Page 164 of Hard Bargain

All his life, attachment had felt like a threat. Something to outrun before it could turn on him. But standing in this room, with a brother who guarded him and a man who refused to let him go, Knox felt that fear lose some of its authority. In the space it left behind, something stronger began to take its place.

Perhaps love wasn’t the absence of fear at all. Maybe it was the willingness to let something else matter more.

Chapter 43

Dominic

One month later

The sound of impact reached him before he opened the door to the private gym. Cassian’s voice cut through it, followed by the solid crack of a hit landing clean.

Dominic stepped inside and stopped just past the threshold. He didn’t announce himself, just watched, letting the scene arrange itself before him.

Cassian was pressing hard, driving Knox across the mat with the kind of aggression he reserved for people he believed could actually hold up under it. No pulled punches. His strikes came fast and deliberate, designed to overwhelm, to break rhythm, and to force mistakes.

But Knox didn’t break.

He slipped the first strike cleanly, ducked beneath the second, and drove a counter into Cassian’s ribs hard enough to make him adjust his footing. That wasn’t luck. It was instinct—refined and tempered by months of being hit until his body learned to hit back.

Cassian’s grin flashed, clearly enjoying himself, pushing harder because Knox could take it.

Knox met him with equal force. He pressed in, forcing Cassian to give up ground, until the balance of the fight shifted and Cassian had to work for it.

That was new.

There was confidence in the way Knox moved, a growing precision that hadn’t existed months ago. Between Cassian’s sparring and Dominic’s harder lessons, Knox had learned how to survive under pressure—how not to panic when crowded, how to read violence before it arrived.

Somewhere in the process, something else had taken root. Something neither he nor Cassian had set out to cultivate but both had fed. Knox had started to learn how to turn the pressure back. How to impose it. How to dominate it.

Cassian absorbed another shot to the ribs with a rough laugh, already moving, already answering. Knox pressed in again without hesitation.

And smiled.

Real. Bright. Teeth flashing in a way that had absolutely no business appearing in the middle of a fight like this—yet there it was, breaking across his face as he met Cassian blow for blow. Knox wasn’t enduring this.

He was loving it.

Dominic thought of the boy who’d first stepped out of that alley. He’d been a restless, angry thing, carrying darkness without knowing what to do with it. That boy had looked like someone the world had already worn down.

This was someone else.

Someone stronger. Someone who’d stopped fighting himself and learned to embrace every part of who he was.

God—he looked magnificent like this.

Cassian lifted a hand, calling the end. Knox broke away, chest heaving, sweat tracking down his throat.

Cassian glanced toward the doorway, finally noticing Dominic, and a crooked smirk tugged at his mouth. “Your protégé’s getting vicious.”

Dominic watched Knox for another moment before responding. “You’ll live.”

Cassian huffed a laugh and shook out his arm.

Knox looked up and their eyes met. The violence that had animated him moments ago receded, replaced by a look of such joy and unguarded love that Dominic forgot to breathe.

Knox stepped toward the ropes and asked, “Well?”

The word carried a challenge, but beneath it lurked the need for approval. Knox probably didn’t know it was there. Dominic heard it every time. “You’re improving,” he said.