Page 32 of Dirty Game

I want to ask her if she’s always been like this.

If the quiet is something she learned, or if it’s the only weapon she has left after a lifetime of being cornered by men who never learned when to stop.

Instead, I reach for the top ledger, tug it from under her elbow, and flip through her notations.

Every correction is precise. Every dollar accounted for, each lie traced back to its original sin.

There’s a ledger in my own head, and I feel the balance tipping in her favor.

Will’s voice echoes, always there when I’m about to do something irreversible: “She’s not Sienna.” Like his ghost thinks I could ever forget the difference.

Sienna was fire and lies—she’d take a number and burn it, just to watch the smoke.

Rosalynn is ice and truth. She’d rather lose a finger than round up a penny.

I hear the click of her pen as she picks it back up. The sound drags me back to the room.

“You missed a spot,” she says. Not in a taunting way—just an observation.

I look. She’s circled a line I hadn’t noticed. Embezzled, and re-embezzled, a Matryoshka doll of theft.

The paper smells of mold and corruption. I want to incinerate the entire office.

My phone buzzes. I let it, watching her watch me out of the corner of her eye. After the third vibration, I answer.

“King,” I say. Never my first name. Something I adopted after Sienna.

On the other end, Mikhail’s voice. “We have movement. Russians, north side. Two cars, four men, none local. They’re asking for you.”

I shut my eyes for a beat. “How close?”

“Half a mile. They’re not armed for subtlety.”

Of course not. They never are.

“Tell security to double the guards at ground level. Then send three to my office. Not two. Three.”

Rosalynn’s hand stops moving, pen held in mid-air. She listens, pretending not to.

I make a note of her pulse point, just visible at the line of her throat.

I end the call and turn back to her. “Visitors coming.”

She nods once. “Should I leave?”

“No. You’re safer here.”

That earns me another look. This one lingers, as if she’s checking my math. “I’ll finish this column,” she says, and resumes the calculations as if her life depends on it.

Maybe it does.

I move to the office door, pausing as my hand hits the polished brass.

I look back, and her hair has fallen into her eyes again.

She tucks it behind her ear, and I see the faintest bruise on her jaw.

Marco’s legacy, not mine, but he still owns the debt.