Breaker was never the type of man to be seen with a woman on his arm. Sure him and me and sometimes Paine, we would go out, we would pick up women. But Break's were smoke by the next morning. In all the years I knew him, I was pretty sure I had never seen him with a woman in the daylight.

A part of me really wished I could have been around to watch him fumble through that first-time experience.

But, no, I was in a basement. And not the nice side. With the bar and the TV. No I was in the cold, damp, windowless side with a bathroom and a folding chair.

If there was one thing I learned I had taken for granted most of my life, it was beds. A nice, thick, firm mattress. Preferably with a nice, thick, sweet woman beside me on it.

But I digress.

I knew shit was going down from what Limp Dick Rick and the new kid Chris were sayin'. About some chump named Glenn who got himself whacked. Then about some asshole named Joshua who had traced the leak in Lex's security to Alex.

Yeah. Their little honeymoon period was coming to an end and fast.

I also knew it meant my time on earth was coming to a close.

Men like Limp Dick Rick and Chris might have been idiots, but they knew better than to talk shop in front of an outsider if they planned to let him live. There had never been any such plan for me.

I was trying to play it by ear. See where things led before I made a decision or not.

The choice was simple: fight my way out and possibly endanger the only person in the world who gave a fuck about me or take my death like a man and hope Breaker had his head in the game enough to get his chick and get away.

Problem was, there was no way to guess the way that night went.

Earlier, I had pissed off Limp Dick Rick (possibly simply because that was how I referred to him, but also possibly because I may or may not have told him that he was proof that evolution works in reverse. In my defense, I thought he was too stupid to understand the insult) but anyway... I pissed him off. He knocked me around a little bit. He took me up to Lex's study for reasons unknown to me until I was dragged back down to find that someone else was locked in the bathroom.

It was then that I started genuinely worrying.

It was one thing to know my life was almost over.

Whatever. That was the life I lived. Every time I picked up a new job, met a new client, pointed my gun, pulled the trigger... there was always a chance of me not making it back.

But the idea that it was someone else who might have to suffer because of me? Yeah that shit didn't sit right.

I tried, like Breaker, to keep my contacts to a minimum. To keep the possibility of collateral damage a small risk. That being said, I wasn't like Break. I made some friends. I visited some women more than a few times. There were people that someone could hurt to get to me.

I had a sinking feeling one of those people were in that bathroom.

Then fast forward to Break charging in. No Alex. No plans, it seemed, to produce Alex. Looking like he hadn't slept in days.

It didn't take much for me to guess she was gone.

And that it wasn't him who got her gone.

The second that kid went into the bathroom and dragged out a kicking, swinging, spittin' mad Alex... yeah, fuck. I don't think I have the words to describe the look that came over Break's face.

Just utter... devastation. Hopelessness.

Followed quickly by determination.

He was going to get her out no matter what.

And then that hacker Josh showed up and gave me the whole, gory picture of what had gone down since I got locked up.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Breaker make his move. I pivoted, ramming hard into an unsuspecting Rick, deciding it was time I threw my weight around as well.

But almost as soon as it started, I was restrained by an even more pissed off Rick (worth it for the bloody nose he had), and Break was being pulled away. He at least got a fair bit of damage in first.

Then I didn't get to see the rest.

A pit was in my stomach as I was shoved through the basement, up the stairs, into the kitchen, then out through the backdoor. Not because of my own fate. I had resigned myself to that the moment I walked out of the coffee shop and had a hood over my head and burns from my spilled coffee down my arm. Before I was even aware of who took me. In that second, my fate was sealed.

But what was unclear was what was going to go down in the basement between Lex, Breaker, and Alex.

I knew Lex. I knew the twisted shit he did. Especially to women. And I knew how much more he would get out of it if he could force a man who loved that woman to watch.

That was all I could think about as I was led into a white wooden shed, set off into the trees quite a ways from the main house, the windows blacked out from the inside, the door with multiple locks and bars.

“I finally get to have some fun with you,” Limp Dick Rick said, opening the door and shoving me inside. “Had it up to fucking here with the sarcasm shit,” he informed me, slamming the door behind him and reaching for the pull tab on the light hanging from the ceiling.

There wasn't much inside. Penny brick floor and reinforced walls. A chair with chains. Three five gallon buckets in a corner. It seemed more like it was used for gardening than torture.

“What? You haven't enjoyed our time together?” I asked, putting a hand to my chest. “That hurts, Rick. I thought you and me really had something special.”

“On your knees,” he growled out, moving into the small space.

“What is with you guys and the kneeling shit? Is that why you're all so grouchy? You like dick? You know... it's the twenty-first century. Even big bad criminals can be gay, Rick. If you need some cock to feel like a man...”

I didn't get the rest of the dig out.

Mainly because his fist found it's way to my face.

Maybe I was going to die. But fuck if I went out like a sniveling pussy about it. Besides, seeing that look of utter mortification cross his features, yeah, it was worth the extra fucking pain.

And I needed a good fight. I was due. I had been letting these cocksuckers (maybe quite literally cocksuckers), get the better of me for days. It was time to knock them off their game.

Because they didn't think I could handle myself.

But, boy, was Rick in for a nasty surprise.

I took three hits to the face and two to the center before I used my wiry sort of grace against him, slipping away, then coming back swinging. A strong uppercut under the chin had him on his ass before he finished cursing. Which gave me just enough time to bend into my boot (where the idiots never thought to look for weapons) and drag out the knife.

I wasn't a knife person.

My weapon of choice would always be a gun. It was impersonal. A scope and a trigger. A target whose blood you never had to touch or smell.

But that didn't mean I didn't know how to use one.

Thanks to Breaker who was a bit more... hands-on in his forms of punishment or justice.

I had just aimed and stabbed the blade into Rick's thigh, turning the knife brutally, wincing at the sound of his scream (I didn't get off on the pain. That was never my thing. It was a job. Or self-defense. Nothing more), when the grounds outside sounded like they were blowing up.

My eyes sought Rick's and found a similar shock there. So whatever was happening was not part of some grander plan of Lex's.

Fuck.

Not good.

I grappled with the idea of killing him versus getting the hell out of there before anything even crazier went down.

“Every man for himself,” I said down at Rick, getting onto my feet. He nodded and I offered him my hand. Which he took and got onto his feet, ripping the blade out of his leg and moving toward the window, breaking it in the corner to look out.