Page 15 of Dirty Game

“I’ve been hurt worse.” There’s a finality to her voice, each word calculated to minimize her footprint but amplify her voice.

I reach for her wrist, slow, deliberate, giving her a chance to pull away.

She flinches, but doesn’t make a move to let go.

The bruising is bad.

I thumb her pulse—still fluttering.

She watches my hand, not my face.

“Next time you see your brother,” I say, “look him in the eye.”

She swallows. “Why?”

“He’s afraid of you now.” I dropped her wrist. “Use that fear.”

I start for the elevator.

She doesn’t follow until I press the button, then she moves in silence.

It takes forty seconds for the elevator to arrive, enough time for me to catalog every detail.

The echo of Marco’s scream.

The tremor in Rosalynn’s left hand.

The satisfaction curls low in my gut.

When the doors finally close, we’re alone in the steel box, just the two of us and the scent of copper and fear.

We ride in silence, floors ticking by in blue digital increments.

I watch her through the glass.

She doesn’t look away, not once.

Some debts don’t wash out.

Others, you pay in installments.

Tonight, I think, the balance shifted in my favor.

The doors to the penthouse open.

Security falls away into obscurity, and it’s just the two of us in the hush that comes after any major moment in my life.

I guide Rosalynn toward the med room.

Her gait is off—half a step slower, as if the bruises on her arm radiate into the rest of her bones.

I stop by a leather settee, the kind that’s too expensive to ever look truly comfortable.

She stands, refusing to sit. I don’t blame her.

“Show me,” I say. No inflection, just command. “Shirt off.”

She hesitates, then takes her shirt off, standing there in a plain white bra.