Chapter 15
KATE
The Bentley is silent on the long drive back from Baltimore.
Granny sits in the front seat, next to Cole.
She’s still too pale for my liking, and from the stiff set to her shoulders, I can tell her legs are bothering her something fierce.
Walking out to the car, she needed to clutch both my forearm and Cole’s, and her right foot still dragged.
I shouldn’t have let her come to Sunday Roast. But I had no idea Da would send her from the table like she was some inconvenient toddler. I had no way of knowing Pyotr Tarasov would ruin everything.
Every mile we’re on the road, I replay all that happened.
My sister, always the good girl, thinking that marrying Tarasov is what she’s meant to do.
My father, signing Breagha over, surrendering his greatest prize after all his years of fighting the bratva.
My mother, flirting with Tarasov as if he’s just another dick in trousers and not the devil that kidnapped her children years ago.
I feel battered. Bruised. I’m so tired, I can scarcely keep my eyes open.
But I see Granny into the carriage house when we get back to Georgetown.
With Mrs. Watson enjoying a well-earned day off, I help Granny get ready for bed.
I leave her with a cuppa and both inhalers on her nightstand, and I place her walker by the bed, for when she needs to get to the jacks.
I make sure her mobile is in easy reach, my number just a tap away.
Her eyes are closed before I shut off the light.
Cole drives us across the street, negotiating the guards at both gates. He parks the car in the garage and gestures for me to precede him into the house. I plant my feet on the marble floor in the foyer before I say, “I hope you’re feckin’ satisfied.”
He looks surprised, but he answers evenly enough. “Not in the least.”
“But you see the damage you’ve done.”
His voice drops a dangerous few notes. “The damage I’ve done?”
“You’re the one who insisted on doing business with that shitehawk. You set him loose in the henhouse, giving him access to Canton Crew files. Tarasov wouldn’t think he has a chance with Breagha if he wasn’t already hip-deep in the clan’s banking.”
“First—I didn’t let him anywhere near your clan’s actual accounts. He got a couple of your father’s crypto toys. That’s all. And second—Tarasov’s obviously been going after Breagha for a while. Today’s little show wasn’t something he threw together in the last seventy-two hours.”
I start to splutter a response, but Cole cuts me off before I can get a word out.
“And third. I did what I had to to protect you. And I’d do it again. I will do it again. Because if there’s one thing I learned sitting at that table today, your family will do nothing to keep you safe.”
His words carve far too close to bone, so I strike out before I’ve fully absorbed the sting. “You may have handed your bollocks over to Tarasov, but I won’t kiss his arse.”
I expect Cole to tell me exactly what he’ll do with my arse. Or maybe he won’t say anything at all, just grab my arm and drag me to the dungeon. I swear to God I’ll use my safeword if he tries. I’ll shout red as loud as I can, scream it all the way down the stairs.
But he just says, “Don’t give this round to Tarasov. Don’t let him be the reason we fight.”
Cole said he loves me, and I believe him. At least, I believe he thinks he does. But he doesn’t begin to understand me.
He doesn’t understand that Tarasov won this round eighteen years ago, when he left Breagha and me in the dark with Larissa’s rotting corpse. He won when he took me into the Cold Room. He won when I couldn’t begin to fight.
“I hate him,” I say.
“You should.”
“I want to destroy him,” I say.
“That’s my job.”
“You aren’t doing anything!”
“Trust me.”
I trust him with my body. That’s easy, downstairs. With all the games, all the toys, all the ways he knows to break me—I’m certain that I’m safe.
But with Clan business? With our ancient bratva enemy? He wasn’t born a Lynch. He doesn’t understand.
“Trust. Me,” he says again.
“I want to,” I finally answer.
He waits, as if he thinks I’ll say something more. But when I don’t, he sighs. “It’s been a long day,” he says. “Let’s go upstairs.”
Not to the dungeon. To bed, rather. To sleep.
That should be a compromise. That should be enough. But I shake my head, then nod toward my office. “You go on. I have work to do.”
I can see he wants to argue. But he takes a step away, and then he says, “Don’t be too long.”
I don’t answer. He doesn’t need to hear me lie.
My computer waits on my desk, like the most loyal of pets. Staring at the screen, I curl my fingers over the keyboard. This is where I’ve taken refuge for years, angry with Mam, disappointed in Da, baffled by Breagha’s pure and simple ability to be content with the world.
I hate Tarasov for everything he’s done. But ruining the Red Cap Raiders might have been his most spiteful move. And wielding my CyberGhost identity as a weapon, making Cole comply… That’s the feckin’ image of cruelty.
Build another team. That’s how I win.
I’ve been thinking about it. A lot. I need to build out a new corner in Winter Reckoning, a place hidden from all the players except the handful I choose. It won’t be a cave or a mountain or a forest. The game is filled with them.
I’ll build a maze.
Each turn will require solving a new puzzle.
I can base my structure on the maths challenges Cole has scattered throughout the online world, but my solutions will put a priority on teams working together.
Players—teams—will have choices every step of the way, twists and turns and plenty of dead ends.
And at the center will be a structure everyone can build together, a house with many rooms, a village we all can share.
Maze sounds too simple. I’ll build a labyrinth.
Just saying the twisty word inside my head takes me back to the first time I heard it. I was eight years old, sitting beside a crackling Irish fire with Granny. She stroked my hair, not even attempting to calm my curls as she told me story after story after story.
That’s when she first taught me about Queen Mebh, but there were other tales as well. There was Sekhmet, the ancient Egyptian goddess of war. There was Pandora, with her forbidden box of secrets. There was Circe, who could turn men into pigs.
And there was Ariadne. She understood the power of the labyrinth. She saved the man she loved by giving him thread to track his way through the maze.
Ariadne’s Daughters—that’s what I’ll call my team. We’ll spin the thread. We’ll mark the path. We’ll craft a new way through the internet.
I only need one trusted ally to start. If I choose the right person, she can help build the team.
Relying on the administrative access Cole gave me last week, I pull up a list of Ice Knights, the most accomplished players in the game. My eyes automatically go to the names I know best—DarkMoney666, Shadow, IceKiller. MaskedMarauder.
But knowing players’ names won’t help me now. I need their email addresses.
With my new game status, it’s simple enough to download the information. It’s only a little more difficult to search for academic addresses—students or alumni or professors using an address that ends in edu. That list is much shorter—barely a dozen names.
Only one meets my requirements: [email protected].
I pull up Professor Mirabelli’s profile at her university website. She looks young, maybe five or six years older than I am. She specializes in algorithmic game theory. And she’s faculty liaison with her campus’s chapter of the Delta Alpha Lambda honor society for women engineers.
Going back to Winter Reckoning, I trace Dr. Mirabelli’s play within the game.
She’s mostly a loner, striking out on solitary missions.
But at least half a dozen times in the last year, she’s reached out to players in desperate need of assistance.
She hasn’t solved their problems, but she’s explained what they need to do to succeed.
Maybe this won’t work. She might be too busy with her academic obligations. She might be one of those gombeens who simply breathes wrong. She might think my entire idea is shite.
But I send her an email outside of the game, faking an address I hope will catch her attention.
From: [email protected]
Re: New Opportunity for Women Coders
Professor Mirabelli —
Imagine an online space built entirely by women, for women, and about women, designed to advance the professional and personal lives of coders like you and me…