Page 61 of Dirty Game

It will scar, but not badly. I’ve had worse.

The memory of her hand on my shoulder, her mouth soft against mine, flashes through.

It’s almost enough to distract me from the sting.

I walk outside, into the cold, and wait for the trucks.

The city looks smaller from here—gray skyline, flat and indifferent.

I think about going back to the penthouse, about showering the gore off and sinking into sheets that still smell like Rosalynn’s hair.

I wonder if she’ll flinch when she sees me, the blood, the wound.

She won’t.

She’s not afraid of monsters.

That’s the part I can’t shake.

The trucks arrive.

Men load the crates, efficient and silent. I watch until every box is accounted for, and then they load the Kastrovs’ cache.

When the last one is locked down, I turn to go and jam my leg into a piece of rebar.

The adrenaline is fading, replaced by the slow throbbing in my leg.

I don’t let myself limp.

I get in the car, hands still sticky with someone else’s life, and drive home.

The city watches me through a veil of snow, quiet and hungry.

I think about her words all the way there.

I head straight to the safehouse, given that the Corsini fuckers are toying with Rosalynn’s life.

The ride is so fast the air shudders in my lungs.

My knuckles are smeared with black and red, some dried, some tacky, some not even mine.

By the time I get inside the safehouse, the wound in my side has stopped bleeding, but I can feel the shirt stuck to my skin, the fabric dried into the split flesh.

It pulls every time I move, a tiny reminder that no job is ever as clean as you want it to be.

The door hisses open, and the whole place is silent.

No sign of my brothers, no guards, not even the cleaning crew.

I’m not foolish enough to think they’re not here—they’re around, waiting, watching, assessing.

Just the quiet, and the trail of footprints I leave behind me.

Mud, blood, and whatever else I picked up at the docks.

I know where she’ll be.

I head to the master bedroom and find her sitting on the edge of the bed, knees tucked in, wearing one of my shirts over the same black leggings I love on her.