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“I bet his ghost is still rattling around in the basement of El Helicoide.” Langford smiled, eyes gleaming. “I murdered your brother, Hollis. I wonder how he’d feel, knowing your fucking his lovely, lovely wife.”
Everything inside Dagger detonated. He lunged. There was no thought, only motion. Pure, explosive instinct. Langford’s back hit the tree trunk hard, bark cracking under the impact, the smirk torn from his face as Dagger’s zip-tied fists drove into his throat. The thud echoed through the canopy like thunder. Leaves shook. Birds exploded from the branches overhead in a startled rush.
Behind him, Quinn cried out, shaken, raw.
Langford choked, sputtering, but the bastard still smiled. “Go ahead,” he rasped. “Kill me. Do it. See how far you get before my men put a bullet in her head.”
“Dagger!” Flash’s voice cracked through the storm in his skull like a lightning strike. “No!”
He didn’t move. Couldn’t.
Flash was there in an instant. “You kill him now, you give himeverything. You hear me? This isn’t justice, Kade. It won’t bring Brian back.”
“Hetorturedhim,” Dagger snarled, voice low and unrecognizable. “Heknew. He gave the order.”
“Iknow,” Flash snapped. “God, I know. I want to break him in half myself. But we don’t do this, man. Not like this. This isn’t who we are.”
Langford coughed wetly, and still fucking smirked.
Dagger’s entire body was a live wire of rage, grief, and guilt so heavy it had calcified inside him. But—Quinn. His gaze flicked to the side, just for a second. She stood frozen, eyes locked onhim, not with fear, but with pleading. Not for Langford. Forhim.Don’t become this. Not like this.
His hands trembled, not from weakness, but from restraint. From the war between bloodlust and the woman who saw every facet of him… and chose to love the man, not the weapon. He drew in a breath so deep it scraped his lungs raw. Then he let Langford go.
They shovedthem through the rusted compound gate, across a cracked expanse of open ground. The jungle loomed beyond the fence line, dense, seething, alive, breathing in watchful shadow, its silence louder than gunfire, watching from every vine and leaf.
Once, this place had been a home, a weathered hacienda swallowed now by war and time. The walls had been reinforced with salvaged tin, scrap steel, and sandbags stacked like makeshift battlements. Jungle roots split the foundation in places, vines curling like strangling fingers across the façade. Nature was reclaiming the structure, even as the stench of gunpowder and blood declared it a fortress for monsters.
Spent brass littered the dirt, crates of ammunition stacked high beneath torn tarps. Armed men lounged in the shadows, eyes gleaming with boredom and violence, predators waiting for the command to commit atrocities.
They had marched them through the jungle without stop or rest. The air inside the hacienda was suffocating, thick with rot and heat, a humid veil clinging to every inch of skin. The scent of sweat, old gunpowder, rusted metal, and death hung heavy in the stillness. Light flickered from a single overhead bulb, castingshadows that twitched and stretched across cracked tile and pitted walls.
Dagger knelt in zip ties, muscles coiled beneath his soaked clothes, sweat dripping from his brow. His breath was shallow, controlled. He cataloged every exit, every weapon, every man.
Flash crouched beside him, all casual insolence, lips curled in a bored smirk, eyes half-lidded. But Dagger saw the minute twitches in his fingers, the taut line of his shoulders. The readiness. The rage.
Quinn was forced to her knees a few feet away, wrists bound behind her. Her blouse was torn at the collar, one sleeve ripped entirely. A bruise bloomed purple along her cheekbone, her lip split, blood staining her chin. But her eyes, those whiskey-fire eyes, burned.
She looked at Herrera like she wanted to rip him apart with her bare hands. She wasn’t afraid. Not yet.
But Herrera wanted her to be.
Herrera prowled like a king in his court, slow and theatrical, relishing the moment. His boots echoed hollowly across the tile, spurs of sound that cut the silence. His shirt was unbuttoned at the neck, revealing a sliver of a jagged old scar, a badge of brutality worn like a crown. His teeth gleamed beneath a curling smirk, his eyes glittering with sadistic amusement.
“You thought with all your training, your weapons, all your American arrogance was going to eliminate me. That was your plan, but I always have contingency plans,” he said, flicking a glance toward Langford. “Greed knows no bounds and might is often an illusion.” Disgust curled his lips as he crouched in front of Dagger like a man playing with his prey. “Here you are. My prisoner. Shackled. Broken.”
Dagger didn’t speak. Didn’t flinch. He stared, slicing like steel, unblinking, cold, coiled violence ready to be unleashed.
The look of a warrior, weaponless but not unarmed.
Herrera’s smile flickered for the briefest second, a sliver of hesitation buried behind bravado. He straightened with an unnecessary flourish, brushing imaginary dust from his sleeve like it mattered. His fingers lingered on the grip of his sidearm, slow, performative, trying to reassert dominance.
A predator recognized a stronger opponent, knew when he was losing ground.
Then Herrera turned toward Quinn, the one he assumed was weak, insignificant.
Dagger’s body went iron-tight. Flash swore beneath his breath, low and venomous.
But Quinn didn’t shrink back. She locked eyes with Herrera, chin high, fury radiating off her in waves, her own brand of SEAL babe badassery.