Chapter 37
Knox
“Are you fucking serious right now?” His voice came out rough, worn thin after three days in the hospital.
Dominic stood near the window, posture straight, hands loose at his sides, looking like none of this touched him. Like this was just another conversation on just another day.
Knox wanted to throw something at him.
He pushed himself upright in the hospital bed, ignoring the pull of everything that hadn’t healed yet. “Again,” Knox snapped. “That’s the third time I’ve had to sit here and repeat the same bullshit cover story to the police because you decided it was a good idea to bring me here.”
Still nothing.
“Say something,” Knox shouted.
Dominic’s gaze moved to him. Calm. Measured. Infuriating. “You needed medical attention.”
Knox let out a disbelieving laugh that hurt his chest. “Yeah? And that was the only option you could think of?”
“Yes.”
The flat certainty of it made Knox’s grip tighten in the thin hospital blanket. “No, it wasn’t,” he shot back. “You have people. You always have people. You could’ve handled it without—this.” He gestured vaguely around the room. “Without putting yourself in the middle of it.”
Dominic didn’t move. “You were unstable.”
“I was breathing.”
“Barely.”
Knox shook his head, anger spiking again to cover the fear and vulnerability it had exposed. “So what? That means you walk me into a place that asks questions? That calls the police? You think that was a smart move?”
“Yes.”
Knox stared at him. “You don’t get it. This isn’t just about me. You don’t get to take risks like that just because I—” He cut himself off, jaw tightening.
Dominic’s eyes narrowed. “Just because what?”
Knox looked away and dragged a hand through his hair before it stalled halfway, the movement making him wince. He ignored the pain, focusing instead on the thought that had gone too far to reel back in.
People didn’t do that. Not for him. They never had.
Growing up, if something had to give, it was him. His mom had always been caught in her own spiral, his dad worse in every way that counted, and somewhere along the line Knox had learned that his needs came last—if they came at all.
The idea that someone would look at him and decide he was worth risking anything for didn’t sit right. It didn’t fit with the way he understood the world and his place in it.
“Just because you decided I was worth the risk,” he said, barely above a whisper.
Silence.
Dominic stepped closer. “It wasn’t a risk.”
Knox barked out another laugh. “Yeah, it was. Your whole life depends on people not looking too closely. And you just, what, threw that out the window because I got beat up?”
“I didn’t know how hurt you were.” Dominic’s gaze dropped to the bruises and bandages. “You could’ve had internal bleeding. You could’ve been dying.”
A knot formed low in Knox’s gut as something uncomfortable pushed up behind the anger. He buried it before it could surface. “I wasn’t dying.”
“I didn’t know that. And you’re not the one who decides what I risk,” Dominic said.
“I should be if it’s because of me,” Knox snapped.
“No.”
Knox clenched his jaw, frustration climbing higher, mixing with what felt a lot like fear if he was stupid enough to examine it. “You could’ve gotten exposed,” he said. “Someone could’ve connected you to it. You could’ve ended up in jail. You think that doesn’t matter?”
“It doesn’t matter more than you staying alive.”
Knox’s throat went dry. He swallowed hard and clung to the anger, because it was easier—so much easier—than dealing with whatever this was. “That’s stupid,” he said.
“Maybe.”
Knox dropped his head back against the pillow and stared up at the ceiling. His eyes were stinging and he was furious about that too. “I’m not something you blow up your life over,” he muttered. “I’m not worth that.”
Dominic moved faster than Knox expected. His hand closed around Knox’s jaw, firm enough to stop him from looking away, but careful enough not to hurt his injuries. “Don’t,” he said.
Knox’s breath hitched.
“Don’t decide your worth for me.”
Knox looked at him. Dominic’s eyes were steady and close, carrying the sort of certainty he had never expected to be on the receiving end of. “You still shouldn’t have risked it,” Knox said, but the bite was gone.
Dominic didn’t let go of his jaw. “I would do it again.”
The sheets bunched in Knox’s grip. Neither of them moved. And for the first time in three days, the anger didn’t feel like the only thing holding him together.
* * *
The movie had been playing for at least twenty minutes.
Knox hadn’t followed a single second of it.
Something exploded on the screen—loud, dramatic, probably important—but he didn’t even blink.
His eyes were pointed in the right direction, but nothing was sticking. It all slid past like background noise.
Which was funny, considering how badly he’d wanted noise all week. It had been seven days of nothing but hospital rooms, machines beeping, and nights that stretched too long with nothing but his own mind and the ceiling. He’d wanted out so badly it had started to itch under his skin.
Now he was out. Two hours free, and somehow it wasn’t better.
Dominic was beside him on the couch. Close enough that their legs brushed when Knox shifted.
Cassian sat across the room, ankle crossed over his knee, watching the movie like he actually gave a shit about it.
Dominic had been at the hospital almost constantly.
Sitting beside the bed, working from his laptop like it was just another office.
When he couldn’t be there, Cassian had taken his place without question.
The nurses hadn’t even tried to push them out after the first day.
No one spoke about visiting hours, as if they’d collectively decided it wasn’t worth the effort.
So Knox hadn’t been alone unless it was the middle of the night.
That’s when the room went dead quiet and his body remembered things his brain was trying very hard to forget.
Knox’s leg started bouncing.
He didn’t notice at first, just his heel hitting the floor in a restless, uneven rhythm. He tried to stop. It lasted exactly one second before it started again, faster now. The tension was climbing—crawling up through his chest and into his throat.
A hand brushed his arm, fingers moving up and down in an easy rhythm. Dominic didn’t look at him. Didn’t acknowledge it. But his hand continued its slow path along Knox’s forearm. “Relax,” he whispered.
Knox’s leg stuttered. The restless bounce didn’t stop completely, but it lost its edge. The frantic energy drained down to something more manageable.
It wasn’t enough to fix it. But it was enough for now.
He stared at the screen for another thirty seconds, pretending. Then he picked up the remote and killed the movie mid-frame.
Cassian turned. “Finally gave up faking it?”
Knox ignored that. His knuckles were white around the remote as he stared at the frozen image on the screen. “I know I haven’t wanted to talk about Mercer. But I’m ready.”
The room changed.
Dominic’s hand stilled on his arm. Cassian’s easy posture changed into something alert. “What do you want to talk about?” Dominic asked.
Knox swallowed. “What happened to him?”
“He’s still alive,” Dominic said. “In the cell.”
Knox turned the word over. “Alive.”
It didn’t fit right. Didn’t sit where he tried to put it.
“Barely,” Cassian added, leaning forward, elbows on his knees. “He’s not doing great.”
“What does that mean?”
Cassian’s eyes moved to Dominic. “Means Dom’s been visiting him. Every day.”
Knox felt the implication before it was spelled out. The image formed on its own, vivid and specific: Dominic in the basement, methodical, doing what he did best. Every day. For a week.
“What?” Knox asked quietly.
Cassian shrugged. “Our guy had a lot to work through.”
Knox looked at Dominic, searching his face for something—guilt, conflict, hesitation. He found nothing. Dominic looked back the way he always did: completely at peace with whatever his hands had done.
“He’s alive,” Dominic said, like that was the only part worth focusing on.
“Why?” Knox asked.
“Because he’s yours.”
Three words. Knox just stared at him, his grip tightening around the remote. “Mine,” he echoed.
Dominic didn’t look away. “You suffered because of him. You decide what happens to him.”
Knox sat with that for a moment. Then another. The restlessness that had been eating him alive all evening was gone. Replaced by something focused and very, very clear.
He thought about the car crash. The baton. The brand. The knife and the hours that followed it. He thought about counting his own breaths in the dark, holding on to one thought and one thought only, because it was the only thing that made him want to keep counting.
Dominic.
He’d held on for him. Hadn’t broken. Had chosen that whatever Mercer did to his body was worth it if it meant the man sitting next to him right now stayed safe.
And Dominic had torn the city apart to find him. Had gone down to that basement every single day and taken Knox’s suffering out on Mercer’s body.
Knox looked at him. “Take me to him.”
* * *
It was colder down here, heavier somehow, like the walls held onto everything that had happened inside them and refused to let it go.
He didn’t move at first. He just stood there, letting his eyes adjust to the dark. Mercer hung against the wall, arms pulled overhead, the line of his body dragged down by his own weight. The angle of his shoulders was wrong—dislocated, maybe.
Knox’s mind snagged on that detail, trying to make sense of it. The rest followed. The bruising, layered and dark. The wounds that hadn’t healed. The way his head tipped forward, barely held up by whatever strength he had left.
Dominic did this.
Knox stepped forward without thinking about it, the distance between them closing easily.
Behind him, Dominic didn’t say anything.
Knox could feel him there, close enough to reach if he wanted to, but making no move to interrupt.
There was just the steady reassurance of his presence while Knox worked through this himself.
“You kept him like this the whole time?” Knox asked.
“Yes.”
A broken groan rasped out of Mercer's throat as consciousness clawed its way back into him. That sound did something to Knox; it was like a match striking inside him.
Dominic had told him once that they were built the same way—drawn to danger, unrestrained by fear. Knox hadn’t wanted to believe it then.
He believed it now.
Nothing in him trembled. Nothing wanted to step back. He stood there in the cold basement looking at a broken man hanging from a hook and felt nothing that resembled pity. He wondered distantly if this was how Dominic felt right before he decided a man’s fate.
The thought almost made him smile.
Mercer’s head lifted a fraction, one swollen eye cracking open, struggling to focus. Knox waited patiently, until that reluctant flicker of recognition surfaced in the ruined gaze.
There.
That moment was pure oxygen.
“You remember,” Knox said. “Good.”
He was supposed to be terrified. Shaking. Asking Dominic to handle this for him—that was how victims behaved in the stories. But nothing about Knox felt like prey. He felt awake. The pain in his ribs and the burn of half-healed flesh weren’t weaknesses. They were proof he was still standing.
Mercer hadn’t ruined him. He’d done the exact opposite.
Knox stepped closer until his shoes touched the dried line of blood on the floor. Mercer flinched, the chain overhead rattling. “You taught me something,” Knox said. “That I don’t break easily. Now you get to learn that lesson from the other side.”
He reached out and ran a knuckle under the crusted cut on Mercer’s cheek. Mercer hissed at the contact and Knox let the sound curl through him like music. “I’m not afraid of you anymore,” he said.
The darkness Dominic had seen in him from the very beginning was stretching open inside his chest. It didn’t feel foreign.
It felt like him.
It had always been him—built from slammed doors, raised voices, harsh punishments, and parents who never chose him first. Hardened by years of carrying everything alone and never once being allowed to set it down.
This wasn’t something Dominic had put in him. It was something Dominic had recognized.
Knox turned to the table against the wall, lined with stainless-steel instruments laid out in careful order. It wasn’t theatrical, just tools designed to do one thing very well. His fingers closed around the first knife.
Behind him, Dominic’s silence was absolute. Knox didn’t need to look back to feel the approval in it.
Cassian lingered in the doorway, arms folded, eyes narrowed in what looked a lot like respect.
Mercer tried to lift his head as Knox leaned in close. “Stay awake,” Knox whispered. “You told me I cried pretty. Let’s see how you look.”
Mercer wheezed something that might have been a plea. Or a curse. Knox didn’t care which—both fed the same fire.
He straightened, rolled his shoulders, and set to work.