Minutes later, they dragged Sienna up to the seventh-floor apartment, delivering her like a wrapped present.
Simon looked at the boss, trying to play it cool. "Sienna and I are playing a game. She agreed to this, but she’s a little shy, so we gave her something to loosen up."
"Have fun," Simon added. But as he said it, a sudden wave of guilt squeezed his chest.
Meanwhile, in the back of a sleek black car, Viktor sat in the dark. His men turned to him with a tablet in hand.
The tracking dot on his phone had stopped moving.
Seventh floor. A different apartment from the boyfriend’s. Viktor stared at the screen for exactly two seconds, long enough to understand what that meant, not long enough to let it become something he couldn’t control.
"Faster."
The driver didn’t ask questions. The car surged forward through a gap in traffic that wasn’t quite wide enough and became wide enough anyway.
Viktor’s hand found his gun without him looking for it. Old habit. The kind that had kept him alive longer than most men in his position managed.
His jaw was set. His face was still. But his eyes were doing something they rarely did. Sienna came back in pieces.
The ceiling first; it was white and unfamiliar. Then the weight of the dress was still on her, which meant not much time had passed, or someone had been interrupted.
The water. Simon. Lily. Sienna tried to sit up.
Her arms refused the command at first. Heavy. Useless. The drug still crawled through her veins, wrapping around her thoughts like smoke.
The room pulsed strangely around her, the ceiling stretching too far away before snapping back into place.
Move, she told herself. Move, Sienna.
She forced one elbow beneath her trembling body and dragged in a shaky breath. Somewhere nearby, water hissed softly. The shower. Someone was in the shower.
Panic sliced through the fog instantly.
Her heartbeat stumbled hard against her ribs as she tried to push herself backward across the mattress, but her limbs felt disconnected, numb at the edges.
The bathroom door opened. Steam rolled out first. Then him.
Sienna squinted, trying desperately to focus as the man stepped into the dim suite, shirt half-buttoned, completely relaxed. Like, none of this was wrong. Like she belonged here.
"Well," he said with a slow smile, "you’re awake."
His voice made her stomach twist.
"I’ve always liked you, Sienna." He moved closer, casually, confidently. "You have no idea how happy you’ve made me." His eyes dragged over the write wedding dress. "Even if this is just some little game."
Game. The word barely registered through the terror roaring in her head.
"You dressed up to make it fun, didn’t you?" he continued softly. "Don’t worry. I’ll make you feel really good."
"No..." Sienna shook her head hard, trying to clear the haze clouding her vision. "Don’t come closer."
He kept walking. Her pulse spiked violently.
"Don’t come closer," she whispered again, voice breaking this time. "Don’t touch me."
She tried to move away, but her body betrayed her completely. Her legs barely responded. Her fingers trembled uselessly against the sheets. The man chuckled under his breath.
"Is this part of the game?" he asked. "Because I like it." He loosened another button at his throat lazily. "You should know, sweetheart... I have very deep connections."
He came closer. Too close. Sienna’s breathing turned uneven as sheer helplessness clawed up her throat. For the first time in years, real fear settled into her bones. Cold. Suffocating.
Then...The door exploded open. Not literally. But close enough. The sound cracked through the room like a gunshot. Wood slammed violently against the wall.
And Viktor Kessler stepped inside. Gun already raised. Murder already written across his face. The room changed the second he entered it. The air itself turned lethal.
His eyes landed on her sprawled weakly across the bed, the trembling in her hands, the man standing too close. And something inside Viktor snapped.
The temperature in the room seemed to drop instantly. The other man straightened fast. "Who are you?"
"Move another inch," Viktor said quietly, "and I’ll paint this entire room with what’s left of your skull."
Silence. Pure. Deadly silence. Sienna’s breath caught painfully. And God. That look terrified her more than the gun.
The man went completely still.
"Who are you?" he demanded, though the confidence in his voice had already started cracking. "I have connections with the mafia king. You can’t just be here."
Viktor smiled then. Not warmly. Not even humanly. Just the slight movement of his mouth before destruction. The voice that answered was not loud. It did not need to be.
It was the kind of voice that rearranged the temperature of a room. Cold moving in. Everything else is moving out. The gun was at the man’s head before he fully processed that someone had entered.
Viktor crossed the space in four steps. Four. That was all it took.
The barrel pressed against the man’s temple with calm, unhurried certainty, the kind possessed only by a man who had killed before and found the process uncomplicated.
"You have a death wish," Viktor said softly. "So take a very good look at who is standing in front of you."
The man froze. And then recognition hit when he said the symbol of the Kessler Clan.
Sienna watched the exact moment the blood drained from his face. "Oh God..." he whispered.
His hands lifted slowly into the air, the universal language of a man realizing every decision in his life had just led him directly to his funeral.
Viktor did not blink. Did not move. The gun remained steady against the man’s skin while silence swallowed the suite whole.
Then Viktor’s eyes shifted. Just once. Just one brief sweep toward the bed where Sienna still sat trembling beneath the ruined sheets.
Something crossed his face. Gone almost instantly. Hidden again beneath that terrifying composure he wore like armor.
But she saw it. That one unguarded second. Relief. Rage. Possession. All of it twisted together into something dangerously raw.
She filed it away carefully. "Boss."
One of Viktor’s men appeared behind him, then another, broad shoulders filling the shattered doorway. "You can’t kill him here. Too many people outside. Cleaning the mess will be difficult."