Chapter 35
Thirty-Five
Sienna
Little Girl Gone - CHINCHILLA
My mouth tastes like rusted metal and regret.
Copper clings to my tongue, thick and bitter, and the sharp ache blooming behind my left eye tells me I’ve been out longer than I should’ve been.
Everything’s hazy, like waking up underwater, like trying to breathe through cement.
My wrists scream when I shift. Zip ties, tight enough to cut off circulation.
My ankles are pinned to the chair legs too. Fuck.
Of course I’m tied to a chair. Again.
I blink through the dim, flickering light, trying to piece together how the hell I got here.
I was heading back to the pit, bullet keychain in hand.
I was grinning. I didn’t see Jace coming.
Didn’t hear the footsteps. Just the sting of something cracking against the back of my skull and the sudden rush of pavement under my knees.
Black.
That’s all there was after that.
I don’t know how long I’ve been out. Could’ve been ten minutes. Could’ve been hours. And worse—I don’t know if Riot crossed the finish line. If he even knows I’m gone.
Who am I kidding, of course he knows I’m gone. He’s fucking Riot Carter.
A slow clap echoes through the warehouse-sized room. And that’s when I see him. Jace. That smug, polished bastard pacing like a goddamn jungle cat, too clean for the dirt he crawled out of, eyes gleaming like he just won the fucking lottery.
“Well,” he drawls, “look who’s awake.”
“You piece of shit,” I rasp, voice ragged and raw.
“Of course you snuck up behind me. Too much of a coward to face me head-on, huh? Gotta slither out of the shadows like the spineless little freak you are. Tell me, was I out long enough for you to finally touch a woman without sobbing about it after?”
He grips my chin, rough and claiming, forcing my face up to his. His thumb drags across my bottom lip, slow and deliberate. “Still got that mouth,” he mutters, voice low. “Can’t wait to finally shut it up for good. After I’m done using it, of course.”
“Aww, still making empty threats?” I tilt my head, smirking. “It’s cute how hard you try to compensate. What’s the plan, kill me to distract from the fact your dick’s too small to do anything else?”
He moves closer. Too close. His breath reeks of peppermint and rot. His fingers twitch near my chin, like he wants to touch but knows he shouldn’t. Good instinct.
“I should fuck the attitude out of you before he gets here,” Jace murmurs. “Make sure you’re nice and broken when Riot shows up here trying to save your ass. Think he’d cry when I toss your used up corpse at his feet?”
I spit in his face.
He flinches. Wipes it off with the back of his hand, eyes blazing. “You’re going to die screaming.”
“Screaming? You’re going to die in under two minutes, like you do with every woman you’ve ever disappointed. So let’s not pretend we’re both not on a clock.”
He swings. A sharp backhand cracks across my jaw, but I laugh through the pain. His hands are shaking. Mine would be too, if they weren’t zip-tied to a chair.
“He’s on his way, you know,” Jace says, voice lower now, edged with nerves. “Your precious savior is coming, but he’ll be too fucking late.”
Good. Let him be scared.
A flicker of motion behind him draws my eye. And that’s when I see him.
Kane.
Not on a screen. Not behind a wall of guards. In the flesh, and goddamn is he worse up close.
He’s broad. Built like a tank wrapped in tailored wool. Suit blacker than sin. Hair slicked back, streaks of gray at the temples. No emotion in his eyes. Just calculation. The kind of man who doesn’t need to yell to be dangerous. He breathes power. And right now, that power’s directed at me.
“Jace,” Kane says, voice smooth as oil. “Enough.”
Jace doesn’t move. His lip curls. “I’m handling it—”
“I said enough.”
Jace scoffs, defiant. “What, you scared of her now? She’s just a—”
The gun’s already out.
Click.
Boom.
One clean shot.
Jace’s body hits the floor like a dropped weight, a single bullet carved into the center of his skull. Silence crashes into the room. Thick. Unforgiving.
Kane exhales through his nose, like he’s brushing dust off his coat. “I don’t like repeating myself,” he mutters, sliding the gun back into its holster. “He was a tool. And tools that talk too much get replaced.”
Then his gaze cuts to me. Sharp. Unblinking.
“You’re even more like her than I thought,” he says.
“I have better things to do with my time,” he says, stepping over Jace’s corpse like it’s trash on the floor. “Like finishing what I started—with you.”
I cock my head. “You’re gonna have to be more specific. I’ve inherited a lot of people’s bad habits.”
He smirks.
“Tell me, Sienna, do you ever wonder why someone as dangerous as me would go to such lengths to erase you?”
I snort. “Because you’re a coward with a God complex and a dick smaller than your moral compass?”
That smile doesn’t fade. “Because you’re my daughter.”
Silence detonates in my skull.
No.
No, no, no.
“You’re lying.”
“I never lie,” Kane says calmly. “Your mother did. She lied when she said she could run. Lied when she said she could hide you. Lied when she told me I’d never find her. She tried to take you,” he spits, “and your brother.”
The word cracks through me like a whip.
Brother.
My stomach knots. My lungs freeze.
Brother.
The blood drains from my face as everything slams into place—hard and fast and merciless.
The brother whose death I was arrested for.
The faceless boy the courts named me a monster over.
The body I was found near. The crime I couldn’t explain.
The one Kane framed me for.
My vision goes white with shock. “Wait…” My voice breaks. “That was my brother.”
He doesn’t deny it, doesn’t flinch.
Bile rising in my throat.
“You… framed me for his death. Your own fucking son.”
“My heir,” he says, with a cold shrug. “I raised him to take everything one day. But you? You were her mirror. Her defiance. Her blood. Every time I looked at you, I saw her. It only got worse as you got older. So I sent you away. Paid for silence as those loyal to me put you in the system and erased anything that tied you to me. I buried the truth.”
I shake my head, but I can’t stop the truth from boiling up, vicious and jagged.
He blamed me for my brother’s murder.
“You sick, selfish, cowardly piece of shit.” My voice shakes but not from fear. From fury. From the weight of a truth clawing its way to the surface.
He watches me. Silent. Smug. Like he’s already won.
“My own father framed me,” I whisper. “Not just for murder but for killing my own blood.”
“Stephan was weak,” Kane says flatly. “He wasn’t meant for this world. But he was still my blood. Until he turned on me.”
The door blasts inward.
Gunfire echoes like thunder and then Riot barrels into the room like a force of nature.
He’s blood-slicked and breathing like he’s tasted hell. His fists are clenched, jaw tight, chest heaving. His eyes land on me, and everything in him stills but only for a second.
Then he sees Kane. “Let her go,” he growls, voice like gravel sliding over broken bones. “Right fucking now.”
Kane doesn’t flinch. “You’re late.”
“Actually,” Riot snarls, stepping through the door like a storm in boots. “I’m right the fuck on time.” His voice drips with venom. “Hell’s been waiting for you, Kane. And I’m the reaper sent to drag your rotting corpse there.”
Kane turns slowly, unfazed. Calm. Amused.
“Riot Carter.” He says it like he’s spitting something sour off his tongue.
“I have to admit, I’m impressed. You’ve survived longer than I expected.
Crawled your way through the filth. Left a mess in every district.
All for what?” He sneers. “A girl?” His eyes flick to me, then back to Riot.
“You were entertaining once. A good distraction. A wildcard I could profit from. But now?” He takes a step forward, straightening his jacket like Riot’s beneath him.
“Now you’re just dirt under my shoe. A gnat buzzing too close to the wrong flame. And I’m done swatting.”
Riot’s shoulders twitch. Fury pulses off him like heat from a wildfire.
“Yeah, well I know who the fuck you are too,” Riot snarls, lips curling as he spits a mouthful of blood at Kane’s feet. “But if you really knew who I was, of what I’m capable of, you never would’ve touched her.”
His voice drops into a growl, raw and shaking with fury.
“You didn’t just take what’s mine. You hurt her. You put your filthy fucking hands on her. And that—” he steps forward, eyes blazing like a goddamn warpath— “that was your last fucking mistake in this lifetime, you dead piece of shit walking.”
Kane smirks like he’s already written Riot’s obituary.
“You think I’m afraid of some feral mutt with a fucking hero complex?” Kane scoffs, grinning like he’s already won.
“She’s not yours, Riot. She’s mine. Always has been. My blood. My legacy. And you?” He laughs, sharp and mocking. “You’re just the idiot who thought he could play savior and outrun the inevitable.”
Riot lunges a step closer.
“Say another fucking word and I’ll rip your spine out with my bare hands,” he hisses.
And then his eyes find me. That’s when everything in me breaks and rebuilds in one breath.
He’s bleeding. Bruised. Breathing like he fought an army.
But those eyes… They’re locked on me like nothing else matters.
Like I’m the reason he’s still breathing.
I see it, all of it. The bodies he left behind.
The blood that isn’t his. The chaos he walked through just to get to me.
He didn’t just come for me. He carved a path of vengeance through hell. And he’s not leaving without me.
Even if it kills him.
Kane doesn’t even flinch. He watches Riot with that same goddamn smugness he’s worn since he walked in—like none of this touches him. Like Riot’s just a bug buzzing too loud.
“All that blood. All that death. And for what? To die here? Watching me gut her like a fucking deer?” Kane drawls.