Page 43 of Silent Schemes

I sit, let the blood seep into my clothes, and watch Sienna as she checks the bodies for weapons.

She strips them, lines up the guns on the bar.

At least the guests got out. The ones that didn’t get shot anyway.

I stifle a chuckle.

Owning half the city has its perks.

Easy enough to manipulate the cops and the papers into believing whatever I want out in front of the public.

Will walks over, limping, a bullet crease on his calf.

He takes in the scene, then looks at me. “You’re both insane.”

“Probably,” I say.

Sienna grabs a cloth napkin, wipes her hands. She looks at me, hard, then tosses the razor onto the table.

“I could have killed you,” she says.

“But yet again, you didn’t,” I reply.

She shrugs, but her mouth twitches at the corner.

I pour three glasses of whiskey and push one to Will, one to her.

She takes it, slugs it back. “What now?”

Now? Now we rebuild, we retaliate, we reset the board.

But I don’t say that.

Instead, I watch the way her hands shake, just a little, before she forces them still.

I say, “Now we clean up.”

And she smiles, blood in her teeth.

An hour later, the Black Serpent is a butcher shop with a jazz soundtrack.

The staff moves through the carnage like they’ve been trained to, scooping glass, dragging bodies, spraying the marble with so much disinfectant you could drown in the lemon scent.

I’ve already called in some favors, and all is good.

No one will look any further into what happened here.

No real loss.

Sienna sits on the bar, legs crossed, reassembling an Uzi she lifted from one of the dead.

Her long legs are splattered in blood, but it only makes my cock harden.

She’s fucking stunning when she’s deadly.

The front doors swing open, and my brothers walk in.

Korrin is first—six-one, shaved head, boots that leave a trail of mud even on a clean floor.