To my left is another painting, even stranger. A mass of bluish green sets off an angry block of red lined with white. It looks like meat left to rot in the sun, bones poking through muscle. All the paint is smeared, like someone swiped through it with wet fingers.
It’s disgusting. It’s terrifying. Acid splashes across the back of my throat as I stare at it, and for just a moment I hear myselfsinging songs with Breagha—Itsy Bitsy SpiderandWheels on the Bus,as darkness presses around us like a smothering pillow. Sweat prickles in my armpits.
“Fine,” Wolf says, apparently unaware of my reaction. “Stand.”
His words bring me back to the present with a shudder. The Bad Men aren’t here.
“What thefuckis that?” I ask, jutting my chin toward the disgusting painting.
“Art.”
I can’t hide my revulsion. “You actually want to look at that all day?”
He twitches one shoulder. “It’s not what I want. It’s what I deserve.”
My feet carry me forward without my truly giving them permission. My fingers close around the haft of a dagger-shaped letter opener, and I cross the room before he can stop me. Setting my weapon against that monstrosity of a painting, I say, “I want past the gate. Now.”
I expect him to be furious. I brace for him to bark out an order. I wait for him to crush my wrist between his fingers.
Instead, he leans back in his chair and laughs—a soft, rolling chuckle that I know means trouble. “Careful, my dear,” he says. “Damage that Soutine, and it’ll be forty million dollars out of your allowance.”
29
COLE
Forty mill—that’s what I paid for the Soutine. It’s worth a lot more than that to me, because it’s the first painting I ever bought.
No one could ever say the bleeding carcass is beautiful. But it’s raw, in every sense of the word. It’s powerful. When I saw it in a New York gallery, it reminded me of the first fight I ever saw in juvie—the loser’s ruined face, certainly, but also the winner, the animal barely kept hidden by flesh and clothes and rules.
We’re all meat inside.
Kate eyes me, clearly calculating how much she’s willing to pay to make her point. It takes a full minute before her fingers shift on the letter opener, relaxing just enough that I know my painting’s safe.
“Fuck you,” she says, trading one attack for another that’s far more familiar.
I shrug. “You can pay that way too. What’s your asking price, for a full night in the dungeon?”
Her blush really is extraordinary. It starts at her throat, just a hint of a rosy glow. It deepens, though, as it spreads to the tips of her ears, washing out her freckles until her cheeks resemble coral.
I wonder how dark her nipples are right now. I imagine how dark her flush will grow if I ask.
She plants her hands on her hips. “Am I yer feckin’ prisoner?”
Irish thickens her voice, making her sound wild, like one of those sheep that clings to sheer cliffs with nothing more than willpower and the curl of four sharp hooves. She’s supposed to be a mob princess—pampered, sheltered, and bred to marry off. But she’s something stronger. Something a million times more willful.
I take care to meet her sparking gaze. Lowering my voice so she has to catch her breath to hear, I say, “You’re my wife.”
I watch the word hit her, same as my palm against her cheek on that sidewalk up in Boston. She’s doesn’t want to want this. She doesn’t want to comply. But something inside her craves the world I’ve opened up before her. Something inside her soars.
She has to clear her throat before she can speak. “That’s no answer.”
It is, and she’d know that if she wasn’t so intent on fighting me for every inch of ground. I shrug and clarify my terms. “You’re free to come and go. Until you give me a reason to lock you up.”
Resistance is woven into the cells of her body. It’s the only way she’s found to keep from drowning in the cesspit where she was raised. I understand that. Ilivedthat. Her fingers tighten around my letter opener again. “Yer waitin’ fer that,” she says, her voice drenched in Ireland again. “Lockin’ me up.”
Something primal inside me rises to the challenge. “As much as you are, girl.”
We aren’t laughing now. I’m not teasing. I’m not calling hermy dear, joking about her temper, her language, her drive.