Page 19 of Hard Bargain

Blocked the exit.

Knox’s hands twitched before he forced them still.

The bigger man took the envelope from his hand, turning it over once before opening it. His attention remained on the contents. “Rivera usually sends someone else.”

Knox kept his face neutral, though his nerves were beginning to hum violently beneath his skin. “Maybe he thought you could handle a change.”

The man gave no visible reaction. Knox became hyperaware of the room around him—the faint murmur of a television somewhere deeper in the house, the sound of his own breathing, louder than he wanted it to be.

Suddenly, the man by the door moved. A hand slammed into Knox’s shoulder hard enough to shove him off balance, his heel catching awkwardly before he could recover. A second later, something cold pressed against his ribs.

Knox went completely still. His breath locked high in his chest.

“I don’t trust you,” the man behind him muttered.

Knox’s heartbeat slammed painfully against his ribs, everything screaming at him to move, twist away, do something—but there was nowhere to go. The larger man still stood directly in front of him. And the pressure at his side made it painfully clear how quickly this could end if he made the wrong move.

“Easy,” the bigger man said, barely glancing up from the envelope, as though Knox having a gun pressed into his side was little more than routine.

The pressure increased slightly. A warning. Knox forced himself to breathe, shallow and controlled. “I’m just here to deliver,” he said.

No one answered.

Seconds dragged.

Then the larger man finally looked up. “You got a name?”

Knox swallowed against the dryness in his throat. “Knox.”

The man beside him shifted, the weapon still there, his breath brushing the side of Knox’s neck.

The envelope snapped shut. “Tell Rivera it’s done.”

The pressure at Knox’s side vanished. He didn’t react to it immediately. Didn’t move. Didn’t show the relief that hit him hard enough to make him feel dizzy. “Yeah,” he managed, though his voice came out rougher than intended. “I will.”

The man by the door stepped aside enough to let him pass. That was all the invitation he was going to get. He kept his pace measured as he walked out, resisting the urge to bolt until the front door shut behind him and the night air hit his face.

He made it halfway down the block before his body betrayed him. The adrenaline came crashing through him all at once. His hands started to shake uncontrollably, the tremors running up his arms as his body finally released the tension it had been holding too tight.

A breath escaped him that almost sounded like laughter. Or maybe hysteria. He dragged a hand through his hair, fingers trembling, trying to pull himself back together.

He’d done it. He hadn’t frozen or panicked. Hadn’t given them any reason to doubt him. He had walked into a stranger’s house, held himself together with a gun pressed into his ribs, and walked back out in one piece.

Whatever Dominic wanted from him next, he knew he could face it.

* * *

He didn’t go home. He wasn’t even sure he could, not with adrenaline still tearing through his system, and every streetlight feeling like it was a spotlight just for him.

The safest option felt obvious: go back to the casino, find Dominic, and let him know the job was done.

The place had grown busier while he was gone, but he spotted Dominic almost right away. He sat near the back in one of the private gaming areas, half-shadowed beneath low amber light, surrounded by men he wouldn’t want to meet in a dark alley.

Dominic looked at ease, leaning back in his chair, one hand resting near his drink as one of the men spoke. The faint smile might have fooled someone else, but Knox didn’t miss the way his attention tracked everything in the room.

When his gaze landed on Knox, the smile disappeared. It was replaced by that unsettling focus Knox had felt before—the kind that made it seem as though everything else in the room had ceased to matter.

Knox froze under the weight of it. The noise around him seemed to recede, the movement of the casino blurring into the background. All he could feel was the force of Dominic’s attention, burning hotter than anything else in the room. He felt irrationally flustered, but he couldn’t look away.