Page 26 of Silent Schemes (Broken Blood)

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Sienna

Three days.

That's how long it takes to erase a life.

Three days to liquidate the hidden accounts I've been building since I was nineteen, knowing someday I'd need to run.

Three days to activate the false identities—Sarah and Michelle Crane, sisters from Toronto with boring jobs and boring lives and boring deaths that happened only on paper.

Three days to transform from Theodore Cross' weapon into no one at all.

The safe house where we've been hiding sits on the outskirts of Vancouver, a place so mundane no one would look twice.

Beige walls, beige carpet, beige existence.

Maya hasn't left her room except to use the bathroom.

She hasn't eaten anything substantial, surviving on water and the occasional piece of toast I force on her.

The white dress from the warehouse hangs on her like a shroud she can't shed.

I've tried to get her to change, bought her new clothes, even attempted to burn the dress while she slept.

But she woke up screaming, clutching it like armor, like evidence, like the last thing that makes sense in a world gone sideways.

So, I let her keep it.

We all have our ways of processing trauma.

Hers is wearing it like a second skin.

The Mercedes I'm driving isn't mine—stolen from long-term parking at the airport, plates switched twice, VIN filed off.

It's the kind of car that's invisible in its luxury, the kind successful people drive when they don't want to be noticed.

The trunk holds our new lives: two suitcases of carefully selected clothes, nothing that screams money or desperation.

A leather bag with cash in six different currencies.

Passports so perfect even I believe we're the Crane sisters.

We're at the border of Vancouver now, at a scenic overlook that tourists use for photos of the city skyline.

Harbourview Point, according to the faded sign.

It's almost dawn, that liminal hour when night creatures retreat and day animals haven't yet emerged.

The city lights are starting to fade as the sun threatens the horizon, painting everything in that uncertain gray that could be ending or beginning.

This is goodbye—my last look at the place that was almost home, that could have been something different if I'd been someone different.

If I hadn't been raised by Theodore Cross to value bullets over bonds.

If Varrick hadn't been born a bastard king with empire in his blood.

If, if, if.

The two most useless letters in the English language.

The city spreads below us like a circuit board, all lights and connections, power flowing through predetermined channels.

Somewhere down there, Varrick is claiming his crown from the ashes of what we burned.

My cousin was severely injured in a shootout late last night—I heard it on the news yesterday while buying supplies at a truck stop.

"Gang-related shooting leaves seventeen dead, and four injured, including suspected crime boss Bastian Cross.

" The reporter's voice had been breathless with the scandal of it, the violence that had painted Vancouver's underworld red.

I should feel something about him being hurt, maybe.

Relief, that this monster is finally being hurt for once.

Instead, I feel hollow, like someone scooped out my insides and left only the shell.

Maybe that's what my father always wanted—a hollow daughter he could fill with whatever suited his purposes.

"We should go," Maya says, her first words in three days.

Her voice is hoarse from disuse, thin as paper. "Before someone sees us."

"Five more minutes," I say, hand unconsciously going to my stomach where our child grows, still secret, still safe.

Five weeks now, maybe six.

The nausea has mostly passed, replaced by a bone-deep exhaustion that has nothing to do with pregnancy and everything to do with the weight of what I've done.

That's when I feel him.

It's not a sound or a movement, just a shift in the air pressure, a change in the molecular structure of the world.

My body knows he's there before my mind processes it, every nerve ending suddenly alive and screaming.

I know he's there before he speaks, before he steps from the shadows between the Douglas firs that line the viewpoint.

Of course he found me.

I've been careful but not invisible.

The stolen car, the fake IDs, the safe house—all of it leaves traces if you know how to look.

And Varrick always knows how to look.

Part of me—the part that's still capable of hope, that still dreams of different endings—wanted him to find me.

Needed this closure, this final goodbye, even if it kills us both.

"You're predictable," Varrick says, emerging from darkness like he was born from it.

He's wearing all black—tactical pants, fitted shirt, leather jacket that conceals at least three weapons.

There's a bandage visible under his shirt, white against black, marking where my bullets entered.

The wounds I gave him, healing but not healed.

May never fully heal.

Some wounds don't. "Sentimental. It'll get you killed."

"You came to kill me?" I ask, not turning around.

If he's going to do it, I don't want to see it coming.

Don't want my last image to be of him pulling the trigger.

I'd rather remember him from before—gold in morning light, soft with sleep, the only time he ever looked peaceful.

"I came to say goodbye properly."

Now I turn, and the sight of him is a punch to the gut that makes my lungs forget how to work.

He looks older than three days should account for—new lines carved around his eyes like canyons, a hardness to his jaw that wasn't there before.

Gray threads through his dark hair that I swear are new.

I did that.

I carved those lines with betrayal, aged him with bullets that were supposed to save him, supposed to fool my father, supposed to buy us time.

He's still beautiful, but it's the beauty of broken glass—sharp, dangerous, reflective of everything around it, but transparent to nothing.

"Maya, stay in the car," I say without looking at her.

"Sienna—" Her voice holds a note of panic.

She knows who he is, what he represents, what he could do.

"Stay in the car. Lock the doors."

She obeys, the click of the locks loud.

As if those locks would stop him if he wanted to hurt her.

As if anything could stop Varrick Bane when he's decided to be violent.

But he doesn't even look at her, doesn't acknowledge her existence.

His eyes are fixed on me with an intensity that makes my skin burn and freeze simultaneously.

We circle each other in the empty parking lot, two predators recognizing their match.

The asphalt is wet with dew, slippery beneath our feet.

He moves first—not an attack, just a testing strike that I deflect easily.

Muscle memory from all those sessions in his gym, all those moments when violence turned to passion and back again.

I respond with a combination that he flows around like water, like we're dancing instead of fighting.

This isn't about hurting each other.

This is something else.

A conversation in violence, the only language we both speak fluently.

Every move is a word, every block a sentence, every moment of contact a paragraph of things we can't say out loud.

He throws a punch that I duck under, using his momentum to try for a takedown.

He sprawls, prevents it, spins to face me again.

I aim a kick at his injured ribs, pulling it at the last second because even now, even after everything, I can't bear to cause him more pain.

He catches my leg anyway, uses it to pull me close, and suddenly we're grappling, each trying to gain position without actually winning.

It's a dance we've done before—in his gym, in his bedroom, in that warehouse when we first worked together.

But this time it's goodbye.

Each strike is a memory: that first night at the casino when he knew what I was and wanted me anyway; the morning in his kitchen when he stitched my wounds with hands that had killed dozens but touched me like I was precious; the afternoon in the gym when everything changed, when I chose him over everything I'd ever known.

Each block is an apology: for the betrayal he always saw coming; for the lies that were supposed to protect him; for the love that was never supposed to happen but crashed into us like a freight train anyway.

He pins me finally against the hood of the car, both of us breathing hard, bodies pressed together in a way that's more embrace than restraint.

His hands are on my wrists, but gently, like he's holding me together rather than holding me down.

My legs are around his waist, but not to fight, just to keep him close for these last moments.

"Is the child okay?" he asks.

"Still here. Still strong."

His eyes close briefly, and I see him calculating—the danger, the future, the impossibility of it all. "You'll raise it alone?"

"Yes."

"In Prague?"

I don't ask how he knows where we're going. "Yes."

"You'll tell it what? About me?"

I meet his eyes, see the pain there that he's trying to hide behind tactical assessment.

This is killing him as much as it's killing me. "That its father was a king. That he loved deeply and fought honorably. That he let us go to keep us safe."

"Lies," he says, but there's no heat in it.

"Necessary ones. The kind that lets children sleep at night."

His hand moves to my stomach, spreads flat against where our child grows.

For a moment, his control cracks completely, and I see everything—the grief for the family we'll never be, the rage at the situation that's torn us apart, the love that survives despite bullets and betrayal and blood.

The ugly truth is my family will kill me and my sister if I come back here.

I think Varrick will too, honestly.

His whole body trembles with the effort of not pulling me closer, not keeping me here.

Then the mask slides back into place, iron control reasserted, and he pulls up my shirt, looking at the mark.

"This way, everyone knows you belonged to someone you betrayed," he says as he tapes the bandage down. "So you never forget what you cost me."

"I won't forget."

How could I?

Every time I look at our child, I'll see his eyes.

Every time I hear a Canadian accent, I'll think of Vancouver. Every time I see blood, I'll remember the warehouse.

Every time someone says the word 'king,' I'll think of him.

"Will?" I ask, needing to know.

"Alive. Barely. Three surgeries, but he'll make it." His jaw tightens, a muscle jumping beneath the skin. "He'll never forgive this. Never forgive you. He was just starting to come around, and Vincent shot him."

The guilt of that sits like lead in my stomach. "You?"

He's quiet for a long moment, looking at the city below us.

The sun is starting to rise properly now, painting everything gold and pink, beautiful and false as a promise.

Vancouver looks peaceful from here, like a city where people live normal lives, where children grow up with both parents, where love doesn't require blood sacrifice.

"I may have forgiven you, but I'll never forget," he says finally. "Every morning, I'll wake up reaching for you. Every night, I'll dream of this. Of you. Of what we could have been if we were different people."

"We are who we are, Varrick."

"Yeah, we are, Ruin." He turns back to me, and his control finally, completely shatters.

He kisses me—brutal, desperate, final.

It tastes like blood and goodbye and all the words we'll never say.

His hands are in my hair, pulling hard enough to hurt, mine are clawing at his back, trying to leave my own marks through his shirt.

For a moment we're just Varrick and Sienna, not the King and the traitor, not enemies or lovers or anything but two people saying goodbye the only way we know how.

When he pulls back, we're both shaking like leaves in a storm.

"I won this game," he says, voice rough, broken. "You're breathing because I allow it. The child lives because I allow it. Remember that when you think about coming back."

"I won't come back."

"Liar." His thumb brushes my cheek, catching tears I didn't know were falling.

They mix with his, salt and grief mingling.

"You'll dream about it. You'll plan it. You'll look at our child and see me and want to come home.

But you won't do it. Because next time, I won't hesitate.

Next time, there won't be mercy. I'll kill you before I let you destroy me again.

I might even kill you after that child is born, if the mood strikes me. "

"I know."

He steps back, and the loss of his warmth is like dying. "If it's a girl, name her Raven. If it's a boy, Dante."

"Why?"

"Both are dark omens, just like the two of us. Reminders that beauty and death often wear the same face. And because..." He pauses, struggling with the words. "Because I want to have given them something, even if it's just a name."

He starts to walk away, each step taking him further from the life we might have had.

Then he stops, not looking back.

"Your father’s operations are hindered at the moment, but get out of here—go be free, Sienna."

"What about you? Are you free?"

He does look back then, and his smile is sharp as the knife that marked me. "I'm the King of Vancouver. Freedom isn't in my vocabulary. Just empty thrones and cold beds and the knowledge that I had everything for a moment and let it go."

Then he's gone, melting into the shadows between the trees like he was never there at all.

Only the taste of him on my lips proves he was real.