Chapter 76: My smart wife

Behind the plant, Sienna and Aria watched the whole thing unfold, and slowly, quietly, they both began to laugh, pressing their hands over their mouths to keep the sound from carrying.

"Okay," Aria whispered, wiping at the corner of her eye, still grinning. "That was better than any movie I’ve watched all year."

"I know," Sienna whispered back, a real laugh finally breaking free, the first one she’d had in what felt like forever.

They waited until the hallway cleared before slipping out themselves, careful not to be seen, the two of them practically buzzing with the satisfaction of watching two people who had hurt Sienna so badly finally get a taste of their own mess.

"Alright," Aria said once they were outside, the morning sun bright and warm against their faces. "Now let’s go get something delicious to eat. All that drama made me hungry, somehow."

"Me too," Sienna agreed, and the two of them walked off together, arm in arm, leaving the chaos of that office building behind them, at least for now.

—

Viktor’s meeting went on for the entire night.

It wasn’t really a meeting, not in any sense that word usually carried. There was no long table full of men speaking carefully to one another, no polite exchange of threats dressed up as business talk.

It was something colder than that. Viktor made sure of it. Every single person who dared to raise their voice and call for Sienna’s head found themselves silenced before the night was through, in whatever way silence needed to come.

By the time the sun began to think about rising again, the room, and the house around it, had turned into something closer to a slaughterhouse than a council meeting.

It was a bloodbath. Viktor did not flinch through any of it.

When he finally made his way home, the sky outside was still dark, heavy with the kind of exhaustion that settles into a man’s bones after a long night of violence.

He walked through the front doors of the mansion expecting quiet. Instead, he found his own men, men he had trusted, men who had served him for years, lying scattered across the floor, some shot clean through the head, others simply gone, vanished, their absence somehow louder than the bodies left behind.

Something cold moved through Viktor’s chest at the sight of it.

Sienna.

The thought hit him before he even realized it had formed, sharp and immediate, cutting straight through the calm he usually wore like armor.

He was moving before he finished the thought, taking the stairs two at a time, his heart pounding in a way it rarely did anymore, not after everything he had seen and done over the years.

He reached her door and pushed it open so hard it nearly came off its hinges.

The room was dim, curtains still drawn from the morning before. And there, on the bed, was a shape. A body, lying still beneath the blanket, sharp lines visible through the fabric where someone had clearly been lying not long ago.

And blood. He saw blood, dark and spreading, soaked into the sheets near where a head should have been resting.

"No," Viktor said, the word tearing out of him rough and low. "No. No. Sienna."

For the first time in his life, in all the years since he had learned to carve his name into this world through fear and blood and quiet violence, Viktor felt something break open inside his chest. He crossed the room in three long strides and grabbed the edge of the blanket, his hands shaking, actually shaking, as he pulled it back, bracing himself for whatever waited beneath it.

Pillows.

Just pillows, arranged carefully to look like a sleeping body, and beside them, a punctured blood bag, mostly empty now, its dark contents soaked into the sheets exactly where a wound might have been.

Viktor stood there for a long moment, staring down at the mess of fabric and fake blood, and then he laughed. It came out rough and surprised, half disbelief, half something that felt almost like relief so strong it hurt.

He dragged a hand down his face slowly.

"Damn, Sienna," he muttered, shaking his head. "My smart wife."

A small, genuine smile pulled at the corner of his mouth despite everything, despite the bodies downstairs, despite the long, brutal night he had just survived.

He looked closer at the bed and noticed the bullet holes scattered through the headboard, the wall behind it, and a few even torn through the mattress itself. It could have been her lying there. It very nearly had been.

He was still standing there, staring at the wreckage of her clever escape, when he heard footsteps rushing down the hallway.

Marcus appeared in the doorway, breathing hard, his eyes sweeping over the scene before landing on Viktor.

"Boss," he said. "The Capri men were here last night. So were Aliya, Elena, and Marcel." He shook his head, disgust plain on his face. "These damn people."

Viktor’s jaw tightened at the names, each one landing like a small blow, but he pushed the anger aside for now. There was only one question that mattered.

"What of Sienna?" he asked.

"Nothing, boss," Marcus said. "She’s not on any of the cameras. Not anywhere in the house. It’s like she just... disappeared."

Viktor exhaled slowly, something in his shoulders finally loosening. She was alive. She had to be. Whatever trick she had pulled, wherever she had gone, she had done it herself, on her own two feet, out from under the noses of everyone who had come here to hurt her.

He wasn’t angry. Not about this. Not about her running. As long as she was breathing somewhere out there, nothing else mattered right now.

"Find her," Viktor said, his voice low but certain. "And get this place cleaned up. I want new guards brought in from the other sites. Every single one of them checked, vetted, and made sure they’re clean and loyal before they set foot in this house again."

"And your family," Marcus said carefully. "Aliya, too. What do we do about them, boss?"

Viktor was quiet for a moment, his eyes drifting back to the ruined bed, to the blood bag still leaking slowly onto the sheets, to the small, stubborn proof of exactly how far Sienna had been willing to go to survive.

"Too much is going on right now," he said finally. "I’ll deal with them later."

"Okay, boss," Marcus said, and turned to leave, already pulling out his phone to start giving orders.

Viktor stayed behind a moment longer, alone in the wrecked room, staring at the space where his wife should have been, and finding himself, for reasons he did not entirely want to examine too closely, almost proud of her instead of furious.