Page 20 of Dirty Game

Rosalynn

The dress feels like wearing someone else's skin.

Silk the color of midnight pools against my body in ways my clothes never have, clinging to curves I've spent years hiding under shapeless cardigans and loose fabric.

The neckline dips low enough to make me constantly want to tug it up, but not low enough to be indecent.

It's elegant. Expensive.

Nothing like the ugly, practical things Uncle Enzo made me wear to "avoid drawing attention."

"Stop fidgeting," Varrick says without looking at me.

We're in the back of his car, Jensen driving us through Vancouver's glittering downtown.

I force my hands to still in my lap, but I can't stop being aware of the dress, of how different I look in the tinted window's reflection.

My hair is pinned up, exposing my neck.

Maria spent an hour on my makeup, transforming me into someone I don't recognize.

"I look like?—"

"You look like you belong to me," he cuts me off, finally turning to assess his investment.

His eyes track from my heels to my face with clinical precision. "Which is the point."

The car stops outside The Broken Crown, a restaurant that doesn't advertise, doesn't take reservations unless you're somebody, and definitely doesn't let people like me through its doors.

Unless you're owned by someone like Varrick Bane.

"Business dinner," he'd told me this morning. "You'll sit, you'll smile, you'll say nothing unless directly asked. Can you do that?"

I'd nodded. I've been practicing silence my whole life.

Jensen opens the door, and Varrick exits first, then offers me his hand.

The gesture looks gentlemanly to anyone watching, but his grip tells me this isn't a request.

I take his hand, let him help me from the car, and try not to think about how his fingers feel against mine.

The Broken Crown's interior is all dark wood and candlelight, intimate booths designed for conversations that shape the city's underworld.

Crystal chandeliers cast fractured light across tables where men decide who lives and dies over dessert.

The maître d' doesn't ask for Varrick's name, just leads us deeper into the restaurant's belly.

Our table is in a private section, behind a curtain of black velvet that muffles sound.

I recognize the faces already seated.

The Corsini brothers—Paulie with his perfectly groomed beard and dead shark eyes, his younger brother Luigi, who keeps licking his lips when he looks at me.

The Petrova syndicate's leadership—Viktor and his son Alexei, both built like mountains and twice as cold.

Two men I don't know directly but whose scarred knuckles and flat gazes mark them as killers.

And they all look at me like they know exactly what I am.