Page 24 of Twisted Enemy
And I do my best not to think about the dungeon at all as I settle in for several more hours of lonely coding.
9
KATE
Every morning, I wake to find that Cole has already left our bed, his cold pillow testifying he’s been gone for hours. Every morning, I pull on clean yoga pants and a new hoodie before I collect my coffee andskyrin the kitchen. Every morning, I stop by Cole’s office to find him buried in work, sometimes on conference calls, sometimes so deep in code I have to say his name three or four times to get his attention.
Every morning, he refuses to let me work for his clients.
He’s my husband, he says. He provides for me, he says. He takes care of Lone Wolf, he says.
All of it is absolute bollocks, and I tell him so every chance I get. He’s a feckin’ control freak. He should call the pope, because it’s a genuine miracle he bothers to have any Lone Wolf employees at all. He better not try taking me to the dungeon, because I know he’d rather be in his office working alone, every hour of every day of every feckin’ week.
I let him take me to the dungeon.
Because there’s one thing I don’t say when I’m slagging him on the regular, one truth that’s so explosive if I said it out loud, we’d be through. Cole would send me back to Baltimore, divorce me, annul our marriage, whatever it took to keep me away.
I barely whisper the words out loud to myself: Tarasov has the upper hand.
All of Cole’s obsessive work, every single one of our daily fights, is because we’re powerless against the true threat. Tarasov set a deadline. Cole guts the Canton Crew, or my life as CyberGhost is exposed to the authorities. My husband destroys my clan, or he destroys me.
And I’m the one who put him in this position. I opened the feckin’ gate. I let the bratva shitehawk in.
The whole week passes. Seven days of getting used to armed men at the gate, monitoring my coming and going, my visits to Granny, and my strolls about the garden when I can’t stand another second locked up inside the house. Seven days of living as a billionaire—of tolerating Nilsson as a helpful shadow around the house, of accepting Anna’s delicious meals as something I deserve. Seven days of waiting.
And on Thursday, a few minutes before midnight, I’m standing next to Cole’s desk in his office, watching the seconds wind off a timer in the lower left corner of one of his screens.
“Don’t do it,” I say.
He doesn’t bother answering. He’s spent the day testing his solution. He’s carved out a corner of Da’s sprawling files to open up to Tarasov, a careful selection of the cryptocurrency transactions my father believes will save the Canton Crew.
Cole has insulated the clan as much as possible. He’s diverted funds to other accounts. He’s put up firewalls so high and so strong Tarasov will never be able to cross from the crypto sandbox to truly sensitive matter.
But it’s still a betrayal. A threat. And I’m powerless to keep Cole from damaging my clan.
“Please,” I say, and I hate the begging tone behind the word.
He scrolls through the list of vulnerable files one last time.
“There has to be another way,” I plead.
He puts his finger on the single key that will grant Tarasov access.
“He’s goddamn fucking bratva.” I barely recognize the high pitch of my voice. “If you give him this, he’ll only ask for more.”
Cole reaches out to catch one of my curls that’s gone wild. He twists it around his finger, smoothing it with his thumb. “He’ll hurt you,” he says, his voice gentle.
“Let him!” I wail, because the alternative is admitting Tarasov alreadyhashurt me. He broke me years ago, before I ever had a glimmer of coding or hacking or the goddamn Red Cap Raiders. “I’m a Lynch!” I argue. “I’msupposedto take shite for my clan.”
“Not like this,” Cole says. “Not when I have the power to keep you safe.”
He presses the key.
I pull away so quickly, my hair rips free. I can’t stay and watch Tarasov rampage through Da’s files. I can’t force myself to monitor the damage, to catalog every hit and tell myself I’m lucky because it could have been so much worse.
Stomping upstairs, I try to believe my tears are because I let Da marry me off to such a colossal eejit.
When I reach the second floor, I glare down the hall at our bedroom. There’s no way I’ll sleep with that gobshite tonight. I stomp down the other wing, to one of the perfectly appointed guest rooms that overlooks the garden.
