COLE
“I’m coming home.” I’m holding my phone with one hand and picking up my carry-on bag with the other.
A roped-off corner of my mind is marching through logistics. Prince’s jet is available at the Sun Valley airfield. If he won’t let me take it, I can have my own pilot here in five hours. That’s too long. I’ll fly commercial. The goal is to get home now.
“Don’t do that,” Kate insists. “Everything is fine.”
“You weregassedin front of our house.”
“And the army of men you’ve hired to protect me did their jobs.” She sounds too calm, too quiet. She’s fuckinghandlingme.
“Dammit, Kate?—”
“This is how the bratva works.”
“How the fuck did he know you’d be crossing the street?”
“The driver could have watched from a cross-street for hours. The bratva are just throwing their weight around. Making theirpresence known. This is no different to any thug walking into a shop and saying, ‘Nice little place you have here. It would be a shame if it caught fire.’ Nikolai Tarasovwantsyou to be afraid.”
“I’m not afraid. I’m fucking livid.”
“Don’t give him the satisfaction of seeing you run home. Think of the text we’ll get the instant you duck behind the gate, tail between your legs.”
I want to argue, but the computer running my brain beneath all my messy emotions tells me Kate is right.
She takes advantage of my silence to press her argument. “I’ve known men like Nikolai Tarasov my entire life. I understand how his mind works. He wins if you come home. Don’t let him win.”
Taking a deep breath, I look out the window of my high-end suite. Now, in the middle of summer, the mountains are green. Ski trails carve their flanks like riverbeds.
I have a meeting in two hours with the founder of SparkChat, the most popular social media platform since TikTok went wild. Prince is hosting a cocktail party tonight, just the Diamond Ring members. There’s another tomorrow, where I’ll meet the presidents and CEOs of Silicon Valley’s ten largest corporations.
“You don’t set foot outside that house until I’m home,” I say.
“Agreed.”
“Not for anything. You can go without seeing Granny and Breagha for three days.”
“You’re right.”
“Have anything you need delivered.”
“Of course.”
“I don’t care if Drew Cameron is stapled to your back, you aren’t leaving for any reason, for any amount of time.”
“I promise.”
Part of me worries she’s giving in too easily. Part of me realizes she was just as terrified by this morning’s attack as I was.
“I’ll be home on Thursday,” I finally say.
“I’ll be waiting.”
I want to tell her so much more. I want her to understand how my heart stopped when Jacobson called to tell me about the drive-by. I want her to know my knees failed; I heard his report from the floor of this luxury prison. I want her to feel the same crimson rage that blinded me, the absolute certainty that I would rip off Tarasov’s balls and stuff them down his fucking throat if he turned up anywhere within a hundred miles of me.
Instead, I say, “I love you.”
She sighs as if she can’t figure out how it came to this. “I love you too.”
