Page 44 of Dagger

But it wasn’t just that.

It wasDagger.

From the moment she met Brian’s younger half-brother, she’d felt it, a jolt. A spark she’d buried so deep it might as well have been a sin. Dagger was steel-edged, quiet, and too perceptive for her comfort. He had looked at her that first daylike he saw through all her carefully constructed smiles and polite charm andwanted what was underneath.

Maybe that was the real reason she pushed him away.

Because he’d always seen her. The part even Brian hadn’t fully known what to do with.

Quinn let out a trembling sigh, closing her eyes against the rush of memories.

She stood at the crossroads of her own emotions, feeling the weight of a thousand unspoken words pressing down on her chest. Could she move past this bitterness? Let go of the ache and resentment she wore like second skin?

Dagger was so firmly grounded in his convictions. For the first time, she wondered:what if I let him in?What if she made amends, not for him, but forherself?

But the thought was like trying to move a mountain with no hands. Her grief wrapped around her like cold fire. It was easier to stay angry than it was to admit she was scared. That maybe she was just as broken as she’d always accused him of being.

She clung to that fury because it made her feel like she was stillwhole.

That anger was starting to feel like hollow armor. She wasn’t sure it could hold her up anymore.

Quinn swallowed hard, shifting against the leather seat, forcing herself to focus on something, anything, other than the ache curling low in her stomach.

“Awfully quiet, Quinn,” Langford drawled from the front seat, dragging her back into the present.

She exhaled slowly, rolling her shoulders. “Just thinking.”

“About your boyfriend?”

Her grip tightened on her bag, but she forced her voice to stay even. “No,” she said flatly. “About my work.”

Langford scoffed. “A lot of firms wanted this contract. You were up against some real heavyweights.”

She turned her gaze on him, cool and composed. “You sound like I didn’t work my ass off for this. I?—"

Langford cut her off, “I didn’t say that. It’s just you’ve come a long way in a short time.”

“Short time? I have built and rebuilt this building in my mind since I was seven years old. Every corner, every angle, every single detail has been worked and re-worked.” Quinn sighed. “It seems like forever to me.” She narrowed her eyes. Men like Langford… “I don’t throw sticks and stones. I just hulk smash through the glass ceiling. My vision was a cut above those heavyweights, and I float like a pretty butterfly, but sting like a bee.”

She meant it, too.

When she looked at a blank site, she didn’t see emptiness. She sawpossibility.Light at dawn. Conversations over coffee. Quiet meetings and bold declarations. Her buildings weren’t just structures. They werestories.

Hers had always started in sweat, sacrifice, and steel.

Cornell had tried to break her. The architecture program was a brutal, unrelenting grind, fifteen-hour studio days, sleepless nights buried in drafting paper, models held together by bleeding fingertips and coffee. The dropout rate was high. Only the obsessed survived.

Shehad survived.

She’d graduated with honors. She’dfoughtfor that degree, tooth and nail, because she had known even then that she wanted to build things that mattered.

But Brian had never acknowledged that.

Not once.

He’d watched her work herself to the edge of collapse, and instead of lifting her, he’d quietly, skillfully clipped her wings.Why stress yourself out, baby?You’ve already made it.He’d smiled while saying it, patient and sweet andso damn controlling.She hadn’t seen it then.

But she saw it now.

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