Chapter 5
KATE
Ilove you.
It’s been a full hour since he said it—not when he was pumping away, when his cock would have made him say anything to guarantee a release, but after.
He said it when we’d been lying there for long enough that our hearts stopped pounding.
Our lungs stopped heaving. His feckin’ brain was back online.
I don’t know what I was supposed to do with that.
Every book and movie in the world says I should’ve said it back.
But words are important. They have meaning.
I wouldn’t say it just because he put a ring on my finger.
Just because he’s given me the most satisfying orgasms of my life.
Because he’s agreed to Tarasov’s terms to protect me.
I couldn’t.
So I lay across his chest for a few minutes more.
I waited to see if he meant to press his point, if he’d force a feckin’ conversation.
When he didn’t, I collected my clothes and headed upstairs for a shower.
As I rinsed the shampoo from my hair, I told myself I did one thing right. I asked my Dom for what I needed.
I didn’t fucking cut.
Now, the sun is warm on my face as I step toward the scanner at the gate. I let the green lasers scan my retina. I swallow hard when I settle my palm on the screen to complete the security scan. For just a moment, my belly twists, and puke paints the back of my throat.
This is how I opened the gate this morning. My wrist is still an angry red from Pyotr Tarasov’s ziptie. An alarm deep in my brain says I should never be trusted with the biometrics again. Tarasov might be waiting outside. The Bad Men could take me back to the dark room again.
But I’m not eight years old anymore. I can’t spend the rest of my life locked behind a twenty-foot brick wall. I step through the gate. No monsters wait on the other side.
It’s only as I look back from the pavement that I see Cole framed by the window in his ground-floor office. He’s watching me, steadily, earnestly. He nods once as the gate starts to whisper closed.
Setting my jaw, I force myself to cross the street and the pavement on the other side. I open the less imposing gate there, the one that’s worked with a simple key. And then I enter the carriage house beside the home Lars Nilsson shares with his wife Anna, calling out, “Hello?”
My knees turn watery when Granny calls from the bedroom: “We’re back here.”
A less observant person would say my grandmother looks well today. She’s sitting in an armchair instead of her mechanized hospital bed. She’s wearing trousers and a deep green cashmere jumper. Her snowy hair gleams in the sunshine, bouncy from a recent wash.
But I see the metal cylinder on the table by her right hand, a rescue inhaler she only uses as a last resort.
I note the knitting piled on her lap, needles shoved into a ball of yarn betraying the fact that she wasn’t actually working on her shawl.
I catch the slight frown on Mrs. Watson's lips as she emerges from the jacks, a faint cast of worry she quickly replaces with a professional smile.
“Good morning, Kate,” the nurse says briskly. “Perfect timing. You can keep your grandmother company while I make her some lunch.”
“I’m not hungry,” Granny says in a stubborn voice that makes me realize how often I’ve said the exact same words.
“I know.” Mrs. Watson is already halfway out the door. “But you’ll eat something anyway.”
“That woman is a menace,” Granny complains as I kiss her cheek.
“A menace responsible for keeping you well,” I say, collapsing into the free chair. The motion twists my spine, and I feel the tug of stretched muscles along my sides. I shiver at a sudden flash of memory, my arms straining to break free from Cole’s harness as he buries his face between my thighs.
Granny’s eyes glint with shrewd appraisal, and I fear my suddenly flushed cheeks tell far more of a story than I’m willing to share.
Hurrying to fill the silence before she can, I say the first thing I can think of that has nothing to do with steel or leather or vibrating silicone toys.
“Lovely weather, isn’t it? A fine day for drying. ”
Not that either of us has any damp laundry to be hung in the sun. But Granny taught me the phrase even before she took me to stay in County Donegal.
“So that’s the game we’re playing?” She tilts her head like a robin tugging a worm from damp earth. “Fine, fine. I suppose a new bride deserves some semblance of privacy.”
This time, I blush so hard my savaged nipples ache. Crossing my arms over my chest, I nod toward the inhaler on the table. “You had a rough night last night?”
Granny’s lips twist in a familiar frown. She hates her daily battles with post-polio syndrome. “Lots of tossing and turning,” she says. “I finally fell asleep around sunrise. Only to be awakened by police sirens a couple of hours later.”
I grimace.
Granny pounces. “They woke you too, then?”
I try to deflect. “They were loud.”
Granny leans forward. “What aren’t you telling me, a chroí?”
“Nothing!” My protest is automatic.
“Kaitlín Minola Lynch Wolf, I can smell when you’re lying to me.”
I used to believe that when I was a child. Granny could always sift my fibs from reality—something neither Da nor Mam could do. “The bratva dropped by for a visit,” I admit.
Granny’s sharp eyes go to my wrists, and I realize I’ve been rubbing the reddened band where Tarasov bound my hands. She swears in Irish, a combination of nouns and adjectives I never would have thought to string together. “Tell me what happened, a chroí.”
I don’t want her to worry. But all my life, I’ve carried my hurts to my grandmother. She’s eased my fears. She’s made me believe it’s possible to be safe in the violent, unhinged world of the Irish mob. That’s why she calls me her heart.
So I tell her all of it—Megan Wolf and Pyotr Tarasov and Lars Nilsson coming to our rescue after everything was over.
I tell her Tarasov threatened me and Cole defended me and now my husband is bound to work for the bratva.
And I tell her it’s all my fault, because I’m the eejit who opened the feckin’ gate.
“You’re no eejit,” Granny says, automatically patting my hand. “The Tarasovs are bad men.”
Bad Men. Those were the words Granny gave me when I was just a child, a tool to help me understand how I’d been hurt. Even now, with Granny close beside me and sunshine streaming through the huge paned windows and Mrs. Watson rattling pots and pans in the kitchen, I shudder.
Eighteen years ago, the Tarasov bratva decided to run all of Baltimore on their own. They kidnapped my sister and me from a public playground, killing our nanny by the merry-go-round. Our ransom: All of Da’s holdings, the Lynch clan out of Charm City forever.
Da called the Russians’ bluff. He said they could keep Breagha and me, along with Larissa’s corpse.
The bratva had us two full weeks. Pyotr Tarasov finally negotiated a trade. He drew up a map, dividing the city into bratva territory and a much-shrunken zone for the Canton Crew.
Resentful, Da bent the knee. He shook hands. He paid.
And the instant Breagha and I were home, he launched the Dogfight—five years of brutal gang war. The Canton Crew burned out bratva businesses, stole Russian shipments from the docks, and executed more than a dozen foot soldiers, the bratva’s so-called thieves.
The Russians did worse.
A lot worse.
The Dogfight only ended when the Feds got involved. Four boyeviks ended up in a super-max prison. My father let his own uncle take the fall for the Crew. The Lynch clan barely survived.
Now I glance at Granny’s dresser, at a framed photo of Breagha and me, taken years before all that.
We’re wearing matching white dresses with tights and Mary Janes.
My skirt has a grass stain and my shoes are scuffed and my copper-colored braids are half undone.
Breagha’s golden curls form a perfect frame around her face.
“Kate?” Granny asks, and I know from her tone she’s already said my name at least once.
In the photo, Breagha and I have Easter baskets at our feet. Breagha’s is overflowing with brightly colored eggs because I gave her half of mine. I’ve always loved my sister, from the moment Mam came home from hospital with a blanket-wrapped bundle I wasn’t allowed to touch.
So I can’t understand the enmity between Cole and Megan, his banishing her this morning. I literally cannot imagine cutting off my sister the way he did his.
“Sorry,” I say, before Granny needs to say my name again. “I was thinking.”
She indulges me with a smile. “I was saying Mrs. Watson has lunch on the table. Will you join us?”
I sit with my grandmother and her nurse, and we talk about songbirds in the backyard and new shows on television and favorite meals we’ve enjoyed in the past. The Bad Men stay very far away.
Granny is yawning by the time we finish our meal, so I let Mrs. Watson order me back across the street. Back in the main house, I spend the afternoon in my office.
My office.
I’ve never had one before. In Da’s house, I worked in my bedroom, spending most of my time sitting cross-legged on my narrow bed.
The first two weeks here, I carried my laptop from room to room, knowing every keystroke was being monitored by Cole.
When I fled, I used my cheap, anonymous machine in a dismal motel room.
Now, my desk has a sweeping view of the garden. My chair feels like it was molded for my body. My computer is centered on a leather blotter, displayed like a feckin’ work of art.
Cole did this for me. He gave me the one thing that was guaranteed to heal the wounds he inflicted—the finest technology his fortune could provide and the means to keep my work secret. Cole built an entire computer network for me to manage, where I’m the only superuser and I have absolute control.
I made him leave the room when I set my password: Iri$hQu3enMebh!
Granny used to tell me bedtime stories about Mebh. The legendary queen was strong. Ambitious. Cunning. A perfect role model for an Irish mob princess like me.
Grinning, I type my new password, and my computer flashes to life. I start to explore with caution, taking my time to think through every decision as I build the computer network of my dreams.
This is the best machine I’ve ever owned.
It’s fast and it’s stable and there’s no command I type that even makes it hesitate.
Applying encryption, I bring in everything that’s ever mattered to me online—old journals and current bank accounts and an entire library of coding snippets I can use to build new projects.
I’m startled when Cole appears in the doorway at six. “Dinnertime,” he says.
Holding up a finger, I buy an extra thirty seconds to finish a tricky bit of code. He waits with surprising patience, an amused smile quirking his lips. After closing my laptop with a click, I climb to my feet.
It’s been a mistake, not taking a break during the afternoon. My body—already sore from my exertions down in the dungeon—has grown stiff from hours of sitting. I wince as I roll my shoulders and when I cross the room, I look like I’m auditioning for the role of Frankenstein’s monster.
Offering a surprisingly sympathetic smile, Cole brushes his lips against mine. “You had a good afternoon?” he asks, before he leads the way down the hall.
“The best,” I say. I’m surprised to realize that’s the truth, after the way our day began.
Cole holds my chair in the dining room, and suddenly everything is simple.
We’re a newly married couple, sharing a meal after a long day’s work.
I ask my husband about his afternoon. I tell him about my lunch with Granny.
We talk about his upcoming business trip, the drive he’ll make to Dover in the morning.
When we’re through eating our poached salmon and sautéed spring vegetables, Anna clears our plates. Then she leaves for the evening, heading across the street to eat her own meal and spend time with her own husband.
I want this easy evening to last forever. But I know Pyotr Tarasov has made that impossible.
Cole crosses to the sideboard and pours himself a brandy. I accept a glass of port, but I barely sip at it. I want a clear head for the discussion we’re about to have.
“I’m sorry,” I say, once Cole returns to his seat beside me.
He sets down his snifter with a decisive flex of his wrists. Our idle dinner chatter didn’t soften him one bit. “Go on,” he says, with the wariness of a wild animal sniffing fire on the wind.
“You gave me security credentials for the gate two days ago. And the first thing I did was let a madman into our lives.”
“That wasn’t your fault.” His tone is perfectly flat.
“I opened the gate.” The simple statement has me breathing fast. My heart feels like it’s trying to batter my breastbone into dust.
“You were conned.”
“I wasn’t—”
Cole cuts me off with the precision of a surgeon tying off a suture. “That’s what Megan does. She tricks people.”
His words aren’t complicated. I understand every syllable. But what he’s saying makes no sense.
Shrewd hacker Cole Wolf doesn’t accept failure. He doesn’t allow weakness. He should be destroying me, but instead he has already forgiven me for making a mistake that could have cost us our lives. I can’t begin to understand why.
Yes I can.
I love you.
That’s why.
Shaking my head, I make another attempt to accept responsibility. “I never should have let Megan in.”
He eyes me steadily. “And you never will again.”
That’s it. He’s granted absolution. But I can’t leave things there. I force myself to say, “In a day or two… Once things blow over… I want to call Megan and—”
“No.”
“It’s dangerous for her, with Tarasov on the prowl.”
“You will not call Megan.”
“You don’t know the bratva the way I do! Pyotr Tarasov won’t be content with getting you to break into Da’s computers. He’ll go back to Megan for more, try to use her again. She’ll need help. She needs to know she isn’t alone.”
“But she is. At least where this household is concerned.”
“She’s your sister!”
“I had a sister,” he says, with the same emotion he’d use to say he had a hangnail or a headache or a mealy early peach. “She’s dead now.”
“She’s not—”
“She’s dead to me. And to you too. For as long as you live in this house.” There’s no emotion in his voice—not anger, not disappointment, not sorrow. One plus one simply equals two. Megan Wolf has ceased to exist.
I open my mouth. Close it. Fiddle with the stem of the glass holding my port.
“Say it,” Cole says, like he’s drilling ice cores in the arctic. “She’s dead to you too.”
There’s no room to argue, no way to change his mind. So I look straight into his gold-flecked brown eyes and say, “She’s dead to me.”
I emphasize the words with a swallow of port, but the heavy wine turns sour in my mouth. Without even lifting a finger, Pyotr Tarasov has destroyed yet another corner of my soul.