Chapter 4 - Playing with Fire
That night, the small apartment on Tenth Street felt less like a sanctuary and more like a fortress under siege. The rain continued to pour, washing over the windowpane in heavy, gray sheets.
Dawson sat on the floor, his back against the sofa, cleaning a disassembled black pistol with mechanical precision. He didn't look up when Sienna walked into the living room holding two mugs of hot tea. She sat down beside him, crossing her legs, and set the mugs on the coffee table.
"We can't fight them the old way, Dawson," she said softly, her hand reaching out to touch his knee. "If you go back to being the monster they expect, you give them exactly what they want. They want to drag you back down to the mud."
"I never left the mud, Sienna," he muttered, slotting the slide of the gun back into place with a sharp, metallic clack. "I just put on clean clothes. Men like Victor... they don't understand negotiations. They only understand gravity. You drop them from a high enough ledge, and they stop talking."
"No," Sienna said, her hazel eyes fierce. "We are going to use the law. Or at least, the legitimate version of it. The Baltic Line manifests weren't completely wiped. I kept a secure backup of the routing codes. Those codes link Victor’s syndicate to a series of offshore bank accounts in Switzerland and Cyprus. If we leak those to the federal prosecutors, the government will freeze their assets before they can even buy a bullet to use on us."
Dawson looked at her, his expression a mix of awe and profound worry. "You’re playing with fire, Ice Queen. These people don't wait for trials. If they realize you have those codes, they will bypass me entirely and come straight for you."
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"They are already coming for us, Dawson," she replied, leaning in until her forehead rested against his. "I would rather die fighting to keep this clean life than live a single day in the dark again. We do this together. Or we don't do it at all."
Dawson closed his eyes, his large hands coming up to cradle her face. "Together," he whispered, his heart aching with a fierce, protective love that felt like a physical weight in his chest. "But if they touch a single hair on your head, Sienna... I will burn this city to the ground."
