Page 123 of Silent Schemes

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I pull a bottle from the shelf.

Single malt, aged in the barrel room below us.

Pour three fingers into each glass, let the fumes catch in the throat.

Cyrus takes his neat.

Korrin drowns his with two cubes of ice.

I keep mine untouched.

“New business,” I say. “Bastian Cross is moving on the North Shore again. Port contracts, plus a couple of the old Bratva boys. There’s a sit-down at DeLuca’s Friday night.”

Korrin rolls his eyes. “You want me to crash it?”

“Not yet,” I say. “They’re getting desperate. Cross knows he’s a figurehead. The lieutenants want a real boss.”

Cyrus lifts his glass, studies the legs. “Means a power split. Means a window.”

Korrin grins, the knife dancing on his knuckle. “Means blood. My kind of window.”

Silence stretches, then snaps as Cyrus sets his glass down, hard enough to rattle the table.

He flicks a glance to the map, finger tapping a cluster of pins on Hastings. “You hear about the Prague thing?”

My pulse is steady, but I feel it in the jaw. “No.”

He looks at Korrin, who shrugs with a snort.

“International,” he says. “One of the old Rosetti freaks clocked a girl in Prague, thought she was Sienna. Said she was with a kid. Five years, maybe less. A boy.”

The world tunnels down to the rim of the whiskey glass.

I don’t blink.

I never even told my brothers that she was pregnant, but I know she went to Prague.

“Bullshit.”

Cyrus shrugs. “Could be. Or she’s alive and running, like you said for her to do.”

Korrin watches me over the curve of his blade, eyes feral. “You’d know if she was dead, right? You’d feel it.”

“She’s dead to me,” I say, voice flat. “You don’t survive what we survived and come out alive.”

Korrin smirks. “Yeah, you do. If you’re a cockroach or a Cross.”

Silence.

It’s a new thing, since Will died.

All our old banter turned into loaded pauses.

Cyrus refills his glass, this time letting the whiskey slop over the edge. “If she’s alive, you could find her. Easy enough.”

I keep my face still. “No need. Ghosts should stay dead.”

The knife hits the table with a thunk.

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