Page 9 of Tamed Enemy
Tarasov gives one more rattling laugh. “What Canton Crew? Your father is a fat old man, shitting his diapers and drooling in bed. Your mother spread her legs for my Pyotr. And you? You belong to me.”
“Never,” I spit.
“Immediately,” he counters. “As soon as your divorce is final. Hear that, Wolf? I want papers filed by close of business today.”
A scream of frustration rises in my throat—we had until the end of the month before we had to face this threat. But Cole holds up a warning hand. He hasn’t interrupted as I’ve baited the bear but now he says, “That won’t happen.”
“If your lawyers are not prepared, mine are. Your District of Columbia makes things so easy. No legal separation. No need to live apart. Just swear you want your marriage to end, and thirty days later, the court makes it so.”
I don’t want my marriage to end.
Eyeing me steadily, Cole says, “My lawyers aren’t getting anywhere near this. Not if you want to launch your cryptocurrency anytime this year.”
“What does one have to do with the other?”
“Do you have any idea what it takes to establish a valid cryptocurrency? You’ll need a freestanding blockchain network with its own locked-down consensus mechanism. After you have a genesis block with your basic configuration, you’ll need smart contracts defining your token rules, deployment, and validation.The network has to be road-tested, because any change after it goes live would wipe out all existing value. The entire system has to comply with anti-money-laundering regulations, know-your-customer requirements, and securities laws—or at least look like it does, to the average outsider.”
“What does all that mean in English?”
“Six months of full-time work. Work I don’t think you want me assigning to random employees of Lone Wolf Enterprises.”
“Work faster.”
“There are only twenty-four hours in a day. And I need four of them to sleep.”
“You will find a way to work faster.”
“The only way to work faster is for Kate to help. Together, we can cut the time to four months.”
“Not three?” Tarasov asks with a nasty snort of disdain.
“She needs more sleep than I do.”
I catch a hoot of protest against the back of my throat. Cole’s words are true—Idoneed more than four hours a night, like any normal human being. But there’s a gloating tone behind his statement, a note of ownership that finally brings blood back to my cheeks.
If Nikolai hears it, he smothers an immediate challenge. Instead, he stays quiet for so long that I wonder if the call has disconnected. But he finally says, “You have one month. Katya will be mine on the sixth of August.”
“One month isn’t?—”
“Say it now,” Nikolai interrupts. “Or you will say it in front of Linda Anderson. In the privacy of the Tarasov Fort.”
Fort. The vowel is different, held at the back of the throat, but the meaning is the same in Russian and English. Nikolai Tarasov lives at the top of Baltimore’s Butchers Hill, in a massive home made of red granite, the entire block shielded behind walls of matching stone.
Cole looks at me, shaking his head. His lips form the wordno. But he says, “One month.”
“All of it,” Nikolai demands.
Cole’s fingers fold around his letter opener, and I have no doubt he’d use the weapon if the bratva pakhan was standing in this room. “One month,” he grits. “Kate is yours on the sixth of August.”
I expect Nikolai to double down, to demand that Cole use the Russian name, but instead he laughs. “You are a stubborn little boy.”
Cole shudders, visibly fighting the urge to respond.
Nikolai goes on, his tone dismissive. “Call the crypto RedBear. I expect weekly updates on the development.”
I watch Cole weigh the value in fighting. He settles—barely—on the side of discretion. His computer chimes with an incoming message.
Nikolai says, “Account details for the July payment you owe. You are already nearly one week late. Ten million deposited by midnight, or your indictment goes public. Say it, little boy. Tell me you will comply.”
