Page 111 of Silent Schemes

He strides out, Sienna at his side.

The phone camera keeps rolling.

I stare at the ceiling, counting each heartbeat, each breath. Every second is one closer to the next phase.

I’m not dead yet.

I stay alive.

I win.

Sienna’s back first.

Alone, but I hear the hush in the guards’ voices when she passes.

They’re waiting for the show.

So am I.

She walks to the gurney, knife still blood-wet from the last round.

She moves slow, controlled, and even though the adrenaline is fizzing my blood to static, I clock the way her hands tremble at the fingertips.

Only a little.

She stands over me. “Father wants proof,” she says, loud and clear for the phone camera. “He wants to see what you really are.”

I say nothing.

She drags the blade down my ribs, splitting the skin in parallel lines.

This time she doesn’t pause.

She works up the courage and rakes the knife right over my heart, deep enough that I feel the muscle spasm underneath.

She makes a show of peeling back the edge of my shirt, exposing the tattoo beneath.

The king piece, black, crowned and broken—my favorite.

She presses the blade under the ink and with three quick jerks, slices the skin off in a bloody square, the size of a coin.

She holds it up, lets it drip red onto the gurney.

The guard filming it says, “Jesus Christ,” and even the other Cross men take a step back.

I grit my teeth.

The pain is a white-hot buzz, but it’s not the pain that gets me.

It’s the look in Sienna’s eyes—flat, empty, as if she can’t risk giving anything away.

Not even to me.

She leans in, quiet as a breath, “You’re going to lose a lot of blood. Don’t fight. I’ll patch you up after.”

Theodore walks in like a hangman returning to the gallows.

There’s no hurry in his stride.