The driver—a silent man with close-cropped hair and dead eyes—hadn’t spoken a word the entire journey. Now he turned, his gaze sweeping over them both before settling on Dom.
“You. Stay.” The driver pointed at Dom like he was a dog. “She goes in alone.”
Dom tensed as if preparing for a fight, and she set a restraining hand on his arm. “Dominic.”
He looked down at her hand, then up at her. It was the first time she’d touched him since the backseat of his car. Since that ill-advised, but not unpleasant, moment of weakness that she hadn’t had time to regret properly.
His eyes softened for just a fraction of a second, the blue darkening with concern. Vivi withdrew her hand quickly, regretting the touch instantly. Every point of contact between them felt dangerous, like striking a match near gasoline.
“I’ll be fine,” she said. “Let me handle this.”
Dom leaned in, and for one heart-stopping moment, she thought he was going to kiss her. She wasn’t sure how she’d react if he did. Accept and return the kiss? Punch him?
But all he did was open the door. “If they hurt you—or, hell, if they make you uncomfortable in any way, I’m going to burn this whole place to the ground.”
The intensity in his voice sent a shiver down her spine. This was the Dom she remembered from their days working together—the one who calculated risks in milliseconds and made split-second decisions that somehow always worked out. The one whose protective streak ran a mile wide.
“I can handle myself, thank you.”
“I know you can, Viv, but that doesn’t change the facts.” He was no longer looking at her, but instead at the driver, who had circled around the car to escort her and now stood beside the door, waiting for her to get out. “I will nuke every last piece of this operation if anything happens to her. And then I’ll come after you personally.”
The driver’s lips curled into a condescending smile. “Big talk from a man in restraints.”
Dom leaned forward and held up his bound hands. “You think these ties would stop me? I could be out of them in thirty seconds. I could take your weapon, disable you, and be inside that building before your backup even realized what happened.”
The driver’s hand moved instinctively toward his concealed weapon.
“Dominic,” Vivi warned, but he wasn’t listening.
His eyes never left the driver’s face. “I’ve spent my entire career dealing with men like you. Men who think a gun makes them the scariest thing in the room.” His voice dropped even lower. “You don’t even make the top ten of scariest things I’ve dealt with.”
Calculations flashed behind the driver’s eyes. Assessing the threat, weighing his options, deciding if Dom was bluffing.
He wasn’t.
Dominic Wilde gave off golden retriever energy, which made people underestimate him, but she’d seen him take down three armed men with nothing but a ballpoint pen and sheer determination.
She needed to defuse this before Dom did something spectacularly stupid.
“Enough,” she said, sliding out of the SUV. “I’ll be back in twenty minutes.”
The driver finally broke eye contact with Dom and gestured for her to follow. As she walked toward the building, she felt Dom’s eyes boring into her back, that familiar protective gaze that had once made her feel safe and had later made her feel suffocated.
The warehouse door opened as they approached, revealing another guard, this one with a military bearing that reminded her of Dom’s older brother Davey. He nodded once, and her escort stepped back.
“Arms out,” the new guard said.
Vivi complied, keeping her breathing steady as he ran a handheld metal detector over her. She’d anticipated this—Raines had stupidly given her a lock pick set that was ceramic, designed specifically to avoid detection. The wand passed over her sleeve without a sound.
“Clear,” he said, stepping aside.
The interior was all concrete and fluorescent lights, sterile and cold. Two more guards joined them, flanking her as they moved through a series of corridors. She counted turns—left, right, right, left—memorizing the path like she’d memorized museum floor plans and mansion layouts. Old habits.
They stopped at a heavy door with another keypad. The first guard punched in a code, and the door swung open to reveal a room identical to the one she and Dom had woken up in.
And Sabin.
Her heart stuttered. The video feed hadn’t captured half of it.
