Page 108 of Silent Schemes

She doesn’t even look up.

Theodore gestures, and the guards kick my knees out, drop me to the floor in front of him.

He steps onto the crate platform, looming.

“Tell me, King. How does it feel to lose everything in a single night?”

I test the chains, slow.

They’re new, thick, and welded shut.

But the bolt in the floor isn’t set right.

It gives a millimeter when I pull.

Not much, but enough.

Sienna’s handiwork, maybe, or just Cross incompetence.

Silence is more dangerous than words.

Theodore wants a show, and I never perform for free.

He sighs, exaggerated, then turns to Sienna. “You said he’d break.”

She stares ahead, jaw rigid.

He steps in front of her, so close his face nearly touches hers. “You told me you could bring him to heel. That you’d leash the Bane family like the mutts they are. You failed.”

Her pulse beats in her neck, rapid, but her voice is steady. “You told me to bring him alive. He’s alive.”

A smattering of laughter from the peanut gallery.

Theodore raises his hand for silence. “You can do better and you were supposed to kill him,” he says. “You’re my daughter. Show me what you learned in all those years under my roof. Make the King beg.”

Sienna doesn’t flinch.

She walks down the steps, slow and fluid, and the guards push me forward onto my knees.

She stands over me, so close I can smell the sweat and the adrenaline coming off her skin.

She crouches, hands still behind her back, and looks at my left arm.

“I’m so sorry,” she whispers. Then, loud enough for everyone: “He doesn’t break. He just bends.”

She lifts her leg and slams her knee into my bullet wound, hard enough to make my vision go white.

I see stars.

My head snaps back, blood running hot down my bicep.

I want to grunt, but I don’t.

I don’t give them anything.

She leans in, her lips at my ear, and in a voice so low only I could hear: “North wall. Three men. C4 in the van outside. Your brothers know. I called them. My father wouldn’t leave your body here.”

She pulls back, grabs a fistful of my hair, and lifts my head. “You always said pain was a lesson. This is the test.”