Page 96 of Tamed Enemy
“It could be days.”
“I’ve slept in worse places.”
I’m thinking of the dark, dank room where Tarasov held Breagha and me with the turning corpse of our nanny. That was much worse than a couple of uncomfortable nights in an office.
I’ve brought a duffel bag. I have three changes of clothes. A dozen pairs of clean knickers. A fleece blanket and my phone chargers and a toothbrush.
Cole shrugs, fully aware of how stubborn I can be. “I’ll be back in an hour,” he says.
I spend the time watching Tarasov on camera.
I can’t see his face under the hood, but every muscle in his body screams stress. His fingers curl into tight fists. His shoulders are rough-chopped boards. He sits upright, as if he’s in an electric chair, and his feet seem riveted to the floor.
A normal human being would feel pity for this man. But I’m not normal. And I’m not at all sure he’s a man. All I see is a monster who has earned every punishment he receives.
Nikolai Tarasov issued the orders to kidnap Breagha and me when we were only children.
He sent his shitehawk son Pyotr to manage our release, knowing the unholy appetites he’d stoked in that man.
He undertook the Dogfight for more than a decade, murdering good Canton Crew men in a war for territory he had no right to take.
He runs a human trafficking ring through the Baltimore port, selling girls and women like packs of gum.
He sells Crash to children, addicting innocents who don’t stand a chance against a drug engineered to destroy them.
He seduced my mother in front of my ailing Da.
He forced Ilya Danilov on my sister.
He lured Jeremy Collins into betraying Cole, me, and all his Sawgrass brothers.
He tormented Cole, stealing his money, coopting his coding genius, and ruining his reputation.
He followed Cole and me to Kynk and made us do unspeakable things.
He forced us to file a petition dissolving our marriage, a legal document that will become binding in less than forty-eight hours.
And—worst of all—he means to marry me.
This entire operation can easily go pear-shaped. Tarasov might escape. We have unavoidable loose ends—our realtor, the carpenters and electricians who got this place ready on a rush basis, and the guards at the security desk downstairs who have seen a whole cast of strangers reporting for work, just to start.
Every day that passes without our getting a confession brings us one step closer to disaster. And I have no delusions what my life will be like if Tarasov gets free. He’ll keep me locked up. He’ll keep me tied down. He’ll hurt me in ways I can only imagine, and I’ll never, ever have any hope of escape.
As long as Cole is alive, he’ll fight for me. But eventually they’ll kill him some way slow and painful, and they’ll make me watch.
No.
They’ll make me do it.
I don’t know how they’ll force me. Maybe they’ll get their hands on Granny, or they’ll drag Breagha back from Indonesia.They could track down Ariadne’s Daughters. They could bring in a hundred innocent girls, a thousand, put them all in the balance and make me choose—those lives or Cole’s.
Going to my duffel, I dig deep to the bottom of the bag. I find a leather case, newly purchased since I executed Pyotr Tarasov, since the dungeon was gutted and rebuilt.
The zip whispers open in the heavy silence of the observation room. Six new scalpels rest in one neat row. There’s a flask of alcohol and soft white balls of cotton.
My need to cut is a physical hunger—worse than my empty belly, worse than my thirst-chapped lips, worse than the stiffness in muscles that have been hunched over camera feeds for far too many hours.
This hunger lives deep inside my cells. Cutting is the only thing that can keep my heart beating, my lungs breathing. Cutting is the only way to forget all the ways Tarasov can make me suffer.
