Page 113 of Dirty Game

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, reinforcedsteel. 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.