13. Jack
Jack
The house is too quiet when I’m left to my own devices, but today, for the first time in my entire life, the silence doesn’t feel like a cage waiting to snap shut.
I’m sitting at Silas’ kitchen island, nursing a mug of coffee, doom scrolling, but my mind is wrapped entirely around the memories from last night.
Around Silas.
My cock twitches as my body remembers the weight of his hard, solid body pressing down onto mine.
My skin tingles at the ghost of his lips, and how his hands mapped every inch of me.
But what I also remember is how his touch hadn’t made me flinch.
Silas had anchored me last night, took care of me, and I trusted him completely, especially when my mind is in my space.
My finger runs along my bottom lip, still feeling the tug of his teeth. He staked his claim on every inch of me, and I loved every second of it.
A warm flush rolls up my neck just remembering the way he spoke to me; raw, filthy, and entirely unashamed.
His words, Pussy. Fill me, calling me his good little boy.
Holy fuck, I lived for every second of it.
He’d given me words I never knew I was allowed to crave, tearing down the walls I’d built over the years around my own desires and he had rebuilt them with worship.
I want more, and that realisation doesn’t scare me anymore; it thrills me.
For years, my body was something to be managed, bruised, or hidden away. My wants, my needs, and desires were deemed filthy and disgusting by my uncle. So, I learnt to hide who I actually was when I was young.
I remember when my uncle found out I was gay. I was ten, right before my mother died. He had overheard me telling her about a boy at school I liked, how I thought he was cute and wanted to kiss him.
He waited until I was back in my room before he came in. He called me disgusting, a faggot and that I was unworthy of being part of the family, claiming it was against God and everything they believed in, that it was pure immorality.
But the worst part wasn’t even the beating that followed.
It was the poison he was happy to pour into a ten-year-old boy’s ears: that no one would ever want me. Not my mumma, my dad, not my family, nobody. That the kids at school would hate me and I would never belong anywhere.
I had hooked up with older men before, but none of them ever satisfied me.
None of them knew how to handle me. I was a freak who couldn’t be touched, because how were you supposed to fuck a guy who couldn’t even handle being held, let alone someone who needed a man strong enough to actually dominate me?
They all just saw a fighter, and even if they never said it out loud, I knew I scared them.
But after hiding who I was for my entire life, Silas has given me my identity back. He has shown me that my wants, my needs, my desires—they are who I am.
Silas speaks a language with my body, one we are learning together, and by god, I want to speak it fluently.
I trace the rim of my mug, a soft smile tugging at the corner of my mouth as I think about him.
It was still dark when he left this morning, heading off-grid on a mission, wrapped up in his tech and his shadows.
He had told me last night he had to leave around three and that I didn’t have to wake up, but I did anyway.
We kissed goodbye at the front door, and I stood in the frame, watching his tail-lights disappear into the dark.
I realised then that I wanted to do that every time he left; wake up, make his coffee, and kiss him goodbye when he went to work.
Finn is probably already at the gym, grinding away. I’ll head into the cafe later, but right now, in this fortress Silas built for me, I’m entirely alone.
I’m rinsing my cup, about to head for the shower, when a sharp, heavy rap echoes through the house. The sound hits my chest like a physical blow, shattering the quiet instantly.
My breath catches because nobody knows I’m here.
The PalMerc team made sure of that, and Silas swore no one could ever find this place. The pounding on the door strikes a raw hit of panic right through me; who the hell could it possibly be?
The knocking is louder this time, more insistent.
I freeze at the noise, my mug slipping from my fingers to clatter loudly against the porcelain sink. My heart slams violently against my ribs that still ache when I breathe too deep.
Panic, cold and sharp, floods my veins, dragging me backward through time.
I’m ten years old again, lying under a dusty bed, holding my breath while heavy, hateful footsteps shake the floorboards.
* * *
“Jack.”
Uncle Ray calls through the thick wood. His voice low, dripping with a familiarity that makes my stomach turn.
“Jackie!”
Dad.
My fingers clamp around the edge of the counter, as I force air into lungs.
“Open up, Jackie. We know you’re in there,” Ray calls out.
My hands start to shake hard, as I back away from the counter, My legs tremble so violently I nearly trip over a bar stool as I circle the kitchen island.
They found me.
Despite everything that Silas, CJ, and Deck put in place, they still found me. They had cracked PalMerc’s armour.
The lock clicks, the sound is soft, but it hits me like a gunshot, and bile rises in my throat as the heavy door swings open, revealing the two men I’ve spent my entire life running from, standing in the middle of my sanctuary.
I don’t understand. How the fuck did they get a key?
Silas had said his house was safe, that I was safe.
Ray steps in first, his sharp, cruel eyes sweeping over Silas’s high-end home with a look that’s equal parts disgust and appraisal. He’s dressed in a tailored suit that can’t hide the vicious, predatory way he carries himself; like he’s already decided everything in the room belongs to him.
Dad follows right behind him, broad-shouldered, blank-eyed, towering. Ray’s shadow. Ray’s enforcer. A man who never speaks, not even to his own son. And when he does, it’s only when Ray gives him permission.
“Look at you,” Ray says, spreading his arms like some proud patriarch visiting a wayward son. His smile is thin, poisonous. “Living in the lap of luxury. Fancy tech, expensive walls, everything a little runaway dog would want, Jackie.”
His gaze flicks to me, slow, deliberate, cutting. “You always did have a knack for finding someone to take care of you. Reminds me of your mother, always clinging to the wrong people.”
My teeth grind together so hard my jaw aches. I force my feet to stay planted, refusing to shrink back even though every instinct in me screams to run, hide, disappear.
“Get out.” My voice shakes, but I push the words out anyway. “Get the fuck out of my home.”
Ray chuckles, a dry, grating sound that crawls up my spine like something with legs. He takes a slow step forward, his polished shoes clicking against Silas’s floor like he’s marking his territory.
“Your home?” he repeats, amused. “Now, is that any way to talk to family?” He spreads his hands, mock-hurt dripping off him like oil.
“After everything we’ve done for you? Jack… we raised you, put a roof over your head when your mother couldn’t even keep her balance.”
The words hit like a slap, sharp and practiced, designed to make me fold.
Dad stands behind him, silent and blank-eyed, waiting for Ray’s next command like a loaded gun.
A hot rage flares behind my eyes, cutting straight through the terror.
“You killed her,” I whisper, the words trembling with decades of suppressed fury. “You threw her down those stairs because she tried to stop you from hurting me.”
Dad shifts behind Ray, his jaw tightening, his massive hands twitching at his sides. He doesn’t look at my face, he never does. He looks at me like a problem to be corrected, a piece of machinery that needs a kick to start working again.
That’s all he’s ever been. Ray’s weapon. Devoid of a soul. Devoid of a conscience.
Ray’s smile doesn’t falter. If anything, it sharpens.
“Accidents happen, boy,” Ray says smoothly, waving a dismissive hand like he’s brushing away dust. “Just like accidents can keep happening if you don’t start using that smart little brain of yours.”
He tilts his head, studying me with that practiced, oily calm that always made my skin crawl.
“You think this guy, your little hacker soldier you’ve latched onto, is going to protect you forever?” His smile sharpens. “People like that always fold when the real money talks.”
Ray steps closer, closing the distance with deliberate ease, his eyes locking onto mine with the kind of manipulation he’s spent decades perfecting.
“Come home, Jack,” Ray says, softening his tone into something sickeningly paternal. “You don’t belong in a cage playing house with strangers.”
He gestures around Silas’s kitchen like it’s a toy he’s already decided to break.
“We’ve got properties, accounts, a future waiting for you. All that family money your grandfather left?” His smile curves, slow and poisonous. “It’s yours, son. Clean and waiting.”
He steps closer, voice dropping into that practiced, coaxing warmth he uses when he wants obedience.
“You walk away from this techno-geek, you walk back into your birthright. No more hiding. No more running. You’ll be taken care of.”
The words hit me like a trap snapping shut; familiar, rehearsed, designed to sound like safety while meaning the exact opposite.
He’s dangling the carrot just like he used to when I was a kid; offering safety with one hand while holding a belt behind his back with the other. He wants me back under his thumb. He wants control over my money, control over me, because breaking me was his favorite pastime.
My mother’s father had been wealthy. Stupidly so. My mother married Dad for what she thought was love. It wasn’t. Ray had been after her money, and he got some of it when he forced my dad to marry her.
She knew it. She wasn’t blind. But she told me once that Dad was different when Ray wasn’t around. He was softer, quieter, someone she thought she could build a life with. That was the man she fell in love with.
My grandfather put my inheritance into a trust fund for me, and it’s locked away until I turned twenty-five. Four months from now.
That trust fund is worth millions.
And that, I would guess, is why Ray and Dad have turned up now.
Not for me. Not for family. Not for anything they pretend to care about.
They came for the money. They came for control, and they came because they think I’m still theirs to break.
“I’d rather die than come back with you,” I spit out, my chest heaving, the pain in my ribs flaring with every heavy breath.
Ray’s mask slips for a fraction of a second, just long enough for the venom to bleed through his eyes. The warm facade drops away, revealing the monster underneath.
“You think you’re smart, don’t you?” Ray steps in closer, invasive and suffocating. “You think because you found some tech-obsessed soldier to lick your wounds that you’re untouchable.”
His voice lowers, sharpening. “But you’re fragile, Jack. You’ve always been broken. You break under pressure.”
He leans in, close enough that I can feel the weight of his presence pressing down on my lungs.
“And people like us?” His smile twists. “We always find our way back to what belongs to us.”
Dad doesn’t say a word, but he steps up beside Ray, his hulking frame blotting out the light from the floor-to-ceiling windows. The implicit threat hangs heavy in the air; Dad doesn’t need to negotiate. He just needs the word, and he’ll tear this place apart and carry me out like cargo.
“Get out,” I say again, my voice rising, desperate and furious. “Get out before I make you.”
Ray laughs. It’s low and lazy, almost amused, and he turns slowly toward the door with a swagger that makes my skin crawl. He pauses at the threshold, casting one last sideways glance over his shoulder, his lips curling into a sick, parting smile.
“You’ll come home, Jackie,” he murmurs, voice soft enough to feel like a hand around my throat. “One way or another.”
Dad follows him, but Ray lingers, his face contorting into something close to pure hatred—as if he’s right on the edge of losing control. He yanks it back in a nanosecond, turning fully to face me one last time.
“Think about it, boy. The money, the safety, the bloodline,” Ray says, his voice dropping to a low, venomous hiss. “Or maybe think about your little friend. What was his name? Hale? Cute kid.”
My stomach drops.
“But then your friend, Finn… Runs a gym downtown, doesn’t he?” Ray’s smile twists. “Be a real shame if he took a bad fall down a flight of stairs, too. Accidents happen all the time, don’t they, Jack.”
My blood runs instantly ice-cold.
Hale. Finn.
They know about Hale. They’ve been watching.
Before I can lunge forward, before the scream building in my throat can tear free, Ray and Dad step out onto the porch, the heavy door clicking shut behind them with a definitive, chilling finality.
The silence they leave behind feels like a blade pressed to my spine.
It rushes back in, heavier and more suffocating than before, and panic swallows me whole.
Finn. I have to get to Finn. Ring the school. Make sure Hale is safe.
I turn and run. I don’t grab a jacket, or my keys. Hell, I don’t even think about putting shoes on my feet. I just bolt out the front door, cursing frantically as I throw myself down the porch steps and toward the street.
My lungs burn instantly. Every movement sends a jagged shard of fire tearing through my damaged ribs. The pain is blinding, white-hot, relentless — but I don’t stop. I can’t stop.
Ray’s threat echoes in my skull, looping over and over in my voice, in my mother’s voice, in the sound of a body hitting wood.
Accidents happen all the time.
I hit the open pavement, the afternoon air freezing against my sweat-slicked skin. I run. Down the street, legs pumping, vision blurring at the edges as exhaustion claws at my heels. My breath comes in ragged, shallow gasps, each one feeling like inhaling glass.
I make it two blocks toward the gym before my body simply rebels.
My legs turn to lead. The world tilts sideways, spinning out of focus. The pavement rushes up to meet me.
My knees hit the concrete hard, a shockwave of agony tearing through my ribs. The breath leaves my lungs in a wet, broken sob as the pavement rushes up, and the world finally goes black.