Page 3 of Dirty Game (Broken Blood #1)

CHAPTER TWO

Varrick

This place lives for the dark—the only people out after midnight are predators and prey.

I press my forehead to the glass, watching the lights crawl across the bridge like ants devouring a corpse.

Five a.m., and I’m still pacing.

The office feels smaller the longer I spend inside it.

Too many deals, too many bodies stacked between these four walls.

I drain the last of my whiskey and let the sip rest on my tongue before I swallow.

Heat, burn, clarity.

The bottle’s on my desk, within arm’s reach.

I don’t go back for it.

I watch my own reflection in the window, dark hair cropped close, jaw clenched, eyes sunk so deep you’d think I sleep with the dead.

Maybe I do.

My shirt’s open at the collar.

There’s blood on my sleeve, just a thumbprint, dried to rust.

I haven’t changed since what happened earlier.

There’s an art to controlling your own violence.

The deeper it runs, the quieter it gets.

My father used to say real power doesn’t need to announce itself, but he was full of shit.

Power doesn’t announce, it warns.

The way a wolf snarls before it lunges.

The leather sofa behind me creaks with memory.

Last week, two men in suits, one from Chicago, one from New York, sat there and tried to outbluff each other over a warehouse full of guns.

They both left alive. It was an off night.

I walk the room again, tracking from the matte black shelving, lined with photographs of my brothers in various stages of bloodied youth, to the antique desk.

It’s a beautiful thing.

Heavy, uncompromising.

I inherited it from my father, Viktor Bane, along with the city and the legacy of shit he left in my name.

On the desk, a single folder.

Thin, manila, unremarkable except for the contents: ledger pages in Rosalynn Lombardi’s hand.

Numbers so tight and neat, you almost wouldn’t believe such an abused girl would have the mind for this.

I flick the folder open and scan it.

There, in the margin, a note: $426,000 discrepancy flagged in red.

My men had missed it.

She hadn’t.

Rosalynn.

Taking up bandwidth in my head when I should be strategizing.

The girl is a ticking time bomb wrapped in trauma.

The night she arrived, fresh off the Lombardi trade, she didn’t so much as blink at the blood spatter in the elevator.

She didn’t shrink when she saw me carving up her old family’s rat accountant, either.

She just looked at the mess, looked at me, and asked, “Do you want the hard drive decrypted by morning?”

Like she was asking something as simple as if I took my coffee black.

Maybe that’s what fucks with me the most.

Not the smarts, not the steady hands, but the way she refuses to be afraid of the monster in the room.

Not even a flinch.

I don’t know if that excites me… that she’s not afraid of me.

The phone rings.

I let it buzz twice.

Three times.

Never answer on the first.

On the fourth, I pick up.

“King.” My voice is quiet, steel on stone.

“Sir,” comes the voice from downstairs, security detail, loyal but not creative. “We have Marco Lombardi in the lobby. He’s making it very apparent he’s here to see his sister.”

I roll my tongue over the inside of my cheek, tasting the phantom of old copper.

“And?”

“He says if we don’t let him up so he can speak to all of us properly, he’ll start making noise. Media, cops, the works.”

Of course, he would. Marco’s never known when to cut his losses.

Like every Lombardi, he can’t see past his own reflection.

“Is Rosalynn aware?” I say, watching my own eyes narrow in the glass.

“She’s currently down here with him. I called the guest room before I called you sir, and I, uh… made the wrong decision. She came down straight away.”

Rage bubbles up within me.

How dare he?

“Hold him there. I’ll be down in five.” I hang up before I hear the yes, sir.

The glass in my hand is empty, but I set it down carefully.

My temper is rising, and if I don’t calm down before heading downstairs, I might kill this motherfucker.

As I head for the elevator, I brush my fingertips over the bloodstain on my sleeve.

Just a reminder. Some debts don’t wash out.

The elevator opens onto the lobby floor with a hydraulic sigh.

The air is colder down here, sharpened by the marble underfoot and the vaulted glass above.

Security lines the walls—my men, each one handpicked, each one bred for loyalty and nothing else.

They stand at attention, waiting for the signal to unleash hell or hold the line.

I give them neither.

Marco Lombardi is right where I expect him, posturing at the center of the foyer.

He’s bigger than the last time I saw him, bulked out with gym muscle and too many nights inhaling his own product.

His suit fits like armor.

But he’s not built for the type of violence my world demands.

You can always tell.

Rosalynn stands next to him, a couple of steps behind, held at the elbow in a grip so tight the tips of Marco’s fingers whiten with effort.

Her hair is out of its bun for once, falling over her eyes in tangled knots.

Yet, there’s no struggle in her posture.

She’s perfected the art of going limp, making herself the least interesting thing in the room.

But her pulse gives her away.

I see it flutter in the hollow of her throat. Fear.

Marco sees me and bares his teeth. “ King Bane. You really let yourself go, man. This place smells like a morgue.”

I take my time closing the distance.

My shoes are the only sound on the marble.

Click, pause, click, pause .

“Marco.” I don’t raise my voice.

I don’t need to.

He leans into Rosalynn, hissing something I don’t catch.

She doesn't flinch, just blinks slowly, like if she waits long enough she’ll wake up somewhere better.

“Let her go,” I say, calm as a corpse.

Marco’s grip tightens.

He holds her up like a trophy, twisting her wrist to display the bruising. “Just checking on the family investment. You know how it is.”

I smile.

It’s the same smile I wore the day I buried Marco’s uncle in five separate parcels across three counties. “You lost the privilege of family when your family used her to pay your father’s debt.”

He shrugs. “Yeah, well. Guess blood’s thicker than that shit you drink.”

That’s when I notice Rosalynn’s body turning towards me, a plea.

The way her shoulders draw in, defensive, but not from me.

From Marco.

“She will always be my sister, whore or not.”

I close the final two paces. “Take your hand off her, Marco.”

“Or what?”

The words hang there, daring me to finish them. But I don’t threaten. I promise.

I move faster than he expects.

My left hand closes around his wrist—his dominant hand, the one on her arm.

My thumb presses to the nerve under his watch strap, the same way I’d press a button to detonate a charge.

His fingers splay open, then lock up.

I twist hard, and the snap is loud as a grin spreads over my face.

Marco’s howl echoes off the marble, reverberating through the lobby and up into the glass dome.

Blood blossoms from his palm as the bone shreds the skin.

He staggers back, clutching his ruined hand. “You fuck?—!”

“She’s not your family anymore.” I step between them, shielding Rosalynn with my back. “She’s mine. Because you all gave her to me as payment, remember?” I say it quietly, so only he hears the last part. “So don’t touch what you can’t afford.”

Marco’s face warps between pain and hate.

He spits, blood and saliva painting the marble at my feet. “You’re dead. You’re both—” He can’t finish the sentence.

His bodyguard guides him toward the door, his screams curdling to whimpers as he goes.

The moment stretches.

The security team disperses, back to their duties, but the silence left behind is heavy.

I look down.

The blood from Marco’s hand has splattered Rosalynn’s shoes, pooling around her left instep.

Her face is blank.

Her breathing is shallow, measured in the smallest increments.

She’s still not moving.

I crouch to her level, careful not to touch. “Did he hurt you?”

She shakes her head, a movement so slight I might have imagined it.

Her eyes never leave the floor.

I watch her for a long second, then another.

There’s an imprint of Marco’s hand around her arm, already deepening to purple.

She holds her elbow with the other hand, not massaging it, just holding.

“He won’t come back,” I say.

She doesn’t say anything.

I let the silence stand. Sometimes it says more than a thousand reassurances.

I straighten, nod to the guard behind the front desk. “Clean this up.” I flick my gaze to the blood. “And get someone to sweep for his bodyguard next time. He’s not as harmless as he looks.”

They scatter to comply.

Rosalynn finally shifts, like a puppet whose strings are reluctantly reattached. She smooths her skirt and pushes her hair behind her ear, the motion automatic and deliberate.

“Your wrist,” I say.

“I’m fine.”

“You’re not.”

“I’ve been hurt worse.” There’s a finality to her voice, each word calculated to minimize her footprint but amplify her voice.

I reach for her wrist, slow, deliberate, giving her a chance to pull away.

She flinches, but doesn’t make a move to let go.

The bruising is bad.

I thumb her pulse—still fluttering.

She watches my hand, not my face.

“Next time you see your brother,” I say, “look him in the eye.”

She swallows. “Why?”

“He’s afraid of you now.” I dropped her wrist. “Use that fear.”

I start for the elevator.

She doesn’t follow until I press the button, then she moves in silence.

It takes forty seconds for the elevator to arrive, enough time for me to catalog every detail.

The echo of Marco’s scream.

The tremor in Rosalynn’s left hand.

The satisfaction curls low in my gut.

When the doors finally close, we’re alone in the steel box, just the two of us and the scent of copper and fear.

We ride in silence, floors ticking by in blue digital increments.

I watch her through the glass.

She doesn’t look away, not once.

Some debts don’t wash out.

Others, you pay in installments.

Tonight, I think, the balance shifted in my favor.

The doors to the penthouse open.