But Pyotr Tarasov ruined all of that. When I let the bratva brigadier through Cole’s iron gate, I closed the door on my entire life with Red Cap. I’ve lost the familiar squabbling of our online chats. The visceral thrill of destroying imaginary wintry creatures. The financial boost of robbing poorly guarded banks.
I press my fingers into the tattoo etched at the top of my right thigh, a red felt hat, the type Robin Hood wore. It’s outlined in black, with the feather streaming a tail of ones and zeroes. I got it when my team completed our first successful raid.
I don’t need the Raiders. I don’t need anyone.
I lose the next three hours to structuring my first solo raid.
I already have a long list of potential targets, but they were given to Red Cap by MaskedMarauder, by Pyotr Tarasov. At best, they’re businesses the bratva especially wants to hit. They might be traps that would drop me into the middle of a federal investigation. Worst case, they’ll expose me to other organized crime families inclined to answer any invasion with death. I can’t trust even one of the links.
After scrambling on my own for far too many hours, I identify a bank in Malta that is backstopping its accounts with a new cryptocurrency. I read through their documents three times, trying to understand exactly what they’re doing, but the words keep dissolving into gibberish. I need someone who hasa better understanding of banking systems. That was always the expertise of DarkMoney666, another Red Cap Raider.
Skipping over the financial details for now, I start to structure a hacking tool to penetrate the bank’s crypto scheme. Every approach I come up with will require a massive surge of computer resources at a handful of crucial points. I don’t have a server farm. Shaddow always handled that for the Raiders.
More annoyed than ever, I start to consider what data I’m likely to glean from the entire operation. I may end up with actual money I can channel into my own account. But the real haul will be the bank customers’ government identification numbers, passport IDs and social security numbers, which can all be sold on the dark web. I’ll have a table of email addresses and passwords too. But I’ve never been an expert at navigating the dark web. I had IceKiller to wade through that swamp.
Red Cap wasn’t perfect. The guys were immature, slagging each other over anything and everything. They were quick to grab the glory for each successful conquest and even faster to shift the blame when things went tits-up. But now I’m lost without them.
Plus, I miss the feeling of belonging. Loneliness feels like a physical weight, burrowing through my breastbone like termites through a building’s joists. My tattoo burns like it’s one day into healing.
I take a slug of cold coffee and hunch my shoulders. My bare office walls look stark instead of professional. My desk—empty except for my computer—seems far too large for the room.
Pushing my luxury chair to the side, I start to pace. I know the jagged energy sparking across my shoulders—the feeling of being locked in a cage. It’s how I felt every time Da took my dosh without a single word of thanks. It’s what Mam triggered whenever she uttered her favorite sentence in the world: “A Lynch woman offers up her pain to the clan.”
I’m in pain, and I’m nowhere near my feckin’ clan. Every word inside my head twists into a feral snarl. Knives start to whisper when I feel like this.
I won’t cut. I made a promise, and I’m keeping to it, even if I can’t beg Cole to help me the way he did yesterday.
God, I miss him. I’d never admit the truth to Cole’s face, but I long for his cold certainty that he knows what’s best for me. His calm composure when I lash out in self-defense. His tiny, satisfied smile every time I prove he was right.
And that’s another piece of the seething anger that ripples beneath my skin: I don’twantto miss my husband. To need him. To be the kind of woman who falls apart because her man is gone for one single, solitary day.
A month ago, if I felt this wild I’d rampage through the house, finding ways to punish Cole for leaving me. I could rearrange his precious art collection. Splash bleach over every black garment in his closet. Take one of the cars from the garage and drive it too fast and too far. Wreak havoc with the Red Cap Raiders.
The Raiders provided escape. Winter Reckoning was a refuge too. Without them, I’m stripped bare.
But they’re gone. And Cole is too, at least until tonight.
So I have to learn to wait. To be patient. To be alone.
Catching a screech of frustration against the back of my throat, I throw myself back in my chair and pull my computer close. I forbid myself to look at the clock in the corner of the display.
I’ll work without the Raiders. I’ll search for new online targets. And maybe —I hate the fact that my brain even whispers this thought—the universe will offer up some wee miracle, and Cole will return home early.
8
COLE
Still smelling like a refugee from a Boy Scout Jamboree, I pace my office like a caged animal. It’s almost ten o’clock, hours since I served my time at the World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest and drove home from the Dover airfield, collecting three speeding tickets along the way.
Every cell in my body screams for me to do something more than prowl from my desk to the wall of computer monitors. My fists want to destroy the speed bag in the fully outfitted gym at the far end of the second floor. Better yet, I could wake Kate and take her downstairs to the dungeon…
But neither bruised knuckles nor dominating my sub will change the message glaring from the central screen displayed on my office wall:What will your clients think when they see this?
I paid off this blackmailing motherfucker ten days ago: One hundred million dollars, transferred according to his demands.
I knew it was a mistake when I did it. Blackmailers are never satisfied with one payout. Once they’ve found the soft underbelly, they rip out another bite and another and another, until their victims bleed dry.
I should know. I watched the vicious animal who shoved Megan and me into this world destroy more marks than I can count. Shannon considered extortion the logical extension of all the other cons she ran. Game after game, she threatened to shame her targets in front of their families, their employers, and the public at large.
