. Megan’s the one who is crying.

Cole doesn’t seem to hear her. He says, “MaskedMarauder, right? I know you from the game.”

Even through my fog, I know Cole’s talking about Winter Reckoning, the online game he designed. He filled it with codes and puzzles, with maths for players to solve to advance to higher and higher levels. Every one of my Red Cap Raiders is an expert at the game, Mask included. Me too.

Cole says, “I know you have self-control. You’re a man of reason. That’s how you’ve come so far in life. You c—”

“Stop talking!” Tarasov growls, shoving his pistol against my temple.

Cole cuts himself off mid-word.

The mist inside my head swirls and I know I’d be swaying, maybe falling to my knees, if Tarasov didn’t have me in his death grip.

No one gives orders to Cole.

But Tarasov did. And Cole obeyed. And nothing will ever be the same.

Tarasov juts his chin toward the garage. “You too,” he snarls at Megan. “Silence.”

She hiccups, but her sobs die down.

“This is what will happen now,” Tarasov says to Cole. “You will invite me into your home. We will sit down like human beings. We will have a business conversation.”

Cole’s house is off-limits to anyone but staff and family—and by family, I mean me. He lives behind a twenty-foot fence and a black iron gate and more biometrics than most military facilities. That’s what billions can buy.

But now, my husband takes a single step to the side, gesturing with one shoulder for Tarasov to pass through the gaping front door.

The bratva attacker merely pulls me closer to his chest. “I am not an idiot, Wolf. You go first.”

Cole holds a black belt in krav maga. He maintains a professional-level boxing gym on the second floor of his home. He has the strength—and the motivation—to break Tarasov’s neck with a single, sharp twist.

But none of that matters because a gun is pressed to my head.

“No panic buttons,” Tarasov warns. “No sudden moves. Please understand, I have a very strong startle reflex.”

Cole leads the way inside.

My feet feel disconnected from my body, as if someone sliced a cable somewhere deep inside me. I don’t remember how to cross the continent of the brick drive. But that doesn’t matter, because Tarasov half-drags, half-carries me over the threshold.

Beneath the cobwebs, my brain starts stringing together all the things I want to say to Tarasov. To Mask. To the man who kidnapped me a lifetime ago and the team member I would have died for, as recently as yesterday.

You’re such a big man, aren’t you? You and your feckin’ gun? It’s hard to make a grown woman do what you want, isn’t it? Not like forcing an innocent child, ya feckin’ gombeen.

“Kate,” Cole says, and I realize I said some of that out loud. Maybe all of it.

We’re in the living room. It’s decorated in ice blue and silver—a stiff sofa and two matching armchairs, end tables made of chrome and steel.

A cold fireplace yawns between pairs of French doors that look out over the dewy garden.

A painting hangs on the wall, acid greens and bold purples and heavy black outlines, a woman screaming at her reflection in a mirror.

Cole told me once it’s a Picasso. I feel like screaming myself.

“Not her,” Cole says, and I realize he’s nodding toward Megan. “She doesn’t get to stay.”

He might be sending her away because she’s a lying, conniving thief who has bitten his feeding hand more times than he can count. Or maybe he’s trying to save her from whatever Tarasov has planned.

It doesn’t matter. The bratva kingpin merely laughs. “You do not set the rules today, Wolf. I do.”

Pushing his gun closer to my head, Tarasov releases the chokehold of his arm across my throat. I feel his body twist, and I realize he’s reaching into his back pocket. I’m still remembering how to balance when he snaps a plastic ziptie in front of my face.

“Take it,” he says. I hear the words. I understand them. But I’m still working on making my body comply when he snaps, “Blyad! Take the fucking tie.”

I follow his order.

Tarasov steps away from me. The side of my head feels cold without the muzzle of his gun. But my thoughts start to clear with my first full breath.

“Put it on Wolf,” Tarasov commands, gesturing with his pistol.

I do, fastening the strip of plastic behind Cole’s back, tighter, more, more, because Tarasov says I have to.

The dry shite produces a second ziptie and tells me to restrain Megan.

A third tie goes around my own wrists, awkwardly, because it’s hard to fasten the plastic behind my own back.

Ultimately, Tarasov yanks it tight himself.

“Sit,” the Russian orders, waving his gun to indicate all three of us should take the sofa. Cole sits in the middle. I’m on his right side, Megan on his left. I shift, trying to find a more comfortable angle for my shoulders. There is no comfortable angle when you’re bound before a madman.

Tarasov paces in front of us like a general reviewing his troops. He still holds his gun as if it’s soldered to his meaty fingers. Stopping in front of Cole, he says, “Now we can talk like businessmen.”

“What the fuck do you want?” Cole asks.

“You,” Tarasov says. And then he elaborates: “Working for me. Getting me into the Canton Crew’s computers.”