“It’s not your fault,” I say, tightening my grip. “He’d have done the same. Or worse.”
“And what he has on you… His obshchak…That document will be released!”
“I’ll deal with it. You aren’t responsible for what he did. You can’t blame yourself for any of this. For bringing him here. For keeping him here. For killing?—”
“No!” she says, pushing away, her fingers curled into fists. “I wanted himalive. I wanted to feed him to his own men, to show them who he really was! I wanted them to know he failed when he forced his way past your gate. He failed when he filmed me, before I gave him Viktor. He failed years ago, setting off the Dogfight when all he had to do was hand over Breagha and me, give us back, right as rain.”
She’s broken. She’s twisted. She carried her pain for decades, only to have it ratchet out of control when Tarasov forced her to do…whatever she did to get him to download my code.
“The bratva—” I start to comfort her.
“I was supposed to be the one in control!”
I’m the world’s expert on control. I know what it costs to maintain it. And I understand the terrifying risk of losing it. But I did lose control, for her, a month ago in this very room. That was the night I finally fucked my wife, when I allowed myself to come inside her.
I lost control. And I’m a better man for it.
“I know,” I say. “I understand.” And then I do the only thing I can think of, I offer her the only acceptance she might be able to grasp.
I kiss her bloody fists.
“Let’s get out of here,” I say.
She gestures with crimson hands. “I have to clean this up.”
“We’ll get to that tomorrow. We’re safe until then. This house is a fortress.”
“But Nilsson?—”
“He’s always known where the bodies are buried.”
“Anna—”
“Learned a long time ago never to come down here.”
“The Apex guards. The men outside?—”
“They aren’t allowed in the house.”
Her mouth opens. Closes. She still hasn’t agreed.
“Kate,” I say. “You’ve done the hard part. You won. Let me take care of the clean-up. Let me take care ofyou. Can you do that? Can you trust me to make everything right again?”
She looks around the room. I watch her take in the black sheet. The dull-eyed cameras. The hose against the wall.
But then she looks at the St. Andrew’s cross, in the far corner. The armoire. The bed. The hook in the ceiling, where Tarasov hung, yes, but where she hung first.
She learned to submit here. Her body and her mind and her heart—they all learned to let me take control.
Her smile is shaky, but she nods. “Yes,” she says. “I trust you.”
I slip into my Dom voice to keep her from hearing my relief. “First things first,” I say. “Get out of those clothes.”
“I can’t—” she starts to protest.
“One,” I say.
I don’t even know what I’m counting. I’ll come up with something later, some power exchange to bring both of us back into balance, my perfect little sub and me.