Page 142 of Hard Bargain

He let the baton thunk onto the table and reached for another item. He turned back holding it up like a prize. “Grew up on a farm,” he said, almost fondly. “Branding the cattle was my favorite chore.”

A soft hum crackled to life; coils on the head glowed red-orange, heat radiating visibly in the cold air.

An electric brand.

Knox’s lungs emptied.

“Pretty, isn’t it?” Mercer angled the glowing tip so he could see—three small leaves and a stem. “A little clover.”

Before Knox could answer, Mercer walked over and fisted his hair, yanked his head sideways, and pressed the brand below his ear.

White-hot pain exploded, the burn so fierce it stole sound and sight. Acrid smoke rose, the stench of burning flesh lodging in the back of his throat. He tasted blood where he’d bitten through his own lip. His breathing came back ragged and shattered when Mercer finally lifted the iron.

The brand clattered back onto the table. Mercer’s hand closed around a knife next, the blade catching what little light there was as he twirled it between his fingers. “Now, let’s add some color. Plenty of canvas to work with. Let’s see how beautiful you look in red.”

Chapter 36

Dominic

The crash was loud enough to echo. A monitor hit the wall, ripped straight off the desk and thrown hard enough to shatter on impact. Dominic didn’t stop moving. His hand swept across the desk, sending everything within reach to the floor in a cascade of glass and paper.

Forty-three hours.

The number sat under his skin, pulsing like a second heartbeat.

He turned, grabbed the chair, and drove it sideways into the cabinet. The impact slammed the doors open, hinges bending, shelves cracking inside. His fist drove into the wall next—plaster splitting, knuckles splitting with it—but the pain barely registered. It wasn’t the thing that was tearing him apart.

Knox had been missing for forty-three hours.

The office was wrecked. Glass crunched under his shoes as he stood in the middle of it, chest heaving, blood drying across his knuckles. He dragged a hand over his face, but it didn’t do anything to quiet his mind.

He hadn’t slept. Not once. Forty-three hours and his body should have been shutting down. Instead everything felt too sharp. His thoughts kept looping over themselves without pause, returning to the same names, places, and half-buried connections. Every person Mercer had ever dealt with. Every loose thread that might lead somewhere. He’d worked through all of them. Methodically at first. Then desperately.

The interrogations had been bad.

Usually, he knew exactly where the line was. How far to push before it stopped being productive, how to read the moment someone had given everything they had. This time, he hadn’t cared. If they hesitated, he pushed harder. Hard enough that people broke in ways they weren’t supposed to break. The rational part of his brain—the part that had built everything through precision and control—watched it happen but couldn’t make it stop.

Cassian had stepped in more than once. The last time, he’d had to physically tear Dominic off a guy and shove him backward. “Enough,” he’d said.

Dominic had turned on him instantly, the anger right there at the surface, fist already clenching. For one very real second, he’d almost hit his own cousin.

Cassian hadn’t flinched. “Go,” he’d said, voice steady in a way that meant he understood exactly what was happening. “You’re more useful on the phone. Use your connections. I’ll handle this.”

Dominic had listened. Not because he wanted to, but because Cassian was right and one of them needed to be.

Think.

He’d already thrown everything at it. Crews spread across the city, every contact activated, people leaned on, favors called in, money thrown at every crack and corner where information might be hiding.

Nothing.

Forty-three hours of nothing.

What was he missing? There had to be something. There always was. Mercer wasn’t smart enough to vanish like this. He was desperate, sloppy, burning through resources and goodwill. Desperate men left traces. Dominic just had to find the right one.

He stood in his ruined office and thought about Knox on his knees, looking up at him with those pretty blue eyes. He thought about Knox in his kitchen wearing his shirt and eating his food. He thought about Knox in the dark saying I think I’m bi like it was the bravest and most terrifying thing he’d ever done.

His chest constricted so hard it felt like something physical breaking.