Page 13 of Silent Schemes (Broken Blood)

CHAPTER SEVEN

Varrick

I’m in the penthouse, sixth floor, with the city stretching itself flat below.

Two weeks.

Two weeks of watching her.

Two weeks of waiting for her to make a move.

My steel workbench is a splatter field of rags, solvents, and open magazines.

I’m halfway through breaking down a Beretta M9, the slide balanced on my palm, a dental pick levering carbon from the pinholes.

The walls here aren’t just lined with guns—they’re a history.

Each piece is a lesson.

The SIG I used to blind a snitch at seventeen.

The AR stripped down by Korrin’s teeth during the Czech job.

My father’s Colt polished so long the grip holds like soap.

I’m finishing the cleaning when the elevator groans open and Will barrels in.

He doesn’t knock.

Never has.

If he’s decided you’re family, you’re never alone again, not even in your own skull.

His shoes leave a trail of the city wet on the marble.

He smells like sweat and cheap coffee, and the look on his face says he’s two seconds from ripping my head off and sucking out the secrets.

“Varrick,” he barks, voice bouncing around the room.

He has a folder clutched in one hand, the thick government kind that doesn’t fold easy.

I don’t look up. Just finish seating the firing pin, slotting everything together with a click. “You’re bleeding on my floor.”

He ignores it, marches across the room, slams the folder on the workbench so hard the Beretta almost tumbles off.

The sheets explode across the steel, high-gloss prints of Sienna.

Sienna in sunglasses, at a bus stop. Sienna at a table, hunched over a burner phone.

Sienna in a dark stairwell, hair in a tight knot, holding a briefcase that probably has something lethal inside.

I flip through them, slowly.

The last shot is Sienna in my own goddamn kitchen, the filtered morning light cutting across her face.

There’s a knife in her hand.

She’s smiling.

Will’s voice is gravel. “We have a problem.”

“I know,” I say, still not looking at him.

He yanks the Beretta from my hand, holds it up like a judge with a gavel. “You let her in your house. You let her in your bed.”

“She let herself in that time,” I correct, softly. “She’s not the problem.”

He slams the gun back down. “Don’t play fucking semantics, King. We intercepted communications. She’s reporting to her father.”

I turn, finally, and stare him dead in the eye. “I know.”

Will is the kind of guy who can eat gunfire for breakfast but hates when someone out-thinks him.

The vein in his neck is sticking out so far, I wonder if it’ll snap.

He leans forward, voice dropping. “You’re letting her feed them intel? You’re letting her hand over everything we’ve built, one encrypted text at a time?”

“She’s giving them crumbs,” I say, taking the Beretta and racking it, savoring the hydraulic smoothness. “Let them choke. Hell, I was supposed to be dead two weeks ago. This is all entertainment.”

He’s silent.

The city buzzes outside the window, sirens, a late-shift train, the hum of violence in the bones of the place.

I holster the Beretta under my jacket, feel its weight settle against my side like a warm secret.

Will looks at me like he’s seeing a ghost. “You think you’re in control. You’re not. You’re playing with a snake and you keep thinking you’re the charmer.”

I look back down at the workbench, start wiping oil from my hands. “I don’t charm snakes. I wait until they bite, then I pull out the venom and feed it back to them.”

He doesn’t know what to do with that, so he paces—back and forth, shoes slapping marble, each step getting louder.

He finally comes to a stop, right in front of me, breath hissing through his nose. “She’s going to slit your throat.”

I raise my eyes, let my voice go ice-cold. “Only if I let her.”

He waits for a response.

There’s nothing more to say.

He scoops up the folder, jams it under his arm, and stalks out, the elevator swallowing him whole.

The doors close, and the hum of the lights takes over again.

I glance at the far wall, the window over the balcony.

Sienna is out there standing, leaning against the wall, lit by the red glow of her cigarette.

She stands in the spot that the roof doesn’t cover, getting soaked through her dress like she wants to wash off the city.

She knows I’m watching.

She doesn’t look back.

Not until I open the door five minutes later and step out into the wetness.

When she does, it’s a slow, deliberate turn.

Like a predator checking the wind for prey.

Her green eyes reflect the neon sign on the business behind her.

She takes a drag, then grinds the cigarette to pulp under her shoe.

“Your friend is mad at me,” she says. Her voice is low, a little throaty from the smoke.

I shrug, roll my shoulders, feel the crackle of old injuries. “He’s afraid you’ll break my heart.”

She laughs, a bitter little sound. “You don’t have one.”

I stand next to her, close but not touching.

She shivers in the wind, but she’s not cold.

She’s burning something off.

“You’re letting them watch you,” I say, softly.

She flicks her tongue over her teeth, eyes on the traffic below. “Maybe I want them to see.”

“Why?”

She stares at me, hard enough to feel it in the molars. “I want you to know everything. In case you have to kill me.”

I reach up, brush the hair off her forehead, my thumb smearing a drop of rain down her cheek. “I won’t have to.”

She closes her eyes, leans into my hand just for a heartbeat, then pulls away.

She turns and goes inside, shedding water across the marble as she heads to the elevator.

I fall into step beside her. “I have work to do tonight. You can come with, after you change into something a little less…” Eyeing her up and down, I trail off.

Her eyes roll back, but once we’re back at my suite, she heads back to my room and changes.

“Ready.”

I take the Crown Vic tonight.

Less traceable, more honest.

Also, the minor detail that I have a package in the back that’s been in there since the morning.

If I didn’t deal with it soon, it would cause some issues.

The seats smell like a lifetime of spilled coffee and dead cigarettes, the interior patched up with duct tape and the kind of love only a career criminal can show a car.

Sienna rides shotgun, her hair slicked wet from the rain, but the rest of her is dry.

She rolls the window down, letting in the stink of city pollution.

She doesn’t ask where we’re going.

Doesn’t care.

She hums to herself, some old Italian pop song that turns to static in her throat.

We cut through the warehouse district, then east into the part of town where the streetlights are more shattered than not.

The complex is called the Howard Arms, but the only thing armed here are the dealers and the rats.

I pull into the lot, kill the headlights.

There’s a crescent moon, but it doesn’t reach the pavement.

I open the trunk.

Petrov is in there, bound with shipping twine, mouth filled with an old gym sock.

His eyes bulge like boiled eggs, and his face is so purple he looks like he’s been dead for hours.

I haul him out, let him thud onto the pavement.

Slapping him a few times, he sputters, his eyes opening wide as he takes us in.

Sienna follows, her heels striking sparks off the cracked cement.

She’s wearing a black slip dress and Jimmy Choos still spotted with dried blood from the last outing.

Her expression is blank, maybe a little bored.

We drag Petrov up three flights of piss-stained stairs, down a corridor that smells like diapers.

He’s crying under the gag, but it’s not even worth acknowledging.

Unit 316 is held together by police tape and a single rusty hinge.

I boot it open, and we’re inside.

There’s nothing left of the interior.

Walls caved in, carpet stripped out, the fridge full of syringes instead of food.

It’s my favorite torture room.

I tie Petrov to the kitchen radiator.

The metal is cold, rough, and the more he struggles, the tighter it bites.

Sienna paces the floor, testing the boards with her toe.

She finds a loose one and pries it up, revealing a nest of used needles.

She laughs, low and wicked, then kicks the plank back into place.

Petrov’s eyes dart between us, wild, begging for mercy.

I crouch next to him, pliers in hand.

He moans, shakes his head while snot runs down his face.

I take out the gag, slow and gentle. “You know why you’re here?”

He sputters. “Please, Mr. Bane, I?—”

I jam the pliers into his mouth, grip the first molar.

“Last week,” I say, “you sold a batch to the kids at Hasting Elementary. Three overdosed. Two died.”

He shrieks, the sound biting at the tiles.

I yank the tooth. Blood, spit, and something black fly out onto the floor.

I keep going. Each time, I say a name.

“Jimmy. Eight years old.”

Pop.

“Lisa. Nine.”

Pop.

He thrashes, feet drumming the radiator, but Sienna presses her heel onto his shin, pinning him.

When I finish with the teeth, I move to the hands.

“These fingers,” I say, “typed the texts that ruined them.”

I lay his hand flat, splay the fingers.

Vise-grip pliers.

Sienna steadies his wrist while I clamp down on the pinky.

Snap.

His scream echoes down the corridor, but no one comes.

No one ever does.

One by one.

Each finger, each bone.

By the third, he’s a puddle of piss and prayers.

At the thumb, I pause.

Wipe the blood from my signet ring on his shirt. Lean in close.

“This is what I am,” I whisper. “Not a king. Not a savior. Just a man who finishes things.” Rearing my fist back, I drive it into his face, again and again, until there’s a wet crunch and he looks more dead than alive, his screams turn into gurgles.

He passes out before I’m done.

I step back and breathe slowly.

Sienna is standing perfectly still.

Her shoes are glazed with a new spray of blood, and a single fleck of flesh sits on the arch.

She looks at me, nostrils flared at the stench.

“Still want to play?” I ask.

She checks her reflection in a cracked cabinet door, then plucks a molar from her hairline and holds it up to the light.

She grins, teeth bloody.