Page 82 of Hard Bargain

Beside him, Cassian let out a short laugh. “Well. That tracks.”

“Victor Mercer,” Dominic said. Not a question.

The attacker nodded frantically, sweat running down his face. “He… he said it was payback. Said you killed some of his men a couple weeks ago. Said you had it coming.”

Dominic wiped the blade against the man’s blood-soaked shirt. “If Mercer wants revenge, he should have come himself.” He stepped back. “Tell me everything he told you. Don’t leave anything out.”

The man hung there for a long moment. When he finally spoke, the words came out in broken bursts, each sentence dragged out through pain and exhaustion. Dominic listened without interrupting.

Apparently, Mercer had been watching Dominic’s operations for months. Growing increasingly angry about how much territory Dominic controlled and how far his influence stretched. Mercer had started talking about it openly to his men: how one man shouldn’t hold that much power. Parts of it should belong to someone else. To him. He’d been looking for a way to start cutting pieces out for himself. And then several of his men had turned up dead a few weeks ago, turning that anger into something more urgent.

The instructions had been simple: watch the club every night until Dominic showed up. When he did, get close, and make sure he didn’t walk back out.

Dominic absorbed the information. Mercer had always been a coward. He sent others, men who received messages through disposable phones that disappeared as quickly as they arrived. Even the people on his payroll rarely knew where he actually was.

“Well,” Cassian said. “That answers that.”

Dominic didn’t reply. He stepped forward. The attacker saw the movement and panic flashed across his face before Dominic drove the knife between his ribs—clean and precise, directly into the heart. The body jerked once against the hook before going still.

The only sound in the cell was the slow drip of blood onto concrete.

Dominic pulled the knife free and set it on the nearby workbench without bothering to clean it. Only then did he turn.

Knox had moved. He was no longer in the doorway. At some point in those final moments he had stepped inside the cell. Now, he stood a few feet from the body, staring at the man slumped against the wall with an expression that was still entirely untroubled.

Cassian stepped closer. “You alright there, kid?”

Knox’s gaze lingered. “Yeah.” A slight pause. “He had it coming.”

Cassian huffed out a laugh, clearly pleased with the answer.

Dominic said nothing. His eyes stayed on Knox a moment longer before he turned toward the sink in the corner to wash the blood off his hands.

Two things had become crystal clear.

Mercer had just started a full-out war.

And Knox was considerably more dangerous than Dominic had given him credit for.

Chapter 22

Knox

Cassian walked ahead of them, whistling softly, like the evening had been mildly entertaining rather than what it actually was.

Dominic said nothing. Knox fell in behind him automatically. The silence didn’t feel awkward—it felt heavy, dense with the implications of what had just happened.

They crossed the floor toward the metal staircase. The overhead lights burned bright and everything looked normal, like nothing violent had happened fifteen feet away.

Halfway across the warehouse floor, Dominic pulled his phone out without breaking stride. “Get down to the lower holding cell,” he said when the call connected.

A short pause as Dominic took in whatever was said on the other end.

“Take care of it. Handle the cleanup.”

He ended the call and slipped the phone back into his pocket before pressing the elevator button. The doors opened almost immediately. Dominic and Cassian stepped inside, the latter leaning back against the wall with the relaxed ease of someone who had done this a hundred times.

Knox stopped at the threshold. Stepping in meant assuming he was welcome. He wasn’t sure he had the right to assume that—wasn’t sure what he was doing here at all, if he was honest.