Page 154 of Hard Bargain

The paper crumpled in his fist before he registered the movement. A sound tore out of him—low, feral, ripped from somewhere he didn’t know existed. “Fuuuck.”

He turned in a tight circle, irrationally searching the loft as if Knox might still be there. Like this could still be caught in time, stopped, reversed.

Nothing.

The loft answered him with a silence so total it felt like a physical thing pressing against his eardrums.

Gone.

His hand pressed flat against the marble. His head dropped. For a moment he just stood there, breathing, trying to locate the part of himself that handles things—the cold, rational machinery that had never once failed him in thirty-eight years of navigating a world designed to kill men like him.

He couldn’t find it.

“Jesus Christ.” He slammed his palm against the counter so hard the sound cracked through the loft. The impact traveled up his arm, grounding him in the sting of it. That at least was a kind of hurt he knew what to do with.

The other thing—the thing clawing at his ribs—he had no practice for.

Space.

His jaw clenched until it ached. “Space,” he repeated out loud, the word tasting like poison.

Knox hadn’t run from danger. Not from the violence, or the blood, or any of the things that should have sent a twenty-two-year-old sprinting for the exit.

He’d run from him.

And he’d left a fucking note.

For one ugly second, Dominic hated him. For the absence that already felt like an amputation. For creating a wound he couldn’t retaliate against, because there was no enemy to destroy, no threat to neutralize. There was only a boy who’d gotten scared and chosen to go.

He leaned back against the counter and closed his eyes, forcing himself to breathe through the surge of violence under his skin.

It burned.

God, it burned.

The obsession didn’t dim. It deepened. Grew roots. Grew teeth.

It burned because Knox had gotten further than anyone. He had slipped past every defense Dominic had built over the years and lodged himself somewhere vital. “You little fool,” he murmured. The words would have sounded affectionate to anyone listening, but there was nothing gentle about the possession coiling in his chest.

Knox thought distance would save him. Thought miles and highways and a different city could dilute whatever had grown between them.

He pulled out his phone and hit Cassian’s number.

Cassian answered on the first ring. “You back al—?”

“Find out where Knox’s brother lives.”

“What happened?”

Dominic looked at the letter. The paper was creased where he’d crushed it. He smoothed it flat against the counter with deliberate care, one hand pressing across the wrinkles. “He left.”

“Left how?”

“He ran to Los Angeles,” Dominic replied evenly. “Left me a fucking apology.”

Cassian let out a deep breath. “You’re kidding.”

Dominic stared at Knox’s name at the bottom of the page. The letters were shaky all the way across. “Do I sound like I’m kidding?”