Page 22 of Hard Bargain

“You work for me. Close up and get here.”

Knox shook his head. “I can’t just bail. The owner’s good to me. I’m the only one here for the next hour.”

Dominic’s reply came colder. “That’s not my problem. Don’t make it mine.”

Knox gripped the phone tighter. “I’ll come when my shift ends. I don’t leave decent people hanging. Not even for you.”

The silence that followed felt heavy enough to hurt. When Dominic spoke, his voice had gone dangerously calm. “The second your shift ends, you get here. Don’t make me wait a moment longer.”

The line went dead.

Knox lowered the phone, staring at his reflection in the cooler door.

Three days.

It had been three days since he’d seen or heard from Dominic. Three days of silence that had left him feeling weirdly restless, like he’d been waiting for the other shoe to drop. Now, with one call, everything ordinary felt temporary again.

He finished the rest of his shift with a strange current under his skin. When the next clerk came in, Knox ran through the handoff quickly and stepped out into the afternoon sunlight.

He found the nearest bus stop and boarded, taking a seat by the window. The ride crawled through the city blocks and industrial lots, every street making the ordinary feel farther away.

He got off at the closest stop he could find, checking the map on his phone as he walked the rest of the way. The address led him to an old warehouse that looked forgettable, the kind of building you could pass a hundred times without ever noticing it. Except now his entire life seemed to be pulling him toward it.

He drew in a deep breath, squared his shoulders, and stepped inside. The temperature dropped immediately. Weak daylight filtered through grimy high windows, striping the floor and turning everything a little ghostly.

There were voices, low and serious, echoing off the walls. He hesitated just long enough to get his bearings before following the sound. Every footstep echoed. His heartbeat felt impossibly loud, pulsing in his throat, his ears, even his fingertips.

And then he saw them. Dominic stood beside a battered folding table, sleeves rolled to the elbow, posture deceptively relaxed in the way only truly dangerous men managed. His gaze lifted the moment Knox entered, taking him in with one quick sweep.

Beside him stood the dark-haired man Knox recognized from before. Cassian. The easy grin was there again, but there was something watchful underneath it now.

Two more men lingered nearby, leaning against a stack of crates, their arms crossed. They looked like the kind of men who had done worse than break a nose.

And there, slumped in a chair at the center of the room, was the casino’s floor manager. One eye was swollen shut, blood stained the collar of his shirt, and one hand trembled visibly in his lap. Shame and anger flickered across his face, but it was fear that made him twitch with every sound.

Dominic nodded once. “Right on time.”

Knox kept his expression blank, but he could feel the tension pull tighter inside him. He flicked his gaze from the floor manager to Dominic. “What happened?”

Dominic’s eyes remained on him. “You noticed something no one else did. The other night, you said he seemed nervous.” His gaze flicked briefly to the man in the chair. “He had reason to be. Turns out he’d been stealing from the casino for months.”

Cassian stepped forward, studying Knox with open interest. “We checked after you mentioned it. Not bad, kid,” he said.

The floor manager lurched upright, voice cracking. “It wasn’t like that—”

Dominic silenced him with a glance, then his eyes returned to Knox. “You see details most people miss. That makes you useful. Remember that.”

The praise caught Knox off guard, sparking a flicker of satisfaction he hadn’t expected. Before he could decide what to make of that, Dominic’s expression hardened. “You’re here because I want you to see what happens when someone crosses me,” he said.

Knox managed to nod. He could feel the world reshaping itself around him. Whatever happened next, he was in it now—deeper than before—and there was no turning back.

“Hold out his hand,” Dominic said.

One of the men moved from the shadows, grabbing the floor manager’s wrist. Panic flashed across the man’s face. “No—wait—please—” He struggled hard enough to nearly tip the chair, but it made no difference. The man restraining him forced his fingers apart despite the frantic resistance.

Knox’s stomach twisted, but he didn’t move.

Dominic stepped closer, voice cold as stone. “You took what belonged to me,” he said before nodding to the enforcer. The man bent the manager’s pinky finger back with a sickening crack. The scream ricocheted through the warehouse, loud enough to make Knox’s vision go white at the edges. He wanted to look away, but forced himself to watch. He could feel Dominic’s attention on him without even turning his head, waiting for the first sign of weakness.