one
What the fuckdid I drink last night?
That was the first real thought Dominic Wilde managed to assemble. His head throbbed with each heartbeat, mouth dry as Death Valley, the coppery taste of blood coating his tongue where he’d bitten the inside of his cheek.
He’d had some monster hangovers before, but nothing like this?—
His second coherent thought was her name.
Vivi.
Which was ridiculous. Vivianna Cavalier hated him.
He tried to open his eyes and instantly regretted it. Even the faint light sent daggers through his skull. He squeezed them shut, breathed through the nausea, and tried again. Slower this time, letting the world come in pieces rather than all at once.
Dark. Very dark. Not pitch-black, but close. A thin seam of cold fluorescent light leaked from beneath what had to be a door, somewhere to his left.
He tried to move his arms and found them wrenched behind his back, wrists bound tight enough that his fingers had gone numb at the tips. Zip ties. Thick ones, industrial grade. Notthe flimsy things you’d grab at a hardware store. He twisted experimentally, and the sharp plastic bit into his wrists. The skin there was already raw. Whoever had tied him hadn’t been gentle about it.
Okay. Inventory time.
Dom closed his eyes again and ran through his body the way Griffin had drilled into all of them during tactical assessment training, back when they’d thought the worst thing they’d ever face was a hostile extraction gone sideways.
Head: pounding. Likely concussed, given the way the room tilted every time he moved. A knot on the back of his skull, tender and swollen—he’d been hit, or dropped, or both.
Ribs: bruised on his left side, deep and hot when he breathed. Nothing grinding, nothing shifting. Bruised, not broken.
Shoulders: wrenched from the position, aching, but functional.
Legs: free. That was something. His ankles weren’t bound, which meant either they were confident in the restraints on his wrists or they were sloppy. He didn’t think they were sloppy.
His phone was gone. His watch. His wallet. Even the leather cord he wore around his wrist—the one Brennan had given him years ago, braided during some boring stakeout in the middle of nowhere. They’d stripped everything.
The air smelled like damp stone and industrial cleaner, with a faint mineral tang underneath that reminded him of a parking garage or a subway tunnel. Cool but not freezing. Climate-controlled, or at least well-insulated. The hum of ventilation rattled faintly behind the walls, mechanical and steady, the kind of background noise that told him they were deep inside something built to last.
He pushed himself upright, and as he did, the room simultaneously brightened and lurched sideways. He rode it outwith his eyes closed, forehead pressed against his knees, waiting for the vertigo to pass.
Focus, Dom. Come on.
He opened his eyes and took in the newly lit space. It was small. The floor was bare concrete, the walls the same. No furniture. No windows. One heavy, metal door hinged on the outside, designed to keep people in. The red eye of a camera blinked from the corner beside a floodlight, which must be motion sensor.
He cataloged it all, filing the details into the tactical part of his brain that still functioned despite the chemical fog. Davey would have been proud.
Then his eyes finished adjusting, and he saw her.
Vivi.
Memory slammed back with the force of a wrecking ball. The club. The whiskey. The taste of her kiss in the backseat of his car. Then everything went sideways. Someone yanked him from the vehicle, and his limbs turned to lead.
Fuck. They’d been drugged. Taken.
She was slumped against the wall opposite him. Her wrists were zip-tied in front of her body—different from his, which meant they’d considered her a lower physical threat.
Their first mistake.
Her legs were folded beneath her, her head hanging forward so her hair spilled across her face in a curtain of tangled gold.
Blood on her temple. A dark smear of it, almost black in the dim light, tracking down past her eyebrow and into her hairline. Dried. Not fresh. But seeing it there—onher—sent something white-hot and electric ripping through his chest that had nothing to do with training or tactics.
