Page 35 of Dirty Game (Broken Blood #1)

“He’s safer with me than anyone else,” I say.

Then the world slows. Mikhail steps from the shadows, gun already out.

Mikhail smiles, all gums and rot. “I should’ve ended your bloodline when I had the chance, King. Sienna might be my wife, but she’s just a chess piece in this game.”

Sienna’s face cracks, just for an instant, then she schools it back to stone.

I hear Rosalynn behind me, a half-choked sound.

She’s recording everything, but now her hands are shaking too hard to keep the phone steady.

Korrin’s finger is on the trigger, but he knows better than to risk it.

My eyes are locked on Mikhail. “You don’t want to die here.”

Mikhail laughs. “This is all I ever wanted.”

He starts heading toward the door, grabbing Sienna by the elbow and twists.

Sienna kicks him in the knee, and I see something happening before me that I don’t quite understand.

Is she mad because he would dispose of her in a second if it meant he kept his power? Probably.

Mikhail backhands her so hard she falls into the end table, knocking a lamp over.

The gun wavers, just for a second.

And then suddenly, blood, a body slumping to the ground, pooling around Mikhail’s twitching feet.

For a second, it’s just the noise—wet, animal, the gurgle of a man dying badly.

Sienna stands over him, knife sunk to the hilt in his throat.

Her hair is stuck to her cheeks, wet with tears or sweat, or maybe just all that blood.

I count to three, waiting for whatever she’s about to do next.

Sienna drops the knife.

It clatters across the tile, skids under the coffee table.

Her whole body trembles, and for a moment I think she’ll collapse. But she doesn’t. She looks up at me, face hollowed out, and says, “Maybe he is better off with you. I’m… I’m worse than you are, Varrick. The years have changed me, poisoned me.”

“Considering what you did to our son, I’d have to agree.”

I scan the room. Korrin stands at the door, shotgun up, covering our six.

Cyrus has Rosalynn pressed back against the wall, a human shield for a woman who still hasn’t figured out she can be protected.

Mikhail is dying ugly, but he’s not the threat now.

She wipes her mouth, leaving a red smear across her skin. “Let me live, Varrick, please. Let me disappear.”

I want to kill her.

The silence stretches between us like a taut wire.

Sienna on her knees, Mikhail's blood spreading across the marble, my gun heavy in my hand.

" Please ," she whispers again. "I can disappear. You'll never see me again."

I think about Dante's bruised eye. The way he flinches when anyone moves too fast. How he said he was "learning to duck."

A child learning to dodge his mother's fists.

"You hurt our fucking son," I say, my voice flat.

"I disciplined?—"

"You gave him a black eye for looking too much like me."

Each word makes her flinch. Good.

"He told Rosalynn everything," I continued. "Every beating. Every 'discipline.' Every time you made him feel worthless for having my blood."

Korrin shifts behind me, impatient. But this is between Sienna and me.

"I was angry," she says. "He reminded me of you, of what we had?—"

"What we had was mutual destruction. But Dante wasn't part of that. He was innocent."

"No one's innocent in our world."

"Children are, or at least they should be." I move closer, and she doesn't back away. She knows there's nowhere to go. "You use him like a bargaining chip. You let Mikhail's men terrify him. You used him as a weapon against me."

"I kept him alive?—"

"You kept him as leverage. There's a difference."

I can feel Rosalynn behind me watching everything, witnessing what will be Sienna’s undoing.

This is for her too—to know that some sins can't be forgiven, that protecting the innocent sometimes means removing the threat permanently.

"He chose," Sienna says, a last attempt at manipulation. "Your virgin payment and you. He chose strangers over his mother."

"He chose safety over fear. Love over the chaos you and Mikhail have surrounded him with." I raise the gun. "He chose to be a child, Sienna."

She closes her eyes. "Make it quick."

"Like you made it quick for him? All those times you hurt him?"

Her eyes snap open, and for a moment I see the woman I once thought I loved—brilliant, vicious, broken beyond repair.

"We're the same, you and I," she says.

"No. I protect what's mine. You destroy what's yours."

The shot is clean, precise.

She falls backward, the surprise still on her face.

No suffering, no drawn-out revenge.

Just an ending.

Because I'm not her. I don't torture for pleasure. I remove threats, and she was the biggest threat to our son's future.

Dante is silent for three days.

The penthouse is a shitty place to raise a kid.

Even with the blinds open, the air is always stale, and we’re always waiting for something bad to happen.

I station security at every entrance, rotate the guards, sweep for bugs twice a day.

None of it makes a dent in the quiet that settles over us.

Rosalynn makes herself small, shrinking into the corners when Dante is in the room.

She lets him come to her, never forcing herself on him.

She reads aloud to herself, soft and steady, letting the words drift over him like background noise.

Sometimes he listens, but most of the time he doesn’t.

He won’t eat unless she sits with him. He won’t sleep unless the hall light is left on, the door cracked just enough to see the hallway.

I try to reach him. I try everything—candy, new toys, a stack of picture books.

He ignores them, more interested in the view out the window, the way the city glows orange at night.

Sometimes he draws on the glass with his finger, shapes that might be words, or maps, or maybe just the fragments of a world he can control.

At night, he cries. Not loud, just a slow leak of sound, the kind that rips your guts out because you know he’s trying so hard not to be noticed.

The only time he lets himself be held is when Rosalynn is in the room.

He’ll creep over, wedge himself between her and the couch, then burrow under her arm.

She never reacts, just flips the page and keeps reading.

Sometimes she puts her hand on his head, just for a second.

He sits on the floor, knees hugged to his chest, and stares at the door.

I stand in the hall, watching. I want to go in, but I don’t. I’m afraid I’ll fuck it up.

I waited for this for years but have no idea how to be a dad.

On the third night, Rosalynn tucks a blanket around Dante’s shoulders. She sits cross-legged beside him, lights off except for the lamp shaped like a rocket.

“Want to hear a story?” she asks.

He doesn’t answer.

She opens a book anyway. Her voice is rough, but steady.

She reads about stars, about ships lost in space, about monsters you can trick if you know the right words.

When the story ends, she sets the book aside. “My mother used to read that to me,” she says. “When I was scared.”

Dante glances at her, just once.

“I was scared a lot,” she says. “It’s okay, you know. To be scared. Sometimes people who should love us don’t know how. That’s not our fault.”

He looks down at his hands, small and clenched.

“I’m not leaving,” she says with soft confidence. “No matter what.”

Dante’s mouth works, searching for a word. He finds nothing.

Rosalynn sits with him in silence, letting the darkness settle.

He falls asleep against her shoulder, breath shallow but even.

I watch from the hall, not daring to move.

On the fourth day, Dante finds a box of colored pencils on his bed. He takes them, crawls under the sheets, and draws.

At lunch, he sits at the table and eats three bites of sandwich.

Rosalynn cuts the crusts off, slides the plate in front of him, and pretends not to notice when he stares at her for a long, long time.

Afterwards, she sets up a fort in the living room, blankets draped over chairs and the edge of the couch.

Dante helps, taping the corners together with as much precision as a child could muster.

When it’s finished, they crawl inside and stare at the ceiling, silent.

I pace the hall, unable to join them.

Inside the fort, Rosalynn says, “I had a sister once. Her name was Cora.”

Dante rolls over, tucks his chin to his chest.

“She was my best friend,” Rosalynn continues. “We used to make promises to each other. Sometimes we kept them, sometimes we didn’t. But the promise that mattered was the one where we swore to always come back for each other. Even if it was scary.”

Dante is quiet for a long time. Then he says, “Is she gone?”

Rosalynn’s voice is steady, but her hands twist the blanket. “Yes.”

He nods, like he expected it.

He looks at her, eyes dark and sharp. “Will you leave too?”

She shakes her head. “No.”

He studies her face. “Promise?”

She smiles, tousling his hair. “Promise.”

He holds out his pinky, the way kids do. She links hers with his.

Then, without warning, she takes Dante’s hand and holds it. “We aren’t going anywhere, sweetheart.”

Dante’s eyes are huge. He looks at their joined hands, like the promise is physically there.

He lets go, but not all the way.

The promise she just made him, it’s true. It’s something she won’t ever break, and maybe that’s what he needed to hear right now.

The hours pass and Dante sleeps in his own bed. Rosalynn curls up in a chair beside him, dozing off and on, always one ear open for his dreams.

In the morning, I find them both asleep, her hand resting on his back, the two of them at peace in the wreckage.

I want to join them, but I don’t know how.

Instead, I sit in the hallway, knees to my chest, and watch the door.

I watch for as long as it takes.

Maybe forever.