Ruthless Creatures

There’s snow on Christmas. Kage gives Nat a Russian love knot—three interlocking rings that represent the three traits of love: softness, hardness, and rarity. Kage can’t get her an engagement ring because only Max can decide whom Kage marries. Max won’t allow Kage to have a relationship any time soon since he wants Kage alone and focused. Nat cries. Kage wants Nat to say she loves him; Nat wants to smash his toes with a hammer.

To punish Kage and vent her frustration, Nat spanks him with her wooden hairbrush. He becomes aroused, and she manually stimulates him while also feeling aroused. After 10 spanks, Kage wants to spank Nat. They develop a color system to communicate safe words: “Red” means stop, “yellow” means that they’re unsure but to continue, and “green” means that it’s pleasurable and to keep going. Nat enjoys the spanking and asks him to spank her harder.

Nat performs oral sex on Kage before he ties her up with a stocking and performs oral sex on her. He then blindfolds her with a scarf and uses one of her vibrators on her as she performs oral sex on him. Eventually, he penetrates her with his penis, speaks to her in Russian, and orders her to orgasm.

Before Kage leaves, he thanks Nat for bringing purpose to his life. 

Sloane arrives and congratulates Nat for getting together with Kage. Sloane has already met another attractive prospect—Stavros bored her and seemed to worry more than her grandmother.

By eavesdropping on Stavros, Sloane discovered that several mafia families had a violent meeting in Boston, Massachusetts, due to the La Cantina shooting. The Russians are in charge of the ports, so they control the illicit goods shipments. The Russians don’t traffic people, but they move drugs and weapons. Kage has called another meeting in New York.

Nat’s dog, Mojo, growls at the window, but Nat doesn’t find anyone or anything suspicious. Nat jokes about her unloaded shotgun, and Sloane notes her loaded magnum before returning to the subject of Kage and Nat. Sloane claims that Nat looks like someone who is sexually satisfied. Sloane speculates about the size of Kage’s penis and comments on the love-knot ring that he gave Nat. Nat calls out Sloane’s lack of romantic feelings as stereotypically masculine and then makes fun of Sloane’s health-conscious diet.

The New York meeting takes place on the Lower East Side (another gritty New York City neighborhood). Kage orders his subordinates to close down the ports so that no illegal products reach their destinations. He suspends peacetime rules. When Aleksander, an underling, refers to Kage as the “big boss,” Kage bristles at this insult to Max and forces Aleksander to cut off one of his fingers.

Kage asks Mikhail, a young but trustworthy member of the Bratva, to look into the lack of money coming from Stavros’s online gambling venture. Then, Kage goes outside and talks to Nat over the phone. She tells him she loves him, putting Kage on the verge of tears.

Kage and Nat don’t speak until the middle of January. As Nat complains to Sloane about Kage’s absence, he arrives and catapults into her bed. Nat is elated, and they have intense sex. He claims that Nat has transformed him from a monster into a man. Still, he’s done terrible things and faces death at all times. Being with Nat puts his life in jeopardy.

Nat suspects that adversity is on the horizon. She has anal sex with Kage, saying “green” as he moves from a vibrator, to his fingers, to his penis. Nat feels a short reprieve from the coming storm.

Kage stares at Nat while she sleeps. He’d fight whole armies if she asked him to. When she wakes, Kage jokes about having left the head of a dead horse in Chris’s bed to get Chris to stop harassing her—an allusion to a scene from the mafia film The Godfather (1972). In reality, Kage just forcefully talked to Chris on the phone. 

Kage must leave for a month; before he goes, he loads Nat’s shotgun.