I kick off my shoes and fold back the manky coverlet. At least the sheets look clean underneath. Stacking two thin pillows behind my head, I lie back and stare at the water-stained ceiling.
The last serious fight Cole and I had, I ran like a frightened rabbit. I did everything I could to stay offline, to hide my banking and my credit cards. I used burner phones and lived on cash, contemplating what it would take to move to Ireland and start a new life.
Brushing my fingers against my linen trousers, I imagine I can feel my raised red scars through the fabric. Cole and I fought because I cut. Overwhelmed by the sandstorm in my brain, unable to shove down all my emotions, I used a scalpel to carve away the chaos. When I cut too deep, Cole called a doctor, and then he leashed me so I couldn’t hurt myself again.
I won’t run this time. I won’t cut.
Instead, I’ll do my best to ignore the sound of trucks out on the highway. I’ll try to get some sleep, at least a couple of hours. I’ll lie on this bed and practice conversations, rehearsing the unfamiliar words of an apology.
I was wrong to meet with Megan. I should have let Cole know when she reached out to me. I should have handed over her note. I never should have gone to the Four Seasons.
Of course, he’s made his mistakes too. Selling the fake paintings was a panic move. He’s put both of us in greater danger with Tarasov, a thought that makes me physically ill. It may take years for us to recover from the financial implications of his rash actions.
But we’re both human beings. We both have flaws. Tomorrow, I’ll find the words I couldn’t harness today, and we’ll work together to get through this.
We have to.
Because the alternative is letting animals like Tarasov rule the world.
32
COLE
Iflick on the high beams, beating back twilight as the Mercedes hurtles down rural Delaware roads. My fingers clutch the steering wheel as if they can turn the car into a time machine.
Glancing in the rear-view mirror, I barely recognize the face staring back at me. My jaw is swollen. My belly feels like I’ve been trampled by a horse. A couple of my teeth are loose, but I don’t think Prince broke anything. The pain will get worse, though, after my adrenaline wears off.
I feel like someone has yanked the floor out from under me, and I’m careering wildly in space, flailing my arms and legs, trying to catch my balance. I’m falling down an endless well. I’m helpless, and I know the landing will destroy me.
I haven’t felt like this in years. Not since Shannon regularly turned my life upside down. Not since I served my time in juvie.
I came out a changed man. I mastered control. I traded in emotion and passion and chaos for absolute precision. For predictability. For a fortune.
I’m losing all of that now.
My eyes are back on the road, but I keep seeing Mr. A’s earnest expression as we sit knee-to-knee in his dining room. I hear his worried voice:Be careful, son, about who you do business with.
I wasn’t careful. I brought Tarasov into our lives—first by running Winter Reckoning, then by ignoring Megan’s pleas when she tried to get free of the asshole.
I’m not entirely sure what hold that bratva bastard has on Kate. She’s told me some of it—the kidnapping, the cinder-block cell where she and her sister were kept with the body of their nanny, the years of gang warfare after they were finally freed.
But there’s something more—something worse—that Kate has kept to herself. Something set her off at the zoo, and it certainly wasn’t Breagha. It wasn’t the caged animals. It wasn’t even the fucking game I ordered her to play, greasing the skids so Tarasov would take the Viktor drive.
Tarasov said something,didsomething to knock her so far off balance she still hadn’t recovered by this afternoon.
Fuck.
The wildness in my blood is how Kate feels every day. She’s constantly fighting a world she can’t control, a world that doesn’t value her steel-trap mind. She says things and does things she knows will destroy her, but she just can’t help herself.
I need to make things right with her, and I will, as soon as I can figure out the words to make her trust me again. But right now, right here, I have a tiny window of opportunity to keep from losing a substantial chunk of my fortune.
I thumb a button on my steering wheel and place a call to Braiden Kelly, first on his cell, then at the Philadelphiaconstruction firm that bears his name. He’s a freeport client, and he’s been in the Diamond Ring as long as I have. If I can get him to buy everything in my gallery, it can all stay on the premises with no tax consequences.
I leave messages for him at both places, stressing he needs to call me back immediately.
With Kelly not around, I move on to the next contact in my phone. Connor Boyle operates the biggest green energy company in the country when he isn’t busy running New York’s Irish mob. I don’t have an office number for him, but I have his cell. It rings until voicemail picks up. I leave a terse message for him to call me back as well.
I don’t know when I started associating with so many mobsters. Maybe something is broken about me, that I never stopped to think about how many of my business contacts flourish in organized crime.