The first thing Rafe noticed was the silence.

Well, not true silence. The man in the chair was still whimpering, a wet, broken sound. The drip of a leaky pipe in the corner still echoed. But the usual chatter of the warehouse—the clang of tools, the crude jokes of the other enforcers—had stopped. It was the quiet of held breath.

He looked up from the bloodied wrench in his hand, wiping a crimson streak across his already stained apron. That’s when he saw her.

They’d brought her in through the side door, a splash of soft color against the industrial grays and rust-browns. She was small, dwarfed by the bulk of the guard, Leo, who had a meaty hand clamped on her arm. She wasn’t fighting. Her head was bowed, long hair falling like a curtain, but Rafe could see the tremble in her shoulders. She wore a simple yellow sundress, now smudged with grime from the warehouse floor. Innocent. The word landed in his mind like a foreign object, something he had no context for.

Hightower’s voice, a gravelly rumble from the observation platform above, cut through the quiet. “Eyes back on your work, Cameron.”

Rafe didn’t move his eyes. He watched as Leo pushed her gently—almost respectfully, which was strange—toward a clean, empty chair away from the… mess.

“Rafe,” Hightower’s voice came again, closer now. He’d descended the metal stairs, his expensive shoes clicking a deliberate rhythm. He stopped beside Rafe, following his gaze. “Problem?”

“Who’s that?” Rafe asked, his own voice flat. It was the voice everyone knew. The psychopath’s voice. Empty.

Hightower smiled, a thin, transactional stretch of lips. “That’s y/n. Pretty thing, isn’t she? Her old man thought he could skim from our shipments. A substantial amount. Then he vanished into the wind.” He lit a cigar, the smoke curling between them like a barrier. “We can’t find him. But he’ll find us. When he hears what happens to his little girl if he doesn’t come settle his debt.”

Rafe understood. Leverage. It was standard practice. You find a pressure point and you apply it. A wife, a child, a business. He’d done it before. He’d been the pressure.

“So, we wait?” Rafe finally looked away from her, back to the trembling man in the torture chair. His work was unfinished.

“We wait. And we make sure she’s… comfortable.” Hightower’s meaning was clear. Comfortable meant unharmed, for now. A pristine bargaining chip.

As Hightower walked away, barking orders to Leo about getting her some water, Rafe’s eyes were drawn back to her. y/n had lifted her head. She was looking around, her eyes wide and terrified, scanning the shadows of the warehouse. They passed over the tools on the wall, over the man sobbing in the chair, and then… they landed on him.

He expected her to flinch. To shrink. To see the monster everyone else saw—the crazy man, the killer, the psychopath with blood on his hands and emptiness in his eyes.

She didn’t.

Her gaze held his. In that vast, terrifying ocean of fear in her eyes, there was a single, steady point of clarity. It wasn’t defiance. It wasn’t even plea. It was simple, devastating recognition. As if she looked past the blood and the wrench and the reputation, and saw him. Just Rafe. Not Cameron the enforcer. Not Hightower’s attack dog. Just him.

A jolt, sharp and electric, went through his chest. It was a physical pain, a cracking sensation deep behind his sternum, as if something frozen and dormant for decades had suddenly shifted. He dropped the wrench. It hit the concrete with a clatter that made everyone, even the sobbing man, jump.

Leo glanced over. Hightower, from across the room, raised an eyebrow.

Rafe ignored them. He was staring at his own hands, now empty. They were stained, always stained, no matter how much he scrubbed. He felt the ghost of the wrench’s weight, the familiar, comforting heft of a tool for breaking. Then he looked back at y/n in her yellow dress, a spot of fading sunlight in this place of perpetual twilight.

Hightower thought she was leverage to bring a debt-ridden father running.

What Hightower didn’t know, he felt something