Page 114 of Dirty Game

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.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Varrick

The laptop’s screen throws blue light into the black corners of my office.

The city is dead quiet, but my heart’s beating like I just ran up all the floors in my building.

The video plays in a loop. Each time, I think I’ll get numb to it. I don’t.

She’s in a metal chair, wrists cuffed to the arms, ankles cinched with zip ties.

Her head is down, hair matted dark with sweat, but when she looks up, you can see where they bruised her, the defiance still in her face.

Not fear. Defiance.

There are three men with her. Mikhail’s men—Russians, all muscle and old prison ink.

The one on the left circles her, flips a butterfly knife open and closed with a rhythm that says he’s done this before.

The other two are just shapes in the shadows, hunched like they’re starving. Waiting for permission.

The camera shifts and catches her face. Blood at her mouth, but her eyes burn through the screen.

The fourth voice is Mikhail’s. Not on camera. That’s not his style. He stays out of reach, orchestrating.

“Every hour you delay returning my weapons,” he says, his English so smooth it almost passes as American, “she loses something. Fingers first.”

He lets it hang, then switches to Russian, not knowing I’d have Cyrus translate it on the fly. “After the fingers, we take the tongue. Then the eyes.”

I’ve seen worse videos. I’ve made worse videos. But this one feels like it’s being broadcast directly into the bone.

A hand lands on my shoulder.

Korrin.

He’s been pacing behind me since the call came in, grinding his teeth, waiting for me to do what I always do—cut the losses, move on.