Her legs tighten, knees going white, thighs starting to tremble.
“Eight,” I count, banking my frustration, because an angry Dom is dangerous. Despite her playing games, I’m not ready to walk away from this scene.
I’m stronger than she is. I’m more experienced. And I’m a hell of a lot more determined. I pull her ankle toward her wrist. I lean in so I can pin her with my knee, freeing my hands to tie the necessary knot. I force her legs to splay, revealing the white canvas of her inner thighs.
For just a moment, I don’t understand what I’m looking at. There’s the creamy white flesh I crave, smooth and taut, trembling as she fights me.
But it’s not all white. There’s an angry ladder on either side, stark raised rungs etched into her skin. The marks range in color from dusky pink to raw crimson, closest to her snatch.
They’re scars, terrible in their perfect precision, climbing from old to new.
But they’re not what rocks me back on my heels. They aren’t the reason I drop her foot and retreat halfway across the room.
At the top of Kate’s right leg, just below the crease of her thigh, is a two-tone tattoo. It’s outlined in black: A wide-brimmed scarlet hat turned up in back, with the front narrowed like a bird’s pointed beak. A tattooed feather streams from the top, a trailing line of ones and zeroes.
I saw that hat this morning.
Kate Lynch might as well be screaming at the top of her lungs. She runs with the Red Cap Raiders.
6
KATE
My brain knew better than to come to Cole Wolf’s hotel room. It understood the danger of getting into a stranger’s car. It remembered all the things that Bad Men do.
But my body was a feckin’ traitor. The needy space between my thighs couldn’t resist grabbing the live wire Wolf stripped bare with his slap. That flash of pure sensation made me stupid. It made me forget all the reasons I shouldn’t be here.
Wolf’s a stranger.
His entire fortune is built on eliminating hackers like me.
I cut.
I’m disgusting. I know that. Every single time, I put off using my scalpel for as long as I can—weeks sometimes, even months. I have strict rules—how I prepare myself, how I protect myself. I only cut at the precise stroke of midnight. And always,always, I promise I’ll never cut again.
But the record of how many times I’ve lied is carved into my thighs. Now, Wolf knows how truly revolting I am.
As he collapses into the armchair by the window, I claw at his bowtie around my throat. Scrambling to the edge of the bed, I fight for the duvet and sheets, neatly folded back by some maid who provided turn-down service hours ago. I’m desperate to cover my shame.
“Fuck,” Wolf says. The single syllable is glacier-cold, as smooth as a pane of glass. Then: “You’re a Red Cap Raider.”
For a single heartbeat, his words make no sense. They have nothing to do with my scars. But then I remember the tattoo on my thigh.
I got it four years ago, when we Raiders worked our first big ransomware attack. That night, watching the bank balance rise in my offshore accounts, I calculated how much money I could hand over to Da, what I could give him to pay back his debts.
He took it—of course he did—without a feckin’ word. He didn’t say he was proud of me. He didn’t even say thank you.
That was the first time I realized my own father hates me. My mother, too. They can’t stand taking my money, but they can’t survive without the extra dosh. Just by living and breathing, I’m a constant reminder that they fail at running the Canton Crew.
Realizing that after my first successful raid, my need to cut was so strong I almost boked. But there were hours and hours to survive until midnight.
So I left the house in Baltimore and got my Red Cap tattoo.
And I continue to hand over the money I get raiding because I’m an idiot daughter who thinks someday, some way, my parents may actually come to love me. Besides, I’m a mob princess. That’s my fate—to help my clan, same as my mother, same as my grandmother, same as all the other Lynch women before me.
Now I finally answer Wolf. “Yeah. I am.”
“Just to be clear,” he says. “You ran the job this morning. Against Banque Wagner.”
