Page 27 of Silent Schemes

“You’re fucked up, Mr. Bane,” she whispers.

“So are you,” I say, pulling back. The game got flipped on its head, and as much as my cock is hard, she’s in no shape for fun and games, but it doesn’t matter.

I pull the needle out of my jacket and jab her in the neck.

Seconds pass, and then it’s lights out for her.

I sit there, breathing her in, watching the bandage bloom red again.

This is what happens when predators collide.

No one wins.

Not yet.

CHAPTER FOUR

Sienna

Silk sheets have never felt like a cage before.

I wake slowly, consciousness returning in layers—the softness beneath me, the weight of expensive fabric, the dull throb in my shoulder where the bullet grazed me.

My training kicks in before I even open my eyes: catalog the threats, find the exits, locate the weapons.

The penthouse is quiet except for the distant sounds of the city below and something sizzling from what must be the kitchen.

Varrick's scent lingers on the pillows—whiskey and gunpowder and something uniquely him that makes my pulse quicken against my will.

I sit up carefully, assessing the situation, remembering what happened.

The Black Crown and afterward.

Varrick injecting something in my neck, and then lights out.

My weapons are arranged on the nightstand like an art display—my gun, three knives, even the garrote wire from my necklace.

All there. All useless.

The gun's magazine sits separately, bullets lined up in a neat row like soldiers.

The knives have been cleaned of blood.

The door is cracked open, but I already know it won't matter.

The main exits will be biometrically locked.

Varrick Bane doesn't make amateur mistakes.

My dress from last night is gone, replaced by an oversized men's shirt that smells like him.

The presumption of it should anger me.

Instead, I'm cataloging the ways this fabric could be used as a weapon—strangling, suffocating, blinding.

My father would be proud, and I hate that.

I pick up the gun, check the chamber—empty, of course—and pad barefoot toward the kitchen.