7. Jayson
JAYSON
T he thought circles like a vulture, sharp-beaked and tireless, feeding off every misstep. I didn’t eliminate the witness—I took her. Dragged her through the mud and locked her in the cellar like some medieval lunatic.
And now, after a sleepless night spent pacing floors that creaked beneath my guilt, I’m heading to face the higher-ups. No excuses. No backup. Just me—and the mess I made.
I look in on my captive before I leave; one last look through the bars, where she’s curled on the bench, eyes closed but breathing shallow. She’s still in the mess of muddy clothes she was wearing when I brought her in, a blanket covering her.
Now I’m heading to the Round Table to confess my sins to the men I answer to.
Mason Ironside will stare through me with that dead-wolf patience, measuring exactly how much leash I deserve.
Kanyan De Scarzi? I guess he’ll just weigh the cost of cleaning up my mess against the cost of removing me entirely.
I tap the steering wheel, knuckles tight. I could always admit I panicked, couldn’t kill her, and now I’ll have to find a way to fix it.
I roll my eyes at the windshield. That’s the worst answer I could give them - because it makes me sound weak. Like a coward. In this industry, you do what needs to be done.
The wrought-iron gates of the Moreno estate rise ahead, black against the bruised dawn. Guards wave me through. I park, check the mirror. Mud still crusts under my nails. Let them see it—proof I did the dirty work myself.
You took the girl, you chained yourself to her, my voice warns. One day she’ll be your crown or your coffin.
I step out, button my jacket and walk the winding path toward the manor. Showtime.
Ghost is waiting for me at the Round Table, which is what we call the meeting room at the Moreno estate. The irony of the name isn’t lost on me—we’re no noble knights. Just killers with codes and crowns built on the blood of others.
He’s not alone.
My direct boss—and underboss of the Moreno family—Mason Ironside stands against the wall, arms crossed like steel bars, that familiar storm brewing behind his eyes, waiting for the right moment to tear loose.
And next to him: Kanyan De Scarzi, the head of the family.
Colder than ice, broader than any man has a right to be, and staring at me like I just pissed on the family crest.
The room is quiet when I walk in, but the tension? It’s thick enough to cleave with a knife.
I shut the door behind me and take two steps in.
“Tell me you didn’t fuck this up,” Mason growls, voice loaded with violence.
I don’t flinch. “The hit’s done. That was the objective.”
“And the girl?” Kanyan asks, tone flat but lethal.
The weight of what I’ve done presses harder on my shoulders now. “She wasn’t supposed to be there. You know that as well as I do. ”
“So what the hell was she doing home?” Mason’s voice cuts through the noise in my head.
I shake my head. “I guess the intel was wrong.”
“And instead of doing what needed to be done,” Ghost hisses, “you took her.”
“We don’t do women and kids,” I snap.
“Don’t talk to me about kids,” Ghost says coldly. “She saw you. She saw me. She saw everything. There weren’t supposed to be any witnesses.”
“And she wasn’t supposed to be there, but she was ,” I snipe back.
“You should’ve taken her out. Made it look like a home invasion. Now you’re going to spend the rest of your life in a cell next to mine because your conscience got the better of you!”
Ghost’s voice slices through the air—raw, guttural, louder than reason, louder than the war drums pounding in my chest. He’s not yelling to be heard. He’s yelling because silence feels like suffocation.
The walls feel too close, the air too thin.
He’s only been out of prison a few goddamn weeks, and already freedom tastes like a cruel joke—bitter, fleeting, slipping through his fingers like air.
Every second she breathes is another risk he didn’t sign up for.
Another chance for everything he clawed back from the brink to be ripped away again.
And beneath the fury in his voice, beneath the cracked edge of control, is a terror he won’t name in front of us. Because Ghost doesn’t panic. Ghost destroys. But even monsters get scared when the leash tightens.
“She’s not a threat?—”
“You don’t know that,” Mason interrupts, stepping forward. “You hope she’s not. That’s not the same thing.”
“I’ve got her locked up,” I say. “She won’t say a word to a soul. ”
“And how long are you planning on keeping her locked up?” Kanyan asks, stepping forward.
“She won’t get the chance if we clean this up properly,” Ghost replies, eyes gleaming like a predator’s. “Just say the word, boss.”
“No,” Kanyan says, voice a quiet command. He turns his attention to Ghost. “We don’t hurt women. That’s absolute.”
“I have no such moral code,” Ghost snaps back.
“You do now. A condition of our mutual agreement was that you follow our code. We do not hurt women and children.”
“She’s a witness,” Ghost bites back. “The DA is going to piss himself with joy if they find her and she gives a statement. And you think they won’t believe her? Sweet-faced girl, daughter of a politician? They’ll eat it up. She points a finger and it’s your empire they burn to the ground.”
“Then we make it hard for anyone to find her,” Mason growls, voice low and deliberate. Power clings to him in the silence after, heavy and absolute. His gaze swings from me to Ghost, then snaps back to me like a warning shot.
And just like that, I know. I know exactly what he’s thinking.
This isn’t just about a girl in the wrong place at the wrong time.
It’s not even about cleanup. It’s about consequence.
Legacy. The kind of fallout that scorches whole empires to ash.
If this goes sideways—if a single whisper gets out—he doesn’t just lose two soldiers. He loses everything .
The Moreno family bleeds. Kanyan goes down. Ghost goes back to jail, his forehead stamped ‘never to be released’. Maybe this time, he’ll get the chair. The Gattis take a hit. And Seattle burns . It’s the kind of fallout there’s no coming back from.
The girl in the basement? She’s not just a girl. She’s a liability. A loaded gun with no safety and a full magazine pointed right at the heart of everything we’ve built. And the worst part? They’re not wrong .
Ghost sneers. “She saw us. She knows our faces. She knows our voices, ” Ghost presses. “She could ID us.”
Silence envelopes us. The kind that means everyone’s thinking the same thing—they just don’t like where it leads.
Ghost’s knuckles drum once on the table—an impatient tattoo that rattles my molars—before he finally speaks.
“Your witness is a loose thread, Caluna,” he says, voice flat. “And loose threads? They unravel bodies. You want her breathing? Fine. But think fast, because if she so much as sneezes wrong, I’ll stitch her mouth shut myself.”
I meet his stare, steady. “You’ll have to get through me first.”
One dark brow rises. “You ready to die for this girl?”
“No.” My throat feels sanded raw. “I’m just not willing to carry the weight of a dead woman on my conscience.”
Ghost’s laugh is short and brittle. “And yet, you killed her father in cold blood.”
“That was different and you know it.”
“Different?” He leans forward, fingertip stabbing the air between us. “This one’s on you , Caluna. When it all goes to hell? Don’t expect me to clean up the mess.”
He straightens, shoulders rigid, fury banked but burning. Every word feels like a brand pressed to my skin.
Kanyan steps in, slicing the air between us. “Enough.”
Ghost huffs but obeys, retreating two paces, glare still locked on me.
Kanyan pins me with a glacial stare. “Talk to the girl. Figure out where her head’s at, and whether she can be steered.”
“Understood.”
He turns to Mason. “I want eyes inside the precinct by nightfall. If the cops even whisper our name, I want to hear it in real time.”
Mason nods once—calm, lethal. “I’ll plug in with my contact. ”
Kanyan’s gaze swings back to me. “Until then, you don’t sleep, you don’t blink. She coughs, you’re there with water. She prays, you’re the amen. And if she whispers one syllable we can’t afford?—”
“I’ll silence it,” I say, voice iron. “Whatever it takes.”
“See that you do.”
The meeting breaks. Chairs scrape. Ghost brushes past, shoulder checking mine hard enough to jar bone. His parting look isn’t anger—it’s funeral certainty. Told you so, loaded and waiting.
They file out and the door clicks shut behind them, leaving me alone with the echo of my own heartbeat.
Keira Bishop—my witness, my hostage, my detonator—is two hours away by road and one wrong decision from ruining us all.
And I just volunteered to hold the wire while the clock keeps ticking.