Chapter 15 Sienna
Sienna
Sunday Bingo night always smells like peppermint and polyester.
The room is filled with elderly women shouting at each other about the price of gas and whether the nurse stole their tray of banana pudding.
My grandmother waves at me from her usual table near the front. She’s a dainty little thing in lavender, but with plenty of sass packed into her five-foot-two frame.
She already has our cards set out—two for me, and four for her, just like always. If there is anything my grandmother takes seriously, it’s Bingo.
“There she is!” she greets when I slide into the chair beside her and lean in to give her a hug. “I was starting to think you got kidnapped.”
Yeah. About that.
Thank God she couldn’t see my face when she said that.
“Just had a busy week,” I lie, taking a spot in my cushioned chair.
“You didn’t answer your phone for three days, darling?”
I reach for a neon pink Bingo blotter and shrug like I haven’t been recovering from a hostage situation.“Bakery’s been slammed. Extra orders, extra hours.”
“Which is why you should just open your own,” my grandmother clucks with annoyance. “I dunno why you’re wasting your time with that one lady who’s just using you to make money.”
She’s not wrong. My boss, Andrea, barely knows what she’s doing in the kitchen.
“That all costs money,” I remind her. “And the extra hours give me extra money to do that.”
“Your hair looks stressed.”
I glance over at her with furrowed brows. “What? Is that… a thing?”
“For you? Yes.”
I roll my eyes, but my laugh slips out anyway.
God, I missed this.
Her tiny, barbed comments and dramatic worry. The way she makes space for me in a world where everything else tries to shrink me down.
“Are we winning tonight or what?” I switch topics like I haven’t been thinking about Benedikt nonstop since I left.
I try not to think about how my hands still tremble when I’m alone, or how my body curls up at night like it expects someone to break the door down.
Benedikt’s voice is still in my head.
The low, lethal calm. How quickly he went from hunting me down in L.A. to letting me go.
It makes zero sense.
I should let it go. I’m home and safe. Life is back to normal.
“I’m feeling lucky tonight.” My grandmother taps her cards. “It’s why I’m wearing my vixen-red lipstick and hit on my doctor today.”
Not again.
“Grands, they’re going to kick you out. And you like that doctor.”
She grunts. “I’m just admiring.”
“Most people do that silently.”
“And most people are boring.”
I blot the first number on my card as it’s called out, trying not to smile. It’s hard to stay tense around her, even when my stomach is still twisted with anxiety.
“I heard Doris put salt in Cynthia’s oxygen humidifier again,” my grandmother says casually. There is always drama at the senior-living facility. It’s where I get all my entertainment.
“Why?”
“She claims Cynthia’s been sabotaging her blood pressure with salty chicken salad.”
“Your building needs a reality show.”
“If you ever want to feel young and petty, this is the place.”
The numbers keep rolling out, and my grandmother mutters like a bookie. “Come on, G-54. Come to Mama.”
“What’s the prize tonight?”
“Target gift cards.” Then, she leans in conspiratorially. “Last week I told Harold to roll the balls around a little more, or I’d slap the retirement off him.”
“Grands…”
“I haven’t won in three weeks.”
“Because you’ve been too busy giving me the latest gossip and not listening to the numbers.”
“There’s been a lot going on here, Sienna. I’d explode if I didn’t tell you everything.”
Suddenly, something heavy hits the tile floor, and I nearly jump out of my seat.
I survey the room, looking for him.
“You okay, sweet girl?”
I’m with Grands. I’m fine. Nothing is happening.
“Scared me,” I mumble. “What was that?’
“Ava’s walker.”
“Bingo!” someone calls from the next table over, causing me to jump again.
It’s just Doris, wearing a smug visor and elbowing her bestie, Cynthia.
“Rigged,” Grandma mumbles, obviously annoyed. “She plays that same card every week.”
“It’s good to have a strategy.” I place a palm over my heart to calm it down.
“Doris cheats.”
“I love how serious you are about this.”
“It’s serious around here, darling. I’ve been trying to tell you.”
I shake my head. “I think you live a more glamorous life than me. I think I should move in.”
“There are no men here under the age of seventy-three. Unless you’re lookin’ to pull an Anna Nicole Smith.”
I tsk. “Hardly.”
“So, tell me what’s going on,” my grandmother says without looking at me. “You’re playing Bingo like you’re waiting for someone to come busting through that front door.”
“I am not.”
“You are.” I feel her eyes on me. “Something wrong?”
Nothing like a grandmother’s intuition.
There’s no way I’m going to tell my grandmother what happened between me and a mob boss. Nor what Dad did, and how he sold me off.
I just… can’t.
“Just exhausted.” I force the most genuine smile I can manage. “I’ve been looking forward to today all week. I just want to listen to you trash-talk your neighbors, win a gift card, and relax.”
“Don’t joke like that. You disappear, your hair’s frizzy, and now you’re acting like someone microwaved your brain.”
I huff a laugh. “You’re so dramatic.”
“And you’re hiding something.”
Before I can reply, one of the staff members comes up to the table.
“Mrs. Ramos?” Grandmother and I look over to see Gina, one of the girls at the front desk, handing a phone over. “Call for you.”
Grandmother blinks, confused. “Who the heck’s calling me on a Sunday?” Taking the phone, she says, “Hello?”
It only takes seconds for her face to pale. Her eyes go glassy as she stares into nothing.
Something’s wrong.
“Grand,” I whisper. “What’s wrong? Who is it?”
She doesn’t respond, nor does she move. My grandmother sits frozen and barely breathes as I wait for her to respond.
I wait a few more seconds before I pry the phone from her hand. “Give it here.”
She doesn’t argue, just shakes her head.
I press it to my ear. “Hello?”
“Sienna?” The voice is raspy and broken, and goosebumps break out along my skin. “It’s me. Your old man.”
My stomach drops. “Dad?”
He lets out a manic laugh. “I heard you were home. Word spreads fast. They said he let you go.”
“How did you get this number?” I whisper furiously, rising to my feet and striding from the room. “Don’t call here again.”
“I just needed to hear your voice. He’s coming for me, baby. You know that, right? You brought him to me.”
I clench the phone harder and violently shake my head. “Don’t you dare put this on me. You did this. You borrowed money from people you shouldn’t have, and you… you sold me.”
“I’m gonna die,” he says shakily, ignoring the fact that he put me in jeopardy. “You know that, right? That’s how this ends. He’s a monster. You saw it.”
Tears burn the back of my eyes. “I told you to never call again, and I meant it.”
“I don’t want to die, Sienna. I don’t—”
“Get out of town. Fast.” I bring my fingers to my forehead. “I can’t save you. You can’t bring me down. You called Grand.”
“This was the only number I knew, Sienna. You have to help me.”
No. No. No.
“Dad, I—”
Glass shatters in the Bingo room, and I jerk, almost dropping the phone.
A grunt.
A thump.
Shouting.
Then silence.
“Dad?” Nothing. Not a word. My heart skips a beat. “Dad!”
The line crackles. And then nothing.
My stomach churns.
Shit.
“Dad!”
“Hello, princess.”
Everything in me shuts down.
My throat closes.
My limbs go rigid.
For a second, I think I’m imagining his voice on the other line. I’d convinced myself that he is done with me. He wasn’t going to let me go just to waste his time and come get me again. Even though I’m still on edge, I know Benedikt isn’t a man who goes against his word.
His cold, possessive voice wraps around me still like a steel chain. My knees nearly buckle. The walls tilt. The floor doesn’t feel real.
My body moves on its own, forward, and I catch myself before I face-plant onto the floor.
I move to get outside, shoving the door open with my shoulder and stumbling outside into the fresh air. The phone is still pressed to my ear.
“What did you do?” I grind out, pacing the sidewalk. “Why are you there?”
“I don’t need to answer that, do I?”
“You said you weren’t going to touch him. You said I could go!”
“I never said I wasn’t going to touch your father,” he replies calmly. “I only said you could go.”
“What was the point of all this if you were just going to—”
“Calm down, princess. This isn’t your problem.”
I cover my mouth, trying to breathe, and trying not to scream or sob. Tears rush to my eyes and blur the parking lot. I can’t see straight as a broken sob escapes my lips.
My chest is so tight that it’s hard to stand upright.
I can’t allow this to happen. I can’t stand here and let my dad be murdered.
“Benedikt,” I whimper, failing at pulling myself together. “Please don’t.”
Silence.
But I can feel him on the other line.
Probably smirking. Maybe enjoying himself. Holding all the cards.
“Goodbye, princess.”
“I’ll do anything,” I blurt before he hangs up on me. My desperation tastes like bile and regret as I white-knuckle my grip around the phone.
I haven’t spoken to my father in more than three years, and he stopped being a part of my life long before I cut him off for good. But none of that matters when I can hear the panic in his voice. I can’t live with the thought of letting someone die when there’s a chance I could stop it.
“What do you want?” I round the far corner of the building and duck into a quiet nook between two large shrubs. The faint scent of cigarettes clings to the bricks, mixing with the sharp bite of early spring air. “I can’t… what do you need?”
“I don’t need anything.”
His voice is calm, like he’s already decided how this ends and is just letting me catch up.
I suck in a breath and stare at the chipped paint on the fence in front of me. “Then what do you want?”
I thought I got out.
I thought I was free.
But now I know I never was. Benedikt Volkov doesn’t let things go. He collects. People, power, and debts.
And now I don’t know who’s next.
My father?
Me?
Both?
“You.”
Then, the line goes dead.