Page 53 of Tamed Enemy
“I’m having lunch with the mayor on Friday,” Fournier says. “He’s doing everything he can to make sure the team doesn’t leave town.”
“Friday night?” I counter.
“I can do that.” And then he laughs. “Hey, Gage Rider is the matchmaker here. Why don’t we make him play host?”
And that is how I schedule my most important business meeting of the year at Kynk, in Brooklyn.
21
KATE
Cole’s finger hovers over his keyboard, ready to strike the one key that will transfer Viktor across the ether.
“Go on,” Nikolai Tarasov says irritably. His face fills the monitor because he’s sitting too close to his camera. His lips are chapped.
Cole sends the file.
There’s a moment when the code isn’t here, isn’t there, when it’s suspended in space. And then a chime echoes from Tarasov’s computer.
Nikolai speaks to someone off-screen. “Check this.” The eejit he’s brought in to do his tech work must not move fast enough, because the pakhan snaps his fingers and says, “Now!”
Cole says, “I’ll leave you to your work.”
“Not so fast,” Nikolai says. “Where’s the manual?”
“There isn’t any manual.” Cole’s tone hints at one more word:Idiot. “There’s documentation in the code.”
Nikolai glowers, but he doesn’t protest. This is the first time I’ve seen the bratva leader the least bit unsure of himself. I wonder if Pyotr took advantage of his father’s lack of skill.
Of course he did.
Nikolai recovers quickly enough. “I will send my driver for Katya.”
The crimson curtain that sweeps across my brain leaves me breathless. A dozen different responses boil to my lips, each more foul than the one before.
But Cole’s response is carved from glacier ice. “Kate is going nowhere.”
“You needed her help to build RedBear. You have delivered RedBear. Now she is mine.”
“Kate Lynch is still my wife.”
Nikolai expels a Slavic puff of air. “A detail.”
“Not to me,” Cole says, with all the deadly seriousness of choosing pistols at dawn.
“My demands were very clear. Monthly payments. Cryptocurrency. And Katya.”
“You released the indictment. I delivered RedBear. I say we’re even.”
“You do not get to say we’re even. I am the one who decides. And I want Katya.”
I can’t listen to them anymore, bargaining over me like I’m a piece of meat. I lean in closer to the camera. “Katyasays go to fucking hell.”
Tarasov’s laugh is cruel. “I will take such pleasure taming that mouth of yours.”
“You can try, you motherfucking gobshite.”
“Speaking of mothers…” Tarasov says. “I want to know if you will scream as loud as your mother does when myhuiis upyourass.”
