Page 21 of Silent Schemes (Broken Blood)

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Varrick

Night is the only thing that makes this city honest.

Rain slicks the towers, makes the windows shine with the lights glinting off the surface.

I sit above it all, behind glass thick enough to survive a bomb, and stare at the lightshow while my phone vibrates Morse code across the desk.

It’s late.

Too late for anyone but the desperate or the dead.

The glass box I call my office is empty, except for me, a whiskey, and a line of sight into every high-rise worth owning in Vancouver.

On the black desk: two guns, a notepad with a single word scribbled: “Cross,” circled and underlined, and the phone, still alive with new pings.

I swipe it open, thumb flicking through the text chain.

Cyrus:

Cross family moved five crates from Richmond. Heavy. No manifest.

Korrin:

Give the word. We can end this tonight.

I stare at the messages until the next one pops.

Cyrus again:

They’re arming up. Thirty, maybe forty bodies. Sienna is MIA.

Korrin:

Don’t wait, Varrick. Don’t get soft.

I type back:

Hold. One more day.

No one responds for a long beat, but the blue ellipsis lights up.

Korrin is pissed, probably pacing in his own glass box across town, sharpening knives and grudges.

I can feel the pressure, the way old wounds flare before a storm.

I set the phone down and pour another whiskey, neat, no ice.

I need it. I need to feel the burn.

The room hums.

You can hear the city even up here—sirens, a freight train, distant echoes of someone’s last fuck or first murder.

I tune it out, just like I tune out the ache in my side and the bruise still turning purple on my ribs.

I’m about to kill the lights when the door slams open.

No knock, no warning. Only one man does that.

Will.

He storms in, jaw set like a broken hinge.

His hair is wild, suit unbuttoned, and his hands are fists even before he speaks.

He’s carrying two objects, both jammed into a paper bag.

He rips them out, throws them on the desk between my guns and the whiskey.

Pink Stork ginger lozenges.

A bottle of prenatal vitamins.

The silence is so hard it cracks the air.

I don’t touch them.

I don’t move.

Will leans in, both palms flat on the glass, face lined with a worry that would be touching if it weren’t so fucking offensive.

“Found these,” he says. His voice is made for funerals.

I look at the vitamins.

Neon label, garish, the kind of thing you only buy if you’re… the thought trails off.

I look at the lozenges next.

Pink, like a joke.

My stomach goes cold, but my face is steel.

“Where?” I ask

“Cabinet. Next to your toothbrush.”

He watches me like a cop, like he’s waiting for me to confess.

My fingers curl on the edge of the desk.

I can feel the pulse in my thumb, the blood thumping just under the skin.

“Whose are they?” I ask, though I already know.

Will’s eyes go cold. “Sienna hasn’t left your place in three days and suddenly she’s gone today. You want me to spell it out?”

I pick up the lozenges.

Shake them once, hard enough to rattle the glass. “Not necessary.”

We stare at each other across the desk.

I let the seconds stretch, see if he’ll break the silence first.

He doesn’t. Good man.

Finally, I say, “They moved crates.”

He nods. “Heavy artillery. RPGs, maybe. There’s a rumor they brought in a contract from Toronto. Greek, ex-military.”

I don’t let the subject change. “How long have you known?”

He shrugs, but there’s pain in it. “Long enough to know what it means for you.”

“Means nothing,” I snarl.

He wants to say more. Wants to save me from myself, like he always does. But this is one fight he can’t touch.

He steps back. “You’re making mistakes, Varrick. You’re not yourself.”

I want to hit him. I want to break something. I want to do something that’ll make me feel better.

Instead, I nod once. “Thank you, Will. You’re dismissed.”

He hesitates, then backs out of the room, closing the door with a click.

I look at the vitamins. I look at the lozenges.

I line them up next to the guns.

This is how you know you’re losing control: when the smallest thing shakes you harder than being stabbed.

My jaw is tight, teeth grinding.

I slide the phone toward me, type two new words into the digital notepad, just under “Cross.”

The first is “Sienna.”

The second is “Baby?”

I close the pad and kill the lights.

The city shines on.

I sit in the dark, alone with the evidence and the questions, and let the night decide what happens next.

I wait for her in the dark.

It’s past two, maybe three.

I lose track when the city runs out of noise.

I leave the lights off and sit on the edge of the couch, elbows on my knees, eyes looking blankly out.

The elevator dings long before it stops.

Footsteps, soft but quick.

She’s light on her feet, but the wound in her side makes her drag the left just a touch.

She thinks I’m asleep. She’s wrong.

The lock beeps.

The door hisses open, and she’s there, shadow against shadow, coat clutched tight and hair in a braid down her back.

She sees me and freezes.

She sees the vitamins, and her pulse goes visible in her throat.

I speak first.

My voice is calm, almost gentle. “How long have you known?”

She doesn’t answer.

She walks in, tosses her keys on the island, and stares at the table.

The silence is a glacier, cold and unbreakable.

I wait.

Finally, she says, “Three weeks.”

Her chin is up. The bravest thing about her is that she never lies when it counts.

“My child?” I ask.

She nods.

“Were you going to tell me?”

A second of hesitation. “After.”

I let that hang. “After you killed me?”

She doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t look away. “Yes.”

There’s a part of me that wants to murder her right here.

To end it before it can hollow me out any further.

But instead, I do the only honest thing left.

I break.

Picking up the crystal decanter from the side table, I weigh it in my hand.

It’s full, unopened. I throw it against the far wall, not aiming, just wanting the sound.

It explodes, whiskey everywhere, glass raining down in a miniature apocalypse.

I upend the couch, leather slamming against marble, shattering the silence.

I kick the table, break it in two, vitamins rolling under the piano.

I smash the nearest lamp with my fist.

The bulb bursts, slicing a line through my knuckles. Blood pours down my hand, hot and bright.

I punch the fridge, dent the stainless, then stalk to the far window and put my fist through the pane.

The wind roars in, ice, salt, and city stink.

She stands in the middle of it, not moving.

Not hiding.

When I finally stop, the only sound is my own breathing, ragged and raw.

Blood drips onto the floor.

My knuckles are already swelling, bone starting to show.

Sienna says, “You done?”

Her voice is so calm it almost makes me laugh.

I walk back, wipe my hand on my shirt, smear the blood across my chest like war paint.

“Why?” I ask, soft.

She shakes her head, just once. “It wasn’t supposed to happen. None of this was.”

I stare at her, then at the vitamins. “You think you can just take from me? You think you can raise my child in a world where I don’t exist?”

Her mouth twists. “I thought you’d be dead by now.”

It’s almost funny. Almost.

I drop to my knees, press my bleeding hand to the floor, and laugh until I cough blood into my palm.

When I look up, her eyes are wet.

She says, “I can’t kill you. Not now. But he’ll kill Maya if I don’t.”

It hits like a bullet. “Who?”

“My father,” she says, and her voice is smaller than I’ve ever heard it. “He changed his mind. He was going to turn her into my protege, but now if I don’t finish the job, he’ll kill Maya. He said he’d make me watch.”

I stand, slow.

I walk to her, so close I can smell the iron in my own blood.

“You think I’d let him touch you? Either of you?”

She closes her eyes. “You can’t stop him. He has an army.”

I touch her jaw, gentle, smearing the blood along her cheek.

I whisper, “I am an army. I’m a goddamn battalion for you.”

We stand like that for a long time.

The city wails outside, sirens chasing each other down empty streets.

The wind blows in, bitter and wild.

I look at her, and I see every reason I should end her.

Instead, I pull her to me.

Not soft, not sweet.

I hold her like the last weapon in a world gone to shit.

She doesn’t resist.

We stand in the ruins of my living room, blood on the floor, broken glass everywhere, and nothing between us but the truth.

I tell her, “We end this. Once and for all.”

She nods, just once.

There’s nothing left to say, just silence as she stares down at me. I’m on my feet, her jaw cupped between my fingers.

“Fuck me, Varrick.”

We don’t make it to the bedroom.

She’s on me the moment the words are out of her mouth, hands in my hair, mouth on mine, blood and fear still warm on her tongue.

I taste the iron, the salt, the fucking hunger that’s been building for weeks.

My back hits the wall, shoulder blades grinding into the plaster, her knee already pushing between my thighs.

I don’t know if I want to strangle her or worship her.

Maybe both.

I grab her by the chin, squeeze until she gasps. “You lied,” I say.

I want her to deny it. She doesn’t.

“A lie by omission is still a lie, and I will destroy you for that. You broke the oath.”

Instead, she claws my shirt open, nails scoring fresh lines through the old scars.

She rips the buttons loose, then pushes me back until the wall shakes.

My hands find her waist, lift her onto the console table, still upright in the ruins.

Shards of glass dig into her ass and the side of my hand, but she doesn’t flinch.

Her legs go around me, tight enough to leave bruises.

Our bodies crash together, not soft, never gentle.

I bury my face in her neck and bite down.

She moans, low, animalistic, nails dragging lines down my spine.

I want to punish her for every second she kept this from me.

I want to fuck her until she forgets every other name, every other command.

I want to own her, not like a possession, but like an adversary you’ve bested in single combat and let live just to fight again.

She pulls my head up, smashes our mouths together.

Her teeth cut into my lip and a hiss escapes me as she sucks the blood and swallows.

I slam her back against the glass, shards rattling under her spine.

She shudders, then shoves a hand down, unzips my pants, gets her palm around my cock and squeezes until my vision goes white.

I hiss, then drag my own hand up her shirt, yank it over her head, fling it to the floor.

No bra.

Just skin, covered in goosebumps, every inch a map of every time I’ve tried and failed to break her.

I grab her throat with one hand, pinning her to the glass, while the other tears her leggings down.

The wound on her hip is still raw, bandage half peeled, and she grins when she sees me looking.

“You want to mark me?” she says. Daring me.

I pull the knife from my belt.

Flip it open, the steel flashing blue in the dim light.

I drag the flat of it down her thigh, slow enough to make her squirm.

Then I press the point to the skin just below her left hip, where the blood runs fastest.

“You’re mine,” I whisper.

She nods, no fear.

I slice, quick and shallow, the letters V.B. into her flesh.

She hisses, then arches, and the blood wells up, hot and dark, spilling down her thigh.

I keep my hand on her throat, keep her eyes on mine.

She comes like that, locked in my grip, body bucking against me, blood and sweat and spit all mixing together.

I don’t let go.

Not even when she claws my face, leaving red lines that sting in the cold air.

When she comes down, she grabs the knife and cuts the bandage off her side, letting it fall.

Then she grins, wild, and pulls me in, guides my cock into her like it’s the only thing that will keep her alive.

I give her the knife, and while I fuck her, she carves S.C. into my skin.

We fuck on the table, on the broken glass, on the floor where the whiskey still pools and soaks into her hair.

I hold her wrists above her head, then let her break free and bite my lip until she draws blood.

She rides me until I can’t see straight, until the only thing left in the world is the sound of her panting, the slap of our bodies, the blood painting us both.

When I finish, I hold her so tight I think I might snap her ribs.

She lets me.

She curls up in my lap, sweat cooling, hair sticking to my cheek.

We stay like that for a long time.

Dawn starts leaking into the room, pale and new.

She’s the first to move.

She pulls on my shirt, which is missing half its buttons, and walks to the window.

She looks down at the people below, arms folded, blood still trickling down her thigh.

I pull myself together, wash my hands, tape my knuckles, and find a new shirt.

By the time I’m dressed, she’s back at the table, cleaning the knife with my shirt.

“Guess I better get ready for another day of murder.” Her mouth slopes into a small smile.

“Guess so.”

We suit up.

Guns, knives, spare clips.

She slides the blade into her thigh holster, then looks at me, unreadable.

“When?” I ask.

“Noon. Warehouse thirteen, at the pier.”

“You’ll be there?”

She nods. “I have to be.”

I touch her face, softer now. “You sure you want this?”

She doesn’t answer.

She just stands on tiptoes and presses her mouth to mine, slow this time.

Like it’s a promise.

I kiss her forehead. First and last gentle thing I’ll ever do for her.

We head for the door.

The elevator is waiting, all steel and mirrors.

We ride down in silence, side by side, our reflections doubled and red-lit.

The doors open.

She goes first, black hair a mess, city wind catching the silver streak and making it blaze.

I watch her walk away, hand on the hilt of my knife.

She doesn’t look back.

I am already thinking of how I’ll kill every last one of them, if that’s what it takes.

The day is just beginning.

The end starts now.