Page 27 of Silent Schemes (Broken Blood)

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Varrick

Five Years Later…

The war room in my father’s house is the only thing left that smells like him: old smoke, raw oak, sweat, and leather.

Korrin is already here, boots up on the table, a Bowie knife rolling in slow, hypnotic circles between his fingers.

Cyrus stands at the window, backlit by a strip of dead neon and the sick city light that seeps through the distillery’s frosted panes.

They’re both waiting for me, but neither says a word.

I close the door behind me, let the latch catch loud.

On the wall, a butcher-paper map of Vancouver is stabbed with so many red pins it looks like a murder scene.

Every pin marks a loss—bar, dock, warehouse, every whorehouse or betting den that used to pay us now pays Cross.

The pins cluster like tumors, spreading outward.

The only clear zone is the four blocks around the distillery.

The last safe place.

Korrin knocks the knife’s point into the wood, leaving a crescent. “You’re late.”

“I was visiting Will,” I say, mulling over the visit to the cemetery.

The name lands sharp, but the echo’s dull.

Cyrus turns, hands in pockets, tie undone.

He moves like a schoolmaster who’s given up on discipline. “He would’ve liked to see this.”

I shrug. “He always preferred to see the plan after it was over.”

Cyrus smiles without humor. “He preferred results to process. Most people do.”

Korrin scoffs. “You two miss him like he was a puppy. He got what he wanted—a clean death.”

He’s right.

Will went out on his feet, two shooters down before his throat opened.

If there’s an afterlife, he’s probably still gloating about it.

I pull a bottle from the shelf.

Single malt, aged in the barrel room below us.

Pour three fingers into each glass, let the fumes catch in the throat.

Cyrus takes his neat.

Korrin drowns his with two cubes of ice.

I keep mine untouched.

“New business,” I say. “Bastian Cross is moving on the North Shore again. Port contracts, plus a couple of the old Bratva boys. There’s a sit-down at DeLuca’s Friday night.”

Korrin rolls his eyes. “You want me to crash it?”

“Not yet,” I say. “They’re getting desperate. Cross knows he’s a figurehead. The lieutenants want a real boss.”

Cyrus lifts his glass, studies the legs. “Means a power split. Means a window.”

Korrin grins, the knife dancing on his knuckle. “Means blood. My kind of window.”

Silence stretches, then snaps as Cyrus sets his glass down, hard enough to rattle the table.

He flicks a glance to the map, finger tapping a cluster of pins on Hastings. “You hear about the Prague thing?”

My pulse is steady, but I feel it in the jaw. “No.”

He looks at Korrin, who shrugs with a snort.

“International,” he says. “One of the old Rosetti freaks clocked a girl in Prague, thought she was Sienna. Said she was with a kid. Five years, maybe less. A boy.”

The world tunnels down to the rim of the whiskey glass.

I don’t blink.

I never even told my brothers that she was pregnant, but I know she went to Prague.

“Bullshit.”

Cyrus shrugs. “Could be. Or she’s alive and running, like you said for her to do.”

Korrin watches me over the curve of his blade, eyes feral. “You’d know if she was dead, right? You’d feel it.”

“She’s dead to me,” I say, voice flat. “You don’t survive what we survived and come out alive.”

Korrin smirks. “Yeah, you do. If you’re a cockroach or a Cross.”

Silence.

It’s a new thing, since Will died.

All our old banter turned into loaded pauses.

Cyrus refills his glass, this time letting the whiskey slop over the edge. “If she’s alive, you could find her. Easy enough.”

I keep my face still. “No need. Ghosts should stay dead.”

The knife hits the table with a thunk.

Korrin leans forward, the old scar on his throat white against his skin. “You check the reports. Every sighting, every rumor. Don’t lie.”

I roll the glass between my palms. “I check that she stays away. Nothing more.”

Korrin laughs, sharp as a slap. “Sure, King. Whatever gets you to sleep.”

I let it go.

There’s no point in arguing.

The map is bleak.

Only a handful of pieces left, but enough for the right player to win.

Cyrus leans in, finger on his chess tattoo. “Cross is getting sloppy. You can see the lines—they’re running shipments through the East End, but the muscle’s new. Outsiders. Hired help.”

“That means we hit hard, quick, before they dig in,” I say.

Korrin grins, teeth bared. “Give me two guys and an hour, I’ll take the docks.”

I shake my head. “Too soon. We need to know who’s really running it. Cross is just a puppet. We kill him, they’ll just swap in a new one.”

Cyrus nods, pulling a file from the pile. “We flip the right guy. Make them eat their own.”

Korrin’s knife makes lazy figure-eights in the air. “That’s your play? Diplomacy?”

I meet his gaze, voice soft but sharp enough to hurt. “It’s not diplomacy. It’s leverage. You cut the right muscle, the body drops.”

He considers this, then shrugs. “Fine. But when the time comes, I want the first shot.”

I slide the bottle to him. “You’ll get it.”

There’s a long silence.

Cyrus clears his throat,“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.”

Korrin rolls his eyes. “Sun Tzu, again. You read anything written in the last five hundred years?”

Cyrus grins. “If it works, it works.”

The three of us sit, drinking the memory of our mentor, staring at the bleeding city, and pretending the ghosts don’t whisper from the corners.

I raise my glass, let the burn scald my throat. “To Will.”

Korrin’s voice is gravel. “To the last good man in this shithole.”

Cyrus, barely audible: “To the next move.”

We drink.

No one says it, but the truth is plain: nothing’s finished.

There’s always another game, another fight.

Another ghost waiting to call your bluff.

After the meeting, I hole up in the study above the barrel room.

The silence up here is thick enough to chew.

I sit in my father’s old leather chair—worn to the shape of a bigger man, still stinks of his cologne and the cheap disinfectant they used to scrub the bloodstain out of the armrest.

On the table: a tumbler of whiskey, warm, and a Polaroid that’s so faded it could be a forgery.

It’s the only picture I kept.

Sienna, sitting on a dock in deep summer, big belly, hair wet and wild, mouth open on a laugh so real it breaks the bones of memory.

Someone else took the picture.

She didn’t know I was always watching.

She wasn’t wearing the mask.

Not yet.

I flip it back and forth, thumb worrying the edge until it starts to fray.

I stare at her face and feel absolutely nothing.

That’s the lie I tell myself every night.

Outside, the city sounds like a dying animal: sirens, tires, distant gunfire echoing off the water.

I drink slowly, letting the burn remind me I’m not dead yet.

When the phone rings, I let it buzz three times before picking up.

I don’t bother with hello. “Talk.”

A voice like gravel, thick with old country: “Varrick. It’s Lombardi. I need a minute of your time.”

I set the glass down. “Your brother’s debt was due last week. Why are you still breathing?”

He laughs, but it’s a death rattle. “Salvatore’s a fuck-up. I know this. But family is family, eh?”

“Five million is a lot of family, Enzo. Where’s my money?”

There’s a pause, the sound of a cigarette flicked against tile. “We can settle this. You want something, I want something. Maybe we talk face to face.”

I glance at the Polaroid, then the fire burning in the grate.

The wood snaps and pops, a chorus of little deaths.

“Tomorrow. My office, eight sharp. Bring your answer, or bring a coffin.”

He hangs up. He knows not to try and negotiate.

I set the phone down, then stare at the photo for a long time.

The urge to tear it sharpens, but that’s not enough.

I want it gone, atomized, stripped from the world the way she stripped me.

I toss it into the fire.

Watch the white edges curl, the center blister.

Sienna’s face warps, cracks, turns into a smear of black on orange.

The laugh vanishes first.

It always does.

Regret curls in my throat, and I know it won’t be long until I ask my contact for another copy.

She is under my skin, the way she was five long years ago.

I light a cigarette, draw it deep, let the smoke coat the back of my throat.

I watch the flames and think about nothing.

Nothing, except the way her eyes looked that night.

How easy it was to let her go, and how hard it is to stay in the shadows and not tear the world apart trying to find her.

Find them.

The room fills with smoke and the smell of burning plastic.

The last of the photo flakes away, turning the air into a snowstorm of ghosts.

When I finish the whiskey, I break the glass in my hand.

Not on purpose, but I let the blood bead up, red as the pins on the map downstairs.

I hold the pain a while, then light another cigarette.

I keep my eyes on the fire.

I breathe. I wait for the ache to go away.

It never does.

But I’m getting better at hiding it.

Tomorrow is a new day.

Another kill, another payment, another night of pretending it’s all just business.

I sit in the dark, knuckles dripping, eyes burning, and let the world turn.

The Lombardis come at eight sharp.

Four of them, none related, but they all wear the same grease-caked suits.

Enzo is the only one who counts—the other two are here to carry packages and bodies, in that order.

Korrin brings them up to my office and lingers in the corner, just inside the door.

He has a mug of black coffee in one hand and his favorite hunting knife in the other.

The knife is just for show, but it works… one of the mooks won’t meet my eyes, and the other keeps tracing his own neck like he’s already picturing the cut.

Enzo starts the conversation before the door clicks shut. “Varrick. You are looking well.”

I gesture to the chair opposite my desk, but he ignores it, like he’s afraid to sit down. “You have something for me, Enzo, or you’re wasting everyone’s time.”

He nods to his left.

The shorter asshole drags a human behind him, dumps her on the floor with the practiced air of someone who’s done this a lot.

Rosalynn Lombardi.

I know the file—twenty-five, numbers prodigy, speaks four languages, never been seen in public without her uncle or a gun at her back.

She looks smaller in person, bird-boned, so pale you can see the veins in her wrists.

There’s a thin scar running from her eyebrow to the edge of her hairline.

Her eyes stay on the floor.

I get the sense she’s been trained to do that.

Enzo nudges her with his foot. “This is the payment.”

I look at him, deadpan. “I’m not in the white slavery business, Enzo. That’s your uncle’s game.”

He grins, but there’s no teeth. “She’s for whatever you want, numbers or fucking. You said you wanted the best. She’s the best, at numbers at least. Not too sure about fucking. I hear she’s innocent, a virgin.”

I glance at the girl. She flinches.

Her hands are covered in thin gloves, but even through the fabric I see the purple of last night’s bruises.

Her mouth is stitched tight, but there’s a tremor in the lower lip that tells a better story than anything Enzo could say.

Korrin sets his mug down, steps up to inspect the goods.

He crouches, stares at her with a look that would curdle paint. “She scared of you, or just life in general?”

Rosalynn doesn’t move.

Enzo shrugs. “She does what she’s told.”

I consider it.

The guards, the trembling girl, the knife balanced between Korrin’s thumb and index. “What’s the catch?”

Enzo shrugs. “No catch. My brother’s dead. Salvatore. Shot last night in the head, in Toronto. Nothing left to pay. Except this.”

He pushes Rosalynn forward, like a chess piece.

Korrin looks at me. “What do you want to do?”

I consider. “The books are a mess. If she’s as good as they say, she can fix them.”

Enzo lights a cigarette, blows smoke right at Korrin. “She’ll do what you want. Accountant, whore, punching bag. She doesn’t fight.”

Korrin’s jaw tightens, but he says nothing.

I walk around the desk, kneel so I’m eye-level with her.

Her hair is honey-blonde, streaked with greasy dark dye.

I imagine the bruises go all the way to the bone.

“Rosalynn,” I say. My voice is soft, because soft always cuts deeper. “You know why you’re here?”

She nods, once.

“Say it.”

Her lips barely move. “To pay the debt.”

I nod. “And after the debt is paid?”

She hesitates. “I… I don’t know.”

I glance up at Enzo. “You don’t care what happens to her?”

He flicks ash onto the carpet. “Family is family, but business is business.”

I stand. “Get out.”

The Lombardis file out, leaving the girl on the floor.

Enzo smiles like he’s pawned off a sick dog. “If she runs, just kill her. Less trouble that way.”

Korrin waits until the elevator dings, then looks at me. “You gonna use her, or fix her?”

I shrug. “She’s here to work. That’s all.”

He laughs. “Bullshit.”

I ignore him, look down at the girl. “Get up.”

She does, slow and deliberate, clutching the elbow of her opposite arm the way someone does when they’re cold or trying to keep the pieces together.

She stands, but not straight.

I gesture to the inner office. “There’s a desk. Your computer. Password is ‘freedom.’ Don’t fuck with the other files.”

She blinks at that, like she thinks it’s a trick.

Korrin watches her limp away.

When she’s out of earshot, he murmurs, “She’s not gonna last a week.”

“She only needs three days,” I say.

He laughs, but there’s no humor. “Still think you don’t have a heart?”

I pour myself a drink. “The less you care, the longer you survive.”

He shakes his head, goes back to his coffee. “Tell yourself that as long as you want, brother. Sooner or later, even the dead come back.”

I watch the closed door.

I picture Sienna, somewhere in Europe, maybe with a kid who has her eyes.

Maybe my ruthlessness.

I finish the drink, and for a second I think about throwing the glass.

Instead, I set it down and pick up a pen.

That’s the problem with ghosts, even when they’re gone, they haunt every move you make.

But maybe Rosalynn Lombardi can be the distraction I need.

A distraction I’ve needed for the last five years.