Page 207 of BounBound By Scars

The fucking house explosion when Leora was kidnapped in Canada.

That was months ago. We thought we’d lost the trail. We thought they’d vanished. But Deathmark was standing here, casually tossing the names of men we’d been hunting like it was a fucking afterthought.

Gray shifted his attention to Sebastian now. “Who do you think hid the fact from Romlinson that Blackthorn Security was helping Squad Six?”

Sebastian’s expression barely flickered, but I knew that look. Processing. Calculating.

I wanted to fucking laugh.

Of course, they knew. Of course, they were the reason Romlinson hadn’t come down on Blackthorn like a goddamn wrecking ball. Not until recently, at least.

Gray didn’t let us sit with that one for too long before he turned—to me.

“Why do you thinkyouare still breathing?”

I froze.

A sharp, electric tension crawled up my spine.

Bee grinned over the rim of her now-half-empty coffee cup, like she was waiting for a reaction.

And I hated that I didn’t have an answer.

Because I should be dead, shouldn’t I? Many times over.

But I wasn’t.

They hadn’t saved me from Ling. But they’d let me live.

A thought crashed into me like a freight train.

I straightened. “Where’s your fifth member?”

I meant the masked man—the one who’d come out of nowhere and ended Ling.

Gray’s expression barely shifted, but his eyes sharpened.

“He’s not our fifth member,” he said evenly. “He’s your seventh.”

I staggered back half a step.

What the fuck?

The man who killed Ling—who ruthlessly crushed his skull into the floor—was Dylan?

“Kabir?” Zarek’s voice cut through my thoughts. I looked around the room—at my team’s confusion, all of them staring at me.

I cleared my throat. Swallowed hard. “Uh… the skull smasher? That was Dylan.”

Eyebrows shot up. Someone swore. Someone else choked on a breath.

They already knew what happened in that hotel room—at least the parts I could remember.

But this? This was something else.

I never thought Dylan had that kind of violence in him. That kind of carnage brewing inside.

Lia’s breathing had picked up. I silently held her hand and squeezed.

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