Page 15 of Twisted Enemy
“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!”
“Ihada 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, notdisappointment, 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.
6
COLE
This is a terrible time to be slipping out the front door of my house.
I don’t care that it’s five in the morning. I never get more than four hours of sleep a night.
But Kate half-woke when I edged out of bed, rolling toward my pillow and reaching for the warm spot I left behind. A frown creased the space between her fawn-colored eyebrows, and she murmured something that could have been English, could have been Irish, or maybe it was just the private language of her dreams.
I wanted to smooth her hair and feather a kiss on her temple. I wanted to sit on the edge of the bed and whisper that I love her, tell her the truth again while she’s sleeping, so she wouldn’t feel trapped, wouldn’t have to worry.
I had to leave, though. Married or not, I have to run Lone Wolf Enterprises. Kate will wait until I return.
