Page 8 of Tamed Enemy
You have a choice,lisichka.Who will I hurt, your sister or you?
Yourzhopufeel so good,lisichka.So tight. So hot.
Tell anyone what I did,lisichka, and I’ll kill your entire family while they sleep.
Nikolai clicks his tongue, like he’s chiding a naughty child. “Wolf,” he says. “You should have told me you had company. But what is this,lisichka?You do not want to be called Katie anymore? Then you will be my Katya.”
“I’ll never be yours, you fucking shitehawk.”
“Language, Katya.”
“Excuse me,” I say, my voice dripping venom. “I’ll never be yours, youmotherfuckingshitehawk.”
His laugh sounds like bones rattling. “Get out all those foul words now. Because once you are a Tarasov bride, your mouth will be filled with something else.”
Part of me wants to fight back, to call him acocksucking, motherfucking shitehawk, but I know Nikolai Tarasov doesn’t make idle threats. He simply shreds the world until he gets what he desires.
So I try a different tack. I’ve been thinking about this for almost two days, ever since I heard Nikolai’s impossible demands back at the hotel. He wants Cole to pay him. He wants Cole to work for him. He wants me to be his bratva wife.
But I know how to stop him.
I don’twantto tell the world my story. I don’t want everyone knowing I was complicit in what happened, that I chose every single thing Pyotr Tarasov did to me. No one will ever look at me again without seeing a wounded little girl.
But I have the power to stop Nikolai Tarasov in his tracks. I can end his power play now and get him out of my life, out of Cole’s life, out of our marriage forever. My truth—the life I’ve lived—is more explosive than all the documents Tarasov thinks he’ll use to blackmail Cole and me.
“I’ll tell,” I say.
“Tell what,lisichka?”
“I’ll tell the world that Pyotr Tarasov—your son, your brigadier—raped me when I was eight years old.”
I finally dare to look at Cole. I don’t know when he stood behind his desk, when he planted both hands on the polished wooden surface. I can’t say when his oaky eyes went hooded, when the flecks of gold drowned in black waves of fury.
He shakes his head slowly, like my words have fractured something deep inside him. But he already knows the truth; I told him when we took Pyotr captive.
“I’ll swear out a complaint in Baltimore court,” I promise Nikolai. “And I’ll release it to the press. The police don’t know Pyotr’s dead. They’ll come to Butchers Hill to find him. Are you ready for cameras to watch your every move? For reporters and influencers to camp out on your doorstep?”
“Do not open doors you cannot close, Katya.”
“I won’t have to close them.Youwill. You’ll have to explain how you sheltered a child rapist for years. Or how you were so blind you didn’t know about the crimes of your own son. How can a pakhan possibly lead his crew with a secret like that?”
He laughs again, that hideous sound like a skeleton dancing. “Secret? You think what Pyotr did wassecret?”
I feel my blood siphoning away, draining from my face, my chest, the tips of all my fingers. My knees start to buckle, and I have to grab onto the doorframe again for support. If Pyotr’s crime isn’t a secret…
“What do you think is the Tarasov bratva’s most profitable line of work,lisichka?”
The bratva does things the Canton Crew won’t touch. They’ve shipped arms to Russian soldiers fighting in Ukraine. Their corner-boys hold Crash, the most addictive drug ever dreamed up in a lab, targeted specifically to children’s developing brains.
But Tarasov manages to surprise me when he sneers: “Girls,lisichka. From Moldova. Belarus. Russia. Children, served up to the right hungry customer. My Pyotr was the very best at training all our girls.”
Training.
“So tell your story,lisichka.Let my men hear it from you. Give them one more reason to mourn the brigadier they have lost. Because every one of my men got a bonus after I sold threegirls last month. One on Brewers Hill. One in Fells Point. And one on O’Donnell Street.”
O’Donnell. That’s the feckin’ heart of Canton Crew territory, just two blocks from the house I grew up in. The Tarasov bratva has no right to set foot on O’Donnell Street, much less to work their filthy trade in flesh.
The Irish grows thick in my throat. “The Canton Crew will have yer guts.”
