Page 1 of Tamed Enemy
1
KATE
The human brain has two primary responses to threat. Option One isfight.Option Two isflight.
Me? I’m a lass who fights—with words when I can, with fists when I must. But here, today, in a penthouse suite at one of Washington DC’s most luxurious hotels, I’m afraid I’m not strong enough to win the fight that’s brewing. And I’m not sure I’m fast enough to get away if I run.
So I settle for the far more rare Option Three: I freeze.
I’m vaguely aware that Independence Day fireworks continue to explode outside the windows of our posh suite. My husband and I are on holiday, treating my grandmother and sister to a grand weekend. We’re supposed to be enjoying a treat after the months of tension we’ve managed to survive.
Instead, one single text—with an attached video—has turned everything into a nightmare.
Cole taps the screen of his mobile before I can. The video freezes on the face of a man: Nikolai Tarasov, the pakhan of Baltimore’s bratva. His black eyes look like he plucked them from some dead sturgeon on ice. His cheeks are so sunken they look hollow, and his close-trimmed beard resembles filthy snow.
“Go on, then,” I croak, the Irish strong in my voice. “Play it again so we can be sure of the gobshite’s demands.”
Cole shakes his head. “We don’t need to hear that bullshit again.”
He’s right. Nikolai’s ultimatums have already scored my brain.
One: Cole must pay him ten million dollars on the first of every month, or Nikolai will disclose secret files about my husband’s criminal past.
Two: Cole must build him a new cryptocurrency, all the anonymous power of Bitcoin to be controlled by Baltimore’s Russian mob.
Three: Cole and I must divorce, so Nikolai can marry me himself.
My stomach heaves, painting the back of my throat with bile. I’m the reason we’re facing these demands. I insisted on kidnapping Nikolai’s son, Pyotr. I held the bratva brigadier in the dungeon of Cole’s Georgetown mansion, along with the corpse of his clearly incompetent bodyguard. I tortured Pyotr with BDSM tools Cole kept in the basement.
I killed Pyotr.
There are plenty of reasons why. My Irish-mob family has been at war with Pyotr’s Russian one for years, fighting over Baltimore. Pyotr seduced my mother and supplanted my father, and he intended to marry my sister to cement his claim to the Canton Crew.
But there’s one main reason Pyotr had to die: He raped me when I was eight years old.
The bratva kidnapped my sister and me, intending to use us as bargaining chips. Pyotr forced me to choose all my torments. I chose for him to hurt me instead of my sister. I chose to take him up my arse instead of in my mouth or in my virgin cunt. I chose to lick his cock first, because he said that would make it hurt less. I chose to call him Master instead of Daddy.
He made me complicit. I consented to all his depravity—as if a child could ever consent to anything.
Pyotr Tarasov was a feckin’ monster, and I haven’t regretted one second of the torture I doled out last month. But now the chickens are coming home to their feckin’ bratva roost.
“What will we do?” I ask Cole.
“Not give in to one of his demands.”
“Nikolai Tarasov always gets his way,” I warn. “He’s run the Baltimore bratva for forty years. He’s come close to wiping out Da’s Canton Crew half a dozen times in the last decade.”
My words come faster as I speak, my voice ratcheting higher. My fingernails dig into my palms. Cole wraps his fingers around my right wrist, squeezing hard in a silent command.
My first instinct is to fight him. I want to stiffen my free fingers and aim straight for Cole’s eyes. Crash a knee into his bollocks. Butt my head against his chin.
But over the past three months, my husband has taught me that my instincts aren’t always my friends. Lashing out can leave me a hell of a lot worse off than I’d be with a little measured thought.
Sometimes, a controlled response is better. And Cole is the most controlled person I’ve ever met in my life.
Relaxing my hand beneath his grip, I uncurl my fingers to reveal four crimson half-moons across my palm, where my nails have almost broken the skin. The wounds look like the marks that ladder my thighs, the scars I’ve made by cutting when I’ve been overwhelmed by my past.
Cole raises my palm to his lips and kisses the red marks slowly, tenderly. Tension starts to melt from my shoulders, washed away by his sweet touch.
