Page 118 of Dirty Game

I crawl low, circle right, catch the other as he’s reloading. Two taps, chest and head, and he drops.

Korrin wipes sweat from his brow, blood spatter streaking his hand. “You good?”

“I’m fucking great,” I say.

He grins, savage, and shoulders his way down the next flight.

The screams start then.

Not hers, not yet, but the sound of a man dying somewhere in the bowels of the place. The echo is pure terror.

Cyrus checks in: “Stairs at the end. Camera feeds dead. She’s in the last room on the left. There’s three with her. Mikhail’s not there—he’s running this remote.”

I rack the slide, signal Korrin to go loud. He nods, and we break down the door.

Inside, the temperature plummets. I see my breath.

Rosalynn is in the chair, same as on the video.

The men are around her, one holding a crowbar, the other two just standing, waiting. They look up when we enter, eyes wide.

I shoot the crowbar guy in the throat.

Korrin tackles the second, teeth bared, and drives a knife through his temple. The third drops his gun, backs away, whimpering in Russian.

“Do it,” I tell Korrin, and he does. One swing of the butt, and the skull caves in. The room is silent except for the drip of blood on concrete.

I move to her.

She’s not… there.

Her eyes track me, but she’s somewhere far away. Lips moving, but not words I can hear.

I kneel, gentle. “Rosalynn.”

She keeps her focus on the wall behind me, reciting numbers. At first, I don’t get it. Then I do.

“Uno. Due. Tre. Cinque. Otto. Tredici—” Prime numbers, in Italian. A mantra. A shield.

Her hands are ruined.

Fingers swollen, twisted, nails split and bleeding.

I cut the cuffs, peel them off her wrists slowly so I don’t break more skin. She sags forward, body limp, but her voice keeps going, counting, counting, counting.

“Rosalynn,” I say again, louder.

Her gaze finds mine. For half a second, she doesn’t recognize me. Then she blinks, slow, and the fire comes back. She swallows, tries to form words.

“Didn’t… tell them,” she rasps. “Kept the books safe.”

I shake my head. “Fuck the books.”

She blinks, confused.

“You matter more than any of this,” I say, voice breaking for the first time since I was a kid.

She stares at me, tears pooling, then looks down at her hands. “They broke me.”