Page 47 of Silent Schemes

"You're late," he says, not looking up from the burner phone he's scrolling through.

"I had to be careful. Varrick has eyes everywhere."

Now he does look up, and his smile makes my skin crawl the way it has since I was fifteen and he first started noticing I wasn't a little girl anymore.

Vincent has always looked at me like I'm meat he's been promised but hasn't been allowed to taste yet.

My father's protective ownership is the only thing that's kept his hands to himself all these years.

"Does he now? And what else does Varrick have, Sienna?" His voice drops on my name, suggestive and threatening all at once.

"Nothing that concerns you."

He moves closer, and I force myself not to step back.

Show weakness to Vincent, and he'll report it to my father.

Show fear, and I might not leave this warehouse alive.

The concrete floor is stained with old blood in patterns that tell stories of previous meetings that ended badly.

"Your father wonders if you've forgotten your purpose," he says, blowing smoke in my face.

The gesture is deliberate, meant to make me flinch.

I don't give him the satisfaction. "Seven days, and Bane's still breathing. That's not like you. The Sienna I trained would have had him dead in three."

I pull out my phone, show him the photos I've carefully curated over the past week. "His operations. The dock schedules. Guard rotations for his secondary facilities. Money laundering routes through his clubs."

All true, all useless.

Varrick changes these patterns randomly, sometimes daily, sometimes hourly.

But Vincent doesn't need to know that.

He sees what he wants to see—evidence that I'm working, that I'm still my father’s good little soldier.

"This is bullshit intel," Vincent says, but he's studying the photos intently, probably memorizing details to report back to my father. "What about his personal security? His brothers' schedules? The penthouse layout? The biometric locks?"

"I need deeper access. Trust takes time."

"Trust?" Vincent laughs, ugly and sharp, the sound echoing off the warehouse walls. "You're not there to earn his trust. You're there to fuck him stupid and put a bullet in his brain. Simple. Unless..."

He grabs my wrist, yanks me closer.

His breath reeks of cigarettes and the whiskey he thinks covers it up. "Unless you're enjoying playing house with the Bastard King. Unless you like being his kept woman."

I break his hold with a move that would shatter a normal man's wrist.

Vincent just laughs again, rubbing his arm with something like pride. "There she is. There's Daddy’s little killer. I was starting to worry Bane had domesticated you. Turned you into another one of his whores."

"I'm nobody's pet," I say, voice steady despite the rage burning in my chest.

Despite the voice in my head that whispers I might be lying.

"Prove it. Your father wants him dead within the week. Seven more days, Sienna. That's all you get."

"Then Father can come and kill him himself."