Page 23 of Hard Bargain

Another finger bent backward; another scream tore through the room.

Knox locked his jaw so tightly it hurt, breathing through his nose. His stomach churned, his pulse hammering against his ribs so hard it made his skin feel too tight, but he forced himself to stay exactly where he was.

The manager sobbed, broken and desperate, tears and snot streaking down his face. “Please—please, I’m sorry—”

Dominic didn’t so much as blink. “You’re sorry because you got caught.”

The next crack was somehow worse. Knox swallowed against the nausea rising in his throat.

Cassian glanced over. “First time seeing something like this?” he asked, voice almost kind.

Knox didn’t trust himself to answer. Everything about this felt surreal, like he’d stepped so far outside his own life that there was no recognizable path back.

By the time Dominic lifted a hand to stop it, the manager’s hand was mangled, fingers jutting at impossible angles. The man sagged in the chair, sobbing openly.

Dominic turned toward Knox, expression unreadable. “Remember this. This is what happens to people who betray me.”

Knox nodded, the movement mechanical. He could taste metal at the back of his throat.

“If you’re going to remain in this world,” Dominic continued, “you need to understand exactly what it costs.”

He turned back toward the man in the chair, letting the sobbing fill the space. “Enough,” he said.

Relief crashed across the manager’s face so suddenly it was painful to witness. For one stupid second, Knox thought that was the end of it, until Dominic reached for the gun on the table. Knox’s stomach dropped, a foreign sensation spreading through him, but he didn’t step back.

Dominic stepped closer, stopping just in front of the chair. The manager looked up at him, eyes blown wide, mouth working uselessly around broken pleas.

“I gave you a place,” Dominic said. “I trusted you with my business. My people.”

The man shook his head violently, tears tracking down his bruised face. “I swear—I won’t—please—”

Dominic raised the gun.

Knox registered everything in detail. The way the barrel looked too small to end a life. The trembling rise of the man’s chest. The sudden unnatural stillness in the room. The sound of the gunshot exploding through the warehouse. Blood sprayed, painting the concrete red and splattering Dominic’s sleeve as the man’s body jolted and went limp, head lolling forward at an unnatural angle.

The metallic smell hit a second later. Knox couldn’t move. His ears rang and his hands felt numb, like they didn’t belong to him anymore. Something inside him recoiled in horror, but beneath that, something colder locked into place.

Knox barely had time to process what he was seeing before two of Dominic’s men moved forward, calm and efficient in a way that made the violence feel even more disturbing. One retrieved a body bag from somewhere while the other lifted the dead man from the chair without ceremony.

Dominic turned to Knox, their eyes meeting. For a long moment, Dominic said nothing at all, his gaze moving over Knox like he was searching for something. Shock. Fear. Revulsion. Weakness. Any sign that would prove Knox had reached his limit.

He forced himself to breathe through the pounding in his chest, every inhale deliberate, every muscle held rigid beneath the weight of Dominic’s scrutiny.

Eventually Dominic spoke. “You understand now. That I don’t give second chances.”

Knox swallowed, his throat dry enough to hurt. “Yeah.”

Dominic’s mouth curved into an approving smile. “Good,” he said.

Someone handed him a cloth, and he wiped the blood from his hand with the same detached efficiency he brought to everything else. “In my world, you don’t get the luxury of giving people the benefit of the doubt. You’re careful or you end up dead.”

The body was already being taken away, but the blood and the echo of what had happened lingered in the air. Knox’s gaze flicked to the blood, then back to Dominic. His voice was steady when he spoke, even if he didn’t quite recognize it as his own. “I understand.”

And the worst part—the part he didn’t know what to do with—was that maybe he did.

“You did well,” Dominic said. “You have two choices now. You go home. Sit alone with what you just saw. Maybe that’s what you need. But if you do, you say nothing. Not to your friends, not to your mother, not to anyone.”

Knox stayed still.