“I think it still works.” They would be a pair. Chelsea with her limping walk and she with a bullet wound in her arm. Yes, they were real physical threats.
“Charlotte, do you think he’s really dead?” Chelsea asked, the question ringing in the near-silent room.
Vladimir Denisovitch. Their father. Their abuser. The man who had beaten Chelsea so badly that her legs had never been the same again. The one who had turned Charlotte into a trained killer because no one would suspect such a soft girl. “I don’t know.”
She wouldn’t believe it until she saw it. But her father’s death would only solve one of her problems. It probably opened up a hundred more, including the fact that her husband would eventually suspect she’d been lying to him. She’d worked so hard to gain his trust, and it was all shattered now.
“Are we going back to the States? I want to go home, Charlotte. Not to where we lived, just back to America. But what if Dad’s men find us?”
“Then we’ll have to kill them.”
Chelsea looked up at her, and for the first time Charlie saw the deep strength in her sister’s eyes. For so long, Chelsea had been her burden. She loved her sister. She’d also sacrificed most of her life for her. But now, Chelsea reached for her hands and steadied them. “Did you really marry that man? Ian Taggart?”
“I love him.” At least one person in the world should know the truth. “I didn’t mean to. It was stupid, but I love him.”
“Can we go to him?”
And risk Nelson taking them all out? God, would Ian even speak to her after everything she’d done? “I don’t think so. I don’t even know where he is. I’m not sure why Nelson thinks I’ll be able to track him. Ian is an operative and a damn good one at that. I think I need time to figure everything out.”
She needed to find a way to be worthy of him. If she walked back into his life now, he might actually kill her. Her husband was a dangerous man, and she’d placed him and his entire operation in peril. He would take that seriously. There would be no light spankings followed by a little withheld orgasm.
No, his sub had betrayed him. He wouldn’t trust her again.
Unless she found a way to make it up to him.
Chelsea nodded. “Then we take our time and we get strong. I want to be strong now. I’ve figured a few things out. We’ve been trying to get out of this world, but we can’t. It will always pull us back in. We will always be Denisovitch’s daughters. We can shorten and Americanize our last name all we like. The men like Nelson will always know and they’ll want to use us.”
“We have to stay away.” She’d been trying to get out for years, but she’d become known for everything her father had trained her to do. He’d found her again at the age of thirteen and hadn’t waited long to start teaching her what it meant to be his daughter. He hadn’t had any sons, so he’d treated Charlotte like one. She’d run her first long con at fourteen. She’d made her first kill at the age of fifteen. Robbed her first bank on her seventeenth birthday. She’d done it all because her father would have killed her if she didn’t, but the stains were on her soul all the same.
And when she was twenty-six, she’d finally figured out what love was when a man who looked like a Viking had taken her in his arms and shown her an entirely different world. A world where she could trust someone enough to submit to him.
“He won’t let us. You heard what he said. He expects you to call him.”
Charlie nodded. “Yes. Me. Not you. When we get back to the States, you’re going to college, and I’ll handle this.”
Her sister held on to the table and looked her straight in the eyes. “I am done with letting you ruin your life. Hear me and hear me now. I know you think I’m just a cripple.”
“Chelsea, no.” Her sister was fragile, but she never meant to make her feel bad about it. Since their mother had been killed, Chelsea was her whole life.
She shook her head. “Yes, it’s how you see me and until now, it’s how I’ve acted. I’ve been a scared little mouse. I’ve let you give up everything for me. But not anymore. When we go home, I’m going to help you. I’ve learned a lot in the last few years. Papa made me learn how to hack into systems. I’m really good. I can write code, too. I can be helpful.”
“I don’t want that for you.” She’d been trying to get out of this world for her sister’s sake.
“And I don’t want you to lose the man you love, but I have to deal with it now, don’t I? No, if we can’t run from this world, then there’s one thing to do.”
Her heart hardened slightly as she realized the truth of her sister’s words. “We have to rule it.”
Chelsea nodded. “This world runs on information. So we become the center of it all. We use them the way they used us.”
She found her feet, her sister steady against her. They were just two girls against a world of black operations and money-fueled crime.
Suddenly she knew that she would win. She would have her husband back and she would bring down everyone who tried to stop her. Optimism. She had to have it. She had to believe that she could do everything she needed to.
If there was one thing she’d learned in her lifetime, it was that the world was a game.
She would win or she would die.
Chapter One
Dallas, TX
Five Years Later
Ian Taggart looked across the table at his previously dead wife and took in the changes the last five years had brought.
She was older. There were fine lines around her eyes that had been previously absent. Her hair was a reddish blonde, but it looked oddly good on her. It went with her stark blue eyes.
Death had been damn good to her. She was still the most stunning woman he’d ever seen. Her return from the dead had stirred more than his curiosity.
His cock was rock hard, but he wasn’t going to give in. Nope. Not this time.
“Tetraodontidae?” Ian asked after a very long, very tense few moments. He was curious about what she’d used to fake her death. Tetraodontidae was a good bet.
She’d shown up on his doorstep, all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and calling him Master. She’d gotten past his incredibly rigorous security system. His brother liked to call him paranoid, but Ian knew the truth. The world really was out to get him. That was what happened to spies. They rarely made it to old age, even the ones who got out.