Page 12 of Dirty Game (Broken Blood #1)

CHAPTER SIX

Varrick

The room is silent as we file in and sit.

The only windows are shatterproof and mirrored, deadening the city’s neon and giving back a reflection that looks nothing like the world outside.

We keep the lights low—an old habit, learned from the years when our father’s face was the only thing you ever wanted to see illuminated in a dark room.

On the table, there are maps, ledgers, brass trays of hand-rolled cigarettes, a holster with no gun in it, and the Bane family sigil carved into the wood.

Above us, the chandelier: a spread of cut glass that dates back to before I was even fucking born.

I remember being a toddler and watching them catch the light, mesmerized.

I sit at the head, not because I care for the symbolism but because every time I stand there, it reminds the other two where the real center of gravity is.

Korrin is already there, a black hulk in a chair too small for him, turning his old Marine knife over and over in his palm.

The sound is hypnotic, like a metronome keeping time for impending war.

Cyrus is late by exactly forty-one seconds.

He never runs. The only time I’ve ever seen the man hurry was to catch a chess piece in mid-fall after the board got knocked over in a gunfight.

He enters in a dark blue suit, the kind that’s meant to look casual but costs more than most people’s cars, hair mussed, eyes alight with the little-girl glee of someone about to win a bet.

“Miss me?” he says. He’s carrying a folder. It’s thin, which means he thinks he’s being clever.

Korrin’s eyes cut to mine, then back to the knife. “About as much as a root canal.”

“Let’s keep this civil.” My voice is calm.

My brothers are more of the act now, think later type.

In my mind, I’m already replaying the last ten minutes with Rosalynn, wanting to be back with her instead of here, with these oafs. “What do you have, Cyrus?”

He flips the file open and lays out a single photograph: a woman, tall, dark hair, tan trench, caught mid-stride outside the Russian’s hotel.

“Sienna,” he says, and the temperature in the room drops a full three degrees. “She’s alive. Moscow’s dogs have her on a leash, but she slipped them tonight. Came straight for the waterfront.”

Korrin doesn’t move.

I watch the muscle jump along his jaw. “Why are we talking about Sienna?” The knife in his hand is still, suddenly, as if he might put it through the table.

Cyrus shrugs. “Because the girl’s a problem. We should have cleaned her up when we had the chance.” He slides the picture my way, then sits, steepling his fingers. “And because I think King’s got himself a new one.”

My turn. I don’t let the mask slip. “Might I remind you, that bitch was carrying my child. My heir . As far as the ‘new one’… You’re referring to the Lombardi girl.”

He smiles like a hyena. “Rosalynn.”

I don’t let my mask slip. My brothers could be like fucking dogs with a bone. “She’s a payment for a debt. Nothing more.”

Korrin snorts, the knife again in motion, a nervous tell that he’d break his own finger before he’d ever admit to fear.

“You want her. You keep her in the penthouse. You watch her work, you send your own guards to follow her anytime she leaves your sight. If she were anyone else, you’d have her caged underground by now. ”

“She’s useful and she’s finding our money. Wouldn’t do us well for the best numbers man in years to die on us, now would it?”

Cyrus’s voice cuts in, surgical. “You’re a terrible liar, Varrick.”

For a second, I almost smile.

If anyone else talked to me that way, I’d have them picking up their teeth off the rug.

With these two, it’s as ritualistic as making morning coffee.

I lean back, let the chair creak, and study the lines of the map in front of me. “She’s not Sienna.”

“No,” Korrin says, voice flat. “She’s worse. Sienna was a game. This one could be real.”

The words sting, but not because they’re true.

They hurt because the truth was never supposed to matter.

“She’s a Lombardi,” I say, as if that settles anything. “You want to tell me you don’t have nightmares about the shit that family did to us?”

Korrin grins, slow and wolfish, but it doesn’t touch his eyes. “I sleep fine, King. The difference is, I know which Lombardi to trust. None of them.”

Cyrus’s gaze sharpens. “You really think she hasn’t noticed? You left her alone in the office last night. She fixed every error in the books—three years of shit our own men couldn’t see. She’s smarter than Sienna ever was.”

I don’t respond, because there’s nothing to say.

I know what Rosalynn did to the ledgers.

I spent the night watching her work through the security cams, memorizing the movement of her hands, the way she lost herself in the numbers like the world could only be safe if every column aligned.

“She’s an asset,” I repeat, but it comes out wrong, too clipped.

Korrin sets his knife on the table, blade pointed toward me. “You’re attached.”

“I’m aware.” I keep my voice as dead as the city outside the window.

He leans in, close enough that I can smell the sweat on his skin, the iron tang of old blood on the knife’s handle. “Don’t fuck it up, King. Last time you fell for a girl, the whole east side burned, you lost your fucking kid and almost your fucking life.”

The room goes quiet.

I remember the fire—how it crawled up the sides of the building, painting the night orange and black, the smell of burning flesh and hope.

I remember Sienna running for her life, my baby safely growing inside her.

A baby I’ve never met.

“This isn’t the same.”

Korrin sits back, knife retrieved, spinning now in lazy circles. “Sure. That’s what you said last time.”

Cyrus closes the folder with a snap. “So, what’s the plan? She can’t stay here forever. Marco will come again, and this time he won’t just bring goons. He’ll bring everything he’s got. Word is he feels disrespected by you.”

“Let him.” I can feel the static building behind my eyes, a migraine born of too much adrenaline and too little sleep. “If he touches her again, I’ll kill him. Not just his hand—him.”

Korrin’s grin turns savage. “That’s the King I remember.”

Cyrus checks his watch. “Are we done here?”

He sounds bored, but I see his thumb brushing the chess piece tattooed on his wrist. He’s never as relaxed as he looks.

“Go,” I tell them.

They rise at the same time, Korrin moving first—always ready to stand between me and a bullet, even when I don’t ask.

Cyrus follows, pausing at the door.

He glances back, and for a second, I see something like pity. “Careful, King. You don’t have many pieces left.”

Then he’s gone, leaving the room colder than before.

I sit alone, my chest tight with warnings I can’t afford to ignore.

I stare at the photograph of Sienna on the table, her face blurred in mid-motion, and think of the woman sleeping two floors up, blue eyes sharp enough to cut glass.

Upstairs, the penthouse is a different kind of fortress—glass, concrete, and too many empty corners.

I don’t bother with the lights.

The city below is enough: a thousand pinpricks, each one a problem waiting to be solved or a life waiting to be snuffed.

I pour myself a drink, neat, and let the first swallow burn all the way to my stomach.

I’m not sure what I want to feel.

Vengeance? Nostalgia? The sharp edge of guilt?

The taste of whiskey reminds me of nights in my father’s study, the only place I ever looked small.

My phone vibrates. I ignore it.

Somewhere below, the guards are resetting—scrubbing blood off tile, rearming, making bets on who’ll take the next bullet for me.

Out here, alone, the only thing I can hear is the low hum of the HVAC and the clink of glass as I refill.

I go to the balcony.

The wind tonight is vicious, carving through my shirt and reminding me that I’m alive in a way nothing else can.

I watch the street, half-waiting for Marco to make a run at my gates, half-expecting the Russians to come back with more than a few men next time.

The urge to destroy something is almost physical, but there’s nothing left to break that hasn’t already been broken.

I pause outside the library, listening.

Not for threats, there are none, not here, but for the one thing in this shithole that doesn’t want to kill me.

Her breathing is audible from the hallway.

Quiet, shallow, measured even in sleep.

I open the door soundlessly, a trick learned in houses where fathers don’t want to be disturbed.

Rosalynn is asleep at the desk.

She’s made a nest out of my records: printouts, receipts, ancient ledgers that belonged to men I’d sooner piss on than remember.

Her cheek is pillowed on the crook of one arm, the other extended across the papers, hand still curled around a pen.

She’s wearing a black t-shirt that might have once been mine, sleeves rolled up over thin wrists, the blue from the last bruise bruise just starting to yellow at the edges.

Her hair is loose, fanned across the table, strands caught under her hand and stuck to the ink on the page.

I watch her for a minute.

Maybe two.

She’s not beautiful, not in the way women are in magazines or memory, but there’s a symmetry to her that’s unsettling.

A precision. Even sleeping, her face is set: a jaw that refuses to soften, eyelids flickering with dreams that are never gentle.

I step closer.

She doesn’t wake.

I scan the papers scattered around her.

She’s been at this all night, my entire financial past dissected and reorganized.

Numbers rewritten in perfect columns, every deviation flagged in red.

She’s even corrected my father’s old ledgers, which is a level of disrespect I find almost charming.

I reach for her shoulder, intending to shake her awake, but stop myself.

My hand hovers over the curve of her back.

The memory of her skin, blood-warm and trembling under my touch, is fresh enough to make me forget the warnings.

Instead, I scoop her up.

She’s lighter than she looks—bones like a bird, all hollow and sinew.

She doesn’t wake, but her body stiffens reflexively before relaxing into my arms.

I carry her down the hall, past the security cameras where the feed is being monitored.

Stopping to stare a moment, I nod when the red light blinks off.

The message is clear: if you see the boss carrying a woman, you didn’t.

The master suite is colder than the rest of the house.

She shivers against me, burrows closer without waking.

I set her on the bed, careful not to jar the arm with the bruise.

For a second, I watch her again: chest rising and falling, lips parted slightly, a smudge of ink on her cheekbone.

I should leave. Go back to the room, pace out the rest of my insomnia until morning.

Instead, I linger, drawn in by the gravity of her sleep.

There’s something in the way she lets herself be carried—like she’s always known she’d have to rely on someone else to move her when she couldn’t do it herself.

Or maybe it’s just exhaustion.

She stirs as I start to pull away. Eyes slit open, glazed with confusion.

For a moment, I think she’s going to panic, but then her gaze lands on me and she relaxes, tension draining from her jaw.

“Sorry,” she murmurs, the word barely formed.

“For what?”

She shrugs, eyelids fluttering. “Didn’t mean to… fall asleep.” Her voice is soft, almost like a child’s.

“It’s my house,” I say. “You’re allowed.”

She closes her eyes, then opens them again. “Will you stay?”

The question lands like a bullet. I’m not sure if she means the room, the bed, or something bigger.

I don’t know what to say, so I sit on the edge of the mattress.

My hands rest on my knees, knuckles gone white.

I stare at the carpet, at the pattern in the weave, at anything but her.

“I’m not tired,” I say, which is a lie.

She’s watching me. I feel it, a weight on the side of my face. “I won’t tell anyone.”

I laugh, a dry crackle. “What, that the great King Bane needs a nap?”

Her lips curve. It’s not quite a smile, but it’s closer than anything I’ve seen from her awake. “That you’re not a monster all the time.”

The words don’t sting.

If anything, they settle something inside me.

I lie back, fully clothed, arms crossed behind my head.

She shifts, inching closer, until she’s curled into the space between my chest and shoulder.

Her head rests on my arm.

I can smell her hair—shampoo, strawberry something, and underneath it, the metallic trace of adrenaline.

She’s asleep in seconds. I can feel the heat of her, the faint pulse at her temple.

I don’t move.

For the first time in five years, the ceiling isn’t crawling with memories or ghosts.

My mind is quiet.

There’s only the sound of her breathing and the faint thump of her heart, steady as a metronome.

I drift off and when I wake, she’s still there. The room is blue with dawn.

She hasn’t moved, except her hand, which is balled in the fabric of my shirt. The sensation is so foreign I almost miss it: a kind of peace.

For a moment, I let myself believe in it.

Then the phone buzzes in the hall, and I remember who I am, and what I’m supposed to be.

But I don’t get up.

Not yet.

I didn’t dream of monsters and men, and right now, I don’t feel like putting on the mask of a man without a monster.

Instead, I pull her closer into me and inhale before softly kissing the top of her head.

Of all the medications I’ve tried, legal and illegal, she’s the only thing that’s held the dark at bay while I sleep.

And I’m not sure how the fuck I feel about that.