Page 30 of Dirty Game (Broken Blood #1)

My legs give out completely, but she controls my fall, keeping the wire tight as I sink to my knees.

She's done this before, knows exactly how much pressure to apply, how long a person can go without air before permanent damage.

"I could kill you right now," she muses, like she's discussing the weather.

"Make it look like you killed yourself. Couldn't handle the pressure.

Couldn't compete with his past. He'd believe it.

You're so fucking fragile. So broken already.

Uncle who sold you, brother who burned you.

It would make perfect sense—poor little Rosalynn, finally found something good and couldn't handle it. "

My vision tunnels.

My hands stop clawing, falling limp to my sides.

This is it. This is how I die—not from my family's cruelty or a buyer's violence, but from the woman who had him first.

Who marked him permanently.

Who gave him what I never can.

Then, just as the darkness takes me completely, just as I'm ready to let go, she releases the wire.

I collapse, gasping, choking on air that burns like acid down my traumatized throat.

Each breath is a razor blade, each cough brings up flecks of blood.

My throat feels crushed, like she's restructured it from the inside.

I can't see through the tears streaming down my face, can't hear through the roaring in my ears.

When my vision clears—slowly, painfully—she's crouched in front of me, studying my face like a scientist examining a specimen.

She cocks her head to the side, and she reaches out to wipe a tear from my cheek with mock gentleness.

"But killing you would be too easy," she says, her voice philosophical. "Death is so final, so... boring. I want you alive. Want you to watch as he chooses his son over you. Want you to see the exact moment you realize you were never enough. Never the first choice. Never the priority."

She stands, smooths her perfect hair that hasn't moved despite the violence. "Besides, Mikhail has plans for you. Special plans. He's quite creative when it comes to breaking pretty things."

I try to speak, but only a croak comes out, my vocal cords traumatized.

"Oh, and Rosalynn?" She pauses at the door, hand on the frame.

"That thing you found in the shipping manifests?

The weapons? We wanted you to find them.

Every breadcrumb, every pattern, every discrepancy—all carefully planted for your clever little brain to discover.

Varrick's walking into a trap right now, and it's all thanks to your brilliant discovery. "

My blood turns to ice. The port. The weapons. I sent him into an ambush.

The door opens. She calls out sweetly, maternal mask back in place, "Dante, baby, come say goodbye to Daddy's friend."

He appears in the doorway, sees me on the floor, and his swollen eye widens.

He knows this scene, has probably seen his mother leave other women like this.

"Is she hurt?" His small voice carries genuine concern.

"She just fell," Sienna lies smoothly, naturally. "Clumsy thing. Some people just can't handle the altitude up here."

Dante looks between us, and I see Varrick's intelligence in that small face, see him processing the lie.

He knows she's lying, but he also knows better than to contradict her.

That's probably what earned him the bruised eye in the first place.

He walks over to me, careful and quiet, each step deliberate.

He stops just out of reach, then slowly, like he's approaching a wounded animal, comes closer.

Reaches into his pocket and pulls out a small toy car—red, expensive-looking, the kind of detailed model that Varrick would buy. A Lamborghini, I realize. Perfect in miniature.

"For you," he says quietly, pressing it into my hand with both of his small ones. "Sharing makes people feel better when you're sad."

My heart breaks completely, shatters into pieces that will never fit back together right.

"Thank you," I whisper, my voice destroyed, barely audible.

He nods solemnly, like we've completed an important transaction.

Then he leans closer, so close I can smell his little boy smell—soap and something sweet, maybe juice.

Then he's gone, returning to his mother's side, taking her hand like the good boy he's been trained to be.

The elevator descends, taking with it the boy with Varrick's eyes and the woman who had him first.

Who had him when he could still smile like that. Who knew him before he became the monster I love.

I make it to the bathroom just in time to vomit.

Everything comes up—breakfast that Varrick made me eat, coffee he brought me exactly how I like it, bile that burns my already destroyed throat.

I heave until there's nothing left, then curl up on the cold tile floor, pressing my cheek to the marble because it's the only thing that feels real.

My phone buzzes. Three missed calls from Varrick.

A text:

Something's wrong. Getting out now. Don't leave the penthouse.

Rosalynn, answer me.

I'm coming back. Stay safe.

I try to call him back, but my hands are shaking too hard to unlock the phone.

The numbers swim before my eyes, and even if I could dial, what would I say?

That his ex-girlfriend just strangled me for fun?

That she brought his bruised son to show me what I'll never be—the mother of his child, his first love, his equal?

That I know he'll choose blood over me because that's what men like him do? Because blood is permanent, and I'm just borrowed time?

I pull myself up using the sink, muscles screaming in agony.

In the mirror, I look like death warmed over.

There's already a line of bruising across my throat where the wire was, perfect and precise, just like her training.

My lip is split from her slap, already swelling.

My eyes are bloodshot from oxygen deprivation.

I look exactly like what I am—a woman in over her head, drowning in a world of violence she'll never truly belong to.

But I can't leave. Won't leave.

Because even with everything—Sienna being right about being second choice, knowing I'll never give him children, being broken beyond repair—Varrick is my monster.

The one who feeds me when I forget to eat, bringing me soup at midnight, and watching until I finish it.

Who killed Tommy Fitzgerald before even meeting me properly, just because he'd heard the man hurt me.

Who destroyed a room full of toys he bought for a son he'd never met, then let me hold him while his body shook with rage and grief.

He won't hurt me the way my family has.

He'll destroy me in entirely new ways, but at least they'll be ways I choose.

Ways that come with gentle hands and fierce protection and a love that might kill us both.

Right now, he's the only person I can trust, and Sienna is trying to destroy that.

Trying to poison the one good thing in my life with doubt and fear.

I splash cold water on my face, change into real clothes—jeans, one of Varrick's hoodies that covers the bruising on my throat. I need to warn him about the trap, need to?—

The lights cut out.

For a moment, there's perfect darkness.

Then emergency power kicks in a second later, bathing everything in red like we're already covered in blood.

The security system starts beeping—a breach alert that sounds like screaming.

My phone rings.

Jensen.

Fuck, he’s alive!

Thank God.

"Miss, we have a problem. Multiple hostiles in the building. They took out the main power, the backup generators. They're?—"

A gunshot.

Then another.

Then silence.

The line goes dead.

I hear the elevator moving. Coming up.

But I didn't call it, and if Jensen is down, no one should be able to?—

I run to Varrick's office, to the hidden panel behind the destroyed monitors.

My fingers fumble with the latch, nails catching on the metal.

His emergency gun is still there—a Glock 19, loaded, safety off.

I've never fired a weapon before, but how hard can it be?

Point and squeeze. Point at center mass and squeeze, right?

The elevator dings, the sound cheerful and wrong in the red-lit penthouse.

I position myself behind the desk, gun raised in both hands like I've seen Varrick do, trying to remember everything I've observed.

Steady breathing. Don't anticipate the recoil. Don't close your eyes. Shoot to kill because they won't hesitate.

The doors open with mechanical slowness.

It's not Sienna. Not Jensen coming to tell me everything's okay.

It's Mikhail Kazimir himself, surrounded by six men with automatic weapons that make my Glock look like a toy.

He's everything brutal Russia produces—scarred face like a topographical map of violence, dead eyes that have seen too much and felt too little, a smile that promises pain as an art form.

He's wearing an expensive suit that doesn't quite hide the prison tattoos crawling up his neck, the kind of ink that tells stories of murders and years served.

"Hello, Rosalynn," he says in accented English, each word carefully pronounced like he's savoring them. "My wife says you're ready for pickup."

I pull the trigger.

The gun clicks.

Empty. Not even a round in the chamber.

Mikhail laughs, a sound like breaking bones, like suffering given voice.

"You think we didn't account for everything?

Your boyfriend's predictable. Emergency gun in the office, always loaded.

Panic room behind the bedroom mirror, reinforced steel.

Exit route through the kitchen vent leads to the service stairs.

" He steps closer, and his men fan out, surrounding me.

"We know all his tricks. Had months to study them while you were playing house. "

"He'll kill you for this."

"He'll try." Mikhail's smile widens, showing gold teeth that glint in the emergency lighting. "But first, he'll have to choose. Save his son from my wife's attention—and she can be very creative with her attention—or save his whore from mine. Who do you think he'll pick?"

I already know the answer. Blood over everything. The way it's always been, the way it always will be.

"Then I'll die his," I say, echoing my earlier words to Sienna, lifting my chin with whatever dignity I have left.

"Oh, you're not going to die. Not yet. Not for a long time." Mikhail nods to his men. "Death's too easy. Too quick. We have such plans for you. Sienna wants you broken, not dead. Wants you to beg Varrick to choose his son. Wants you to be the one to tell him to let you go."

The men move toward me. I could run, but where? The penthouse is a cage now. Could fight, but with what? An empty gun and desperation?

In the end, I do neither.

I stand straight, chin up, and let them take me.

Because if I'm going to be destroyed, I'll do it with whatever dignity I have left.

I'll be the woman Varrick taught me to be—someone who faces the violence head-on instead of cowering from it.

One of the men produces a hood—black cloth that smells like chloroform and old fear.

Before he puts it over my head, I take one last look around the penthouse.

The chloroform makes the world fade to black in waves, each breath pulling me deeper under.

But I clutch Dante's toy car so tight it cuts into my palm, the small pain keeping me conscious a few seconds longer.

A small piece of a boy who might have been mine in another life, in a world where I wasn't payment for someone else's debt, where I could give Varrick children, where I could be enough.

A reminder that some wars are lost before they begin.

But even knowing I've lost, even as the darkness takes me under completely, I can't stop loving the man who'll choose his blood over mine.

My monster.

My destroyer.

My Varrick.

The darkness takes me under, and my last coherent thought is a prayer: Let him save his son.

Let something good come from my sacrifice.

Let me matter, even if just as the woman who loved him enough to understand why he had to let me go.

Let him remember me as more than just the virgin payment who tried to be something more.

Let him know I forgive him for the choice he has to make.

Because I do. I forgive him for choosing blood.

It's what I would do if I had any blood worth choosing.