Dagger doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t posture or bark something back. He just looks at me—hard, steady—and breathes out slow through his nose. Like he’s leveling himself. Then he nods once, the kind of nod that feels like a fucking pact.
“You have my word,” he says, voice low and rough. “As long as you’ll do the same.”
I nod back.
That’s it. No handshake. No chest-beating theatrics. Just blood-worn truth passed between two men who should’ve killed each other a long time ago but didn’t. Forher.
Dagger’s hand tightens around the grip of his blade. His eyes cut sideways toward me.
“And for the record,” he mutters, voice dry and sharp. “I still can’t fucking stand you.”
My lip curls. “Good. Hate keeps the aim steady.”
We move.
The hallway twists left, dim and stinking like mildew and rot. Footsteps echo off the concrete, low and sharp. Dagger’s ahead of me, moving like a shadow with a blade already in hand, his shoulders tight with fury. He halts—abrupt, controlled, and flicks his chin toward the end of the corridor.
A guard stands posted outside a thick steel door. Broad, armed, and cocky in that dead-eyed way that says he thinks the vest on his chest makes him invincible.
Dagger moves without a word.
Silent, low, efficient.
One hand braces on the wall as he slips behind the guy then quick as a snap, his blade hooks under the bastard’s chin and drags across clean.
No scream.
Just a fucking wet gurgle and a heavy slump.
Dagger catches his body before it hits the ground and lays him down without so much as a grunt, then wipes the blade on the guy’s vest.
I watch him with a curl of grim respect. He doesn’t enjoy it. Just does what needs to be done.
“Locked,” he mutters, jiggling the handle. Gunshots still echo upstairs—Link and Stone sweeping the upstairs level, handling Dante’s men one by one.
I’m already raising my Glock, safety off.
He steps aside.
One shot to the latch—clean through the bolt, and the door buckles, frame cracking.
Without a second thought, we push inside and descendtogether.
The basement air hits like a fist. Chemical, metallic, and damp.
Each breath tastes like rust and rot, settling in the back of my throat like poison. The stairs groan under our boots, the echo swallowed by the concrete walls as we descend, slow and loaded for war. Overhead, a pipe drips steadily, like a countdown ticking out time we don’t have. One bulb sways above the stairwell, casting fractured shadows that twitch and slither like they’re alive.
The corridor stretches out ahead of us—tight, oppressive, and lined with doors. Some closed, others cracked, but every one of them a possibility I don’t want to fucking consider. This place wasn’t built for escape. It was built for holding shit in. For secrets. For suffering.
Dagger gestures for me to go left and peels right. We split.
I move quiet, weapon raised, breath sharp and shallow. First door—storage. Just crates and a cracked-open box of zip ties and surgical gloves. Second door—plants. Rows of flowering pot plants under hanging heat lamps, the smell thick, sweet and wrong. I clear it fast. No Blair.
No fucking Blair.
My pulse spikes. Jaw clenched as I move to the last one.
End of the hall. Sealed tight with a padlock bolted into the warped wood. One flickering light overhead barely cuts through the dark.
