Page 43

Story: Dagger

She was still trying to get her damn equilibrium back when he asked, “You headed out?”
She nodded, forcing herself to ignore the thrum of want still pulsing through her.
Dagger’s expression cooled slightly. “I can talk to Tex about going with you. I still don’t trust that asshole.”
Quinn clenched her jaw. Of course he’d do this.
“Not happening, handsome.” She stepped around him, but he followed, his arm braced against the wall beside her. “I have plenty of security. You don’t need to play bodyguard.”
His eyes darkened. “I don’t play bodyguard like that DA. I don’t like the thought of you out there without me.”
“Noted.” She crossed her arms. “Still not happening.” This man, in full battle kit, armed and dangerous? She wouldn’t get a damn thing done.
“Quinn—”
“Enough.” Irritation flared in her chest, overriding her shaky knees and lingering desire. “You do not get to micromanage my security, my job, or my damn life. Got it?”
For a moment, he didn’t move, that intense gaze drilling into hers.
Then, to her absolute infuriation, he smirked again.
“Got it, Hell on Wheels.”
She spun on her heel and stalked away before she did something dangerous. Like kiss him again, muttering “Overprotective Neanderthal.” There was more laughter. Shedidn’t look back. Not because she didn’t want to, but because she absolutely, unequivocally refused to give him the satisfaction.
The SUV rumbled forward,weaving through the bustling streets of Caracas, the city alive with movement. The midday heat shimmered over the pavement, casting waves of distortion against the towering glass buildings, the faded colonial facades, the chaotic sprawl of open-air markets wedged between them. Street vendors called out in rapid Spanish, their voices blending into the symphony of car horns, distant sirens, and the occasional sharp whistle of a traffic enforcer trying and failing to keep order as they flashed past.
Quinn barely registered any of it.
She rested her elbow against the door, her fingers brushing absently over her lips, her mind still trapped in that damn kiss.
She could still feel the rough scrape of Dagger’s stubble against her skin, the heat of his breath, the way his body had pinned her to the wall, unapologetic, unwavering, like he had every right to take what he wanted. Brian’s kisses had always been soft, careful. Dagger’s weren’t careful. They were consuming.
She had let him, knowing that Dagger would never try to control her like Brian had.
Quinn sighed and rested her head against the headrest.
The guilt that should have followed wasn’t as sharp as before. It should’ve cut deep. But it didn’t. That scared her more than anything.
That thought twisted something inside her, but she still wasn’t ready to sit with it.
Not yet.
Her mind drifted further, tugged not just by Dagger’s kiss but by thereasonit shook her to her core.
Because this wasn’t just about Brian. Or even Dagger.
It went further back.
To when she was ten.
To the tiny white cat with the matted fur and the strange little snore that curled into her lap every day after school. Muffin. Her one friend. Her secret-keeper. The only soft place in a world that rarely made room for her feelings.
When Muffin died, no one had cared. Not her parents, who were too busy climbing ladders of ambition to notice their daughter crumbling. Not the kids at school who laughed when she cried about “just a cat.” That was the first time Quinn learned a cruel truth. No one felt things the way she did. No onecaredthe way she did. If she let go of her grief, it meant the thing she lost didn’t matter. So, she learned to hold on to pain. Toguardit. To wrap herself in it like armor, because grief was proof that something mattered.
So, when Brian died and people told her to move on, to heal, to live again, she rejected it violently. Becausemoving onfelt like forgetting. Like betrayal. Dagger, God, Kade, he was trained to push through grief. Tocompartmentalize.To carry the mission, not the loss. To her, that looked likeerasure.
She had clung to her anger because it made her feel like she was still fighting for Brian. Like his death hadn’t just faded into the noise.