Page 48 of Dirty Game
Not for threats, there are none, not here, but for the one thing in this shithole that doesn’t want to kill me.
Her breathing is audible from the hallway.
Quiet, shallow, measured even in sleep.
I open the door soundlessly, a trick learned in houses where fathers don’t want to be disturbed.
Rosalynn is asleep at the desk.
She’s made a nest out of my records: printouts, receipts, ancient ledgers that belonged to men I’d sooner piss on than remember.
Her cheek is pillowed on the crook of one arm, the other extended across the papers, hand still curled around a pen.
She’s wearing a black t-shirt that might have once been mine, sleeves rolled up over thin wrists, the blue from the last bruise bruise just starting to yellow at the edges.
Her hair is loose, fanned across the table, strands caught under her hand and stuck to the ink on the page.
I watch her for a minute.
Maybe two.
She’s not beautiful, not in the way women are in magazines or memory, but there’s a symmetry to her that’s unsettling.
A precision. Even sleeping, her face is set: a jaw that refuses to soften, eyelids flickering with dreams that are never gentle.
I step closer.
She doesn’t wake.
I scan the papers scattered around her.
She’s been at this all night, my entire financial past dissected and reorganized.
Numbers rewritten in perfect columns, every deviation flagged in red.
She’s even corrected my father’s old ledgers, which is a level of disrespect I find almost charming.
I reach for her shoulder, intending to shake her awake, but stop myself.
My hand hovers over the curve of her back.
The memory of her skin, blood-warm and trembling under my touch, is fresh enough to make me forget the warnings.
Instead, I scoop her up.
She’s lighter than she looks—bones like a bird, all hollow and sinew.
She doesn’t wake, but her body stiffens reflexively before relaxing into my arms.
I carry her down the hall, past the security cameras where the feed is being monitored.
Stopping to stare a moment, I nod when the red light blinks off.
The message is clear: if you see the boss carrying a woman, you didn’t.
The master suite is colder than the rest of the house.
She shivers against me, burrows closer without waking.
