Page 45 of Dirty Game

He takes care of me in all these small ways, as if each meal, each locked door, each broken nose in my defense is building toward something neither of us knows how to name.

Three days ago, he gave me my first kiss—gentle as butterfly wings, careful as prayer.

Tonight, I gave him my second—clumsy and eager and absolutely certain.

Tomorrow, we'll pretend none of this happened.

But I can still taste copper and whiskey on my lips, still feel the S.C. carved into his hip under my fingertips, still see the hope in that photograph I refused to let him burn.

This life with Varrick isn't the prison I thought it was.

It's something else entirely.

Something that might destroy us both.

Or save us.

I suppose tomorrow we'll start finding out which.

CHAPTER SIX

Varrick

The room is silent as we file in and sit.

The only windows are shatterproof and mirrored, deadening the city’s neon and giving back a reflection that looks nothing like the world outside.

We keep the lights low—an old habit, learned from the years when our father’s face was the only thing you ever wanted to see illuminated in a dark room.

On the table, there are maps, ledgers, brass trays of hand-rolled cigarettes, a holster with no gun in it, and the Bane family sigil carved into the wood.

Above us, the chandelier: a spread of cut glass that dates back to before I was even fucking born.

I remember being a toddler and watching them catch the light, mesmerized.

I sit at the head, not because I care for the symbolism but because every time I stand there, it reminds the other two where the real center of gravity is.

Korrin is already there, a black hulk in a chair too small for him, turning his old Marine knife over and over in his palm.

The sound is hypnotic, like a metronome keeping time for impending war.

Cyrus is late by exactly forty-one seconds.

He never runs. The only time I’ve ever seen the man hurry was to catch a chess piece in mid-fall after the board got knocked over in a gunfight.

He enters in a dark blue suit, the kind that’s meant to look casual but costs more than most people’s cars, hair mussed, eyes alight with the little-girl glee of someone about to win a bet.

“Miss me?” he says. He’s carrying a folder. It’s thin, which means he thinks he’s being clever.

Korrin’s eyes cut to mine, then back to the knife. “About as much as a root canal.”

“Let’s keep this civil.” My voice is calm.

My brothers are more of the act now, think later type.

In my mind, I’m already replaying the last ten minutes with Rosalynn, wanting to be back with her instead of here, with these oafs. “What do you have, Cyrus?”

He flips the file open and lays out a single photograph: a woman, tall, dark hair, tan trench, caught mid-stride outside the Russian’s hotel.