Page 147 of Hard Bargain

Knox felt the implication before it was spelled out. The image formed on its own, vivid and specific: Dominic in the basement, methodical, doing what he did best. Every day. For a week.

“What?” Knox asked quietly.

Cassian shrugged. “Our guy had a lot to work through.”

Knox looked at Dominic, searching his face for something—guilt, conflict, hesitation. He found nothing. Dominic looked back the way he always did: completely at peace with whatever his hands had done.

“He’s alive,” Dominic said, like that was the only part worth focusing on.

“Why?” Knox asked.

“Because he’s yours.”

Three words. Knox just stared at him, his grip tightening around the remote. “Mine,” he echoed.

Dominic didn’t look away. “You suffered because of him. You decide what happens to him.”

Knox sat with that for a moment. Then another. The restlessness that had been eating him alive all evening was gone. Replaced by something focused and very, very clear.

He thought about the car crash. The baton. The brand. The knife and the hours that followed it. He thought about counting his own breaths in the dark, holding on to one thought and one thought only, because it was the only thing that made him want to keep counting.

Dominic.

He’d held on for him. Hadn’t broken. Had chosen that whatever Mercer did to his body was worth it if it meant the man sitting next to him right now stayed safe.

And Dominic had torn the city apart to find him. Had gone down to that basement every single day and taken Knox’s suffering out on Mercer’s body.

Knox looked at him. “Take me to him.”

* * *

It was colder down here, heavier somehow, like the walls held onto everything that had happened inside them and refused to let it go.

He didn’t move at first. He just stood there, letting his eyes adjust to the dark. Mercer hung against the wall, arms pulled overhead, the line of his body dragged down by his own weight. The angle of his shoulders was wrong—dislocated, maybe.

Knox’s mind snagged on that detail, trying to make sense of it. The rest followed. The bruising, layered and dark. The wounds that hadn’t healed. The way his head tipped forward, barely held up by whatever strength he had left.

Dominic did this.

Knox stepped forward without thinking about it, the distance between them closing easily. Behind him, Dominic didn’t say anything. Knox could feel him there, close enough to reach if he wanted to, but making no move to interrupt. There was just the steady reassurance of his presence while Knox worked through this himself.

“You kept him like this the whole time?” Knox asked.

“Yes.”

A broken groan rasped out of Mercer's throat as consciousness clawed its way back into him. That sound did something to Knox; it was like a match striking inside him.

Dominic had told him once that they were built the same way—drawn to danger, unrestrained by fear. Knox hadn’t wanted to believe it then.

He believed it now.

Nothing in him trembled. Nothing wanted to step back. He stood there in the cold basement looking at a broken man hanging from a hook and felt nothing that resembled pity. He wondered distantly if this was how Dominic felt right before he decided a man’s fate.

The thought almost made him smile.

Mercer’s head lifted a fraction, one swollen eye cracking open, struggling to focus. Knox waited patiently, until that reluctant flicker of recognition surfaced in the ruined gaze.

There.