13. Jayson
JAYSON
K eira paces, but it looks more like she’s a seesaw tipping off balance with her bum leg.
Back and forth, like a tethered animal. Controlled. Measured. Silent.
She’s not the kind of girl who screams or begs for mercy. And she’s definitely not the kind who bargains for her life. That should make her easier to handle. Predictable. Contained. But her defiance only makes me respect the hell out of her.
I watch her on a grainy old monitor in my grandmother’s study, the feed hooked up from the basement below. It flickers once, static bleeding across her image like ghostlight.
She’s wrapped in the same blanket I left her with, but she moves like she doesn’t feel the cold.
Or the pain in her leg. As though discomfort isn’t new to her.
Like she’s endured worse in warmer rooms. She pauses near the bars and stares out into the dark.
But she’s not looking for escape. She’s just listening.
For what? I don’t know.
But I hate how long I’ve been watching. Hate the weight in my chest when she finally moves again. Hate the relief I feel when I see she’s still there .
“Why did you bring her here, Jayson?” Nina says from somewhere behind me. I don’t turn around when she speaks.
“I needed somewhere safe for her to stay.”
“Who is she?”
When I don’t acknowledge her, she steps into my line of sight, planting herself right in front of the monitor. Like a shadow swallowing all the light in the room. Like an unspoken command I’m supposed to obey.
The image of Keira disappears behind Nina’s figure, and I feel the loss like a punch to the ribs. Goddamn it. I drag my eyes up, slow and deliberate, until they meet hers. Sharp. Knowing. Unapologetic.
My hands move to my hips on instinct, jaw tightening as I shake my head with a dry, humorless breath. A long exhale spills from my chest—half frustration, half surrender.
Nina doesn’t move. Just stares at me like she’s waiting for the boy I used to be to show up and explain himself.
“You’ve been gone for ten years, Jayson,” Nina says, her voice low, laced with all the weight of that absence. “Ten long, silent years while I buried this house in memory and tried— tried —to forget the boy who walked out and never looked back.”
She steps closer, her cane tapping once against the floorboards like a gavel.
“I kept the doors open longer than I should’ve. And every time, you left them swinging in the wind.”
Her eyes narrow, sharp enough to cut.
“And now you come striding back through them like nothing happened…with a nameless woman in tow. Who you insist on keeping in the basement.” She pauses, lets the silence stretch. “So yes, Jayson. I think you can appreciate why I might be curious.”
I wasn’t lying when I said I needed somewhere safe for the girl. That part was true. But it wasn’t the whole truth. Not even close.
I can dress it up all I want—call it strategy, necessity, convenience. But the fact is, I came back for reasons I haven’t said out loud. Reasons I can’t outrun anymore, no matter how many bodies I’ve buried or names I’ve erased.
The truth? I’ve been thinking about the past more than I should.
Obsessing, really. Picking at old wounds like I want them to bleed again.
Like I need them to. And this place—this cold, creaking, blood-soaked house—is the last place I remember being me .
The real Jayson Caluna. Before I learned how to kill without blinking, how to carry a gun like it was fused to my palm.
I had feelings back then. But now? Now silence feels safer than truth. But here I am anyway. Back where it all started.
And maybe, just maybe, I came back to see if there’s anything left of the boy I used to be. Or if he died the day I stopped fighting my demons.
“We’ll leave in the morning,” I say, my voice low, final.
But my eyes betray me—dragging back to the monitor. Keira’s a small figure on the screen, curled on the bench like she’s folding into herself. Knees to her chest, spine straight, jaw tight.
She doesn’t look scared. She just looks numb. And that unsettles me more than if she were crying.
“I didn’t ask you to leave,” Nina says quietly, stepping in close enough that her perfume—clove and old roses—curls in the air between us.
I don’t look at her.
“It’s for the best,” I murmur.
A beat of silence passes before she speaks again, her voice dipped in something colder now.
“No, Jayson. It’s easier. That’s not the same thing. ”
I grit my teeth, fingers twitching at my side. My jaw tightens, but I won’t bite. Because I know where this conversation is going. It always circles back to him. To the boy I used to be. The reasons I left this house and never looked back.
“I don’t want to talk about the past,” I say—more to myself than to her.
But I don’t need to. Because she already knows. And worse—she remembers. She taps her cane once against the floor. A sharp sound. A warning.
“You think she’s your responsibility,” Nina says. “She’s not. She’s your reflection. That’s what’s got you unraveling.”
I stare at the black screen at Keira’s image.
“She’s hiding something,” I murmur.
Nina hums. “So are you.”
“I don’t want to talk about the past,” I repeat.
Nina hums softly. “That’s the problem with ghosts, darling. They never ask for permission.”
And just like that, I’m back there again.
FLASHBACK
The fight ignites before the elevator even seals us inside the penthouse.
My father’s voice—booming, venom-laced—shatters the hush of his glass-walled throne like a sniper round. It ricochets off polished floorboards, off the gold-framed newspaper clippings that canonize him, off the dusty portrait of a woman and a little girl who don’t smile anymore.
“You think I don’t notice?” he thunders, his glass trembling in his hand. “You think I don’t feel it—your guilt—every time I look at you?”
I stand still. Silent. Because with men like him, the truth is useless. Grief demands a target, and he chose me years ago .
The accident.
The shattered SUV on the side of the highway. The flashing lights. The blood.
My mother died instantly.
My little sister lasted just long enough to whisper my name before the medics dragged me from the wreckage.
We were hit by a drunk driver. Broad daylight. No warning. No chance to swerve.
And yet ? —
“You were at the wheel,” he spits, pacing the floor like a lion with a thorn in its paw. “You were supposed to protect them.”
“I was seventeen,” I murmur. The words feel brittle in my mouth. “I tried ? —”
“You failed.”
He spins, eyes locked on me like crosshairs. “You walked away. They didn’t. That’s all I see when I look at you. Two bodies, and the son who survived.”
I bite down on the scream in my throat. I remember my mother’s voice—soft, warm, full of songs. I remember Lila’s laugh. Her pink sneakers. Her hands clutching mine as we sang along to the radio.
I remember the sound. The crunch of impact. Her whisper. My failure.
And I remember the way he looked at me at the funeral, like I was a loaded gun that had gone off in his face.
“I didn’t kill them,” I say.
“No?” he snarls, stepping in close. “Then why are they in the ground and you’re still breathing?”
Because I wore a seatbelt. Because the world is unfair. Because sometimes death has a sense of humor so cruel, it leaves the guilty alive just to see what they’ll become.
He grabs the front of my shirt, dragging me close.
“I built a dynasty for you,” he growls, eyes glassy with grief. “I carved this empire with my own two hands—and you repay me with coffins.”
My voice cracks, but I force it out. “You lost a wife and a daughter. I lost them too. I lost a mother and a sister.”
“No. You took them from me.”
Something inside me snaps. I inhale, taste smoke that isn’t in the room.
Flashbulbs of memory slam behind my eyes—screeching tires, my sister’s scream, my mother’s blood on my hands while the SUV burned in the ditch.
A guardrail that gave way, the smell of smoke in my nostrils.
But monsters rewrite history to keep their crowns.
“I begged Mom to drive,” I say. “I tried. But you don't want the truth. You want someone to punish.”
He shoves me back. Rage burns off him like a second skin.
“You’ll never be a man. You’re just a walking scar.”
I straighten. My heart’s a riot, but my spine stays locked.
“I’m a scar you gave yourself,” I whisper.
The silence that falls is nuclear. The kind that comes after everything worth saving has already burned.
“You ungrateful little bastard,” he says, voice ragged. “I carved a kingdom out of hell for you.”
“And buried Mom and Lila in its foundations,” I fire back. The names taste like blood on my tongue. “I won’t let you bury me next.”
The silence that follows thrums, thick as wet cement. Lightning flares against the windows, throwing our shadows across the floor—his colossal, mine broken.
“You’ll never outrun this,” he says finally, calm and cold. “Every mirror will show you what you did. Every night will remind you who you lost.”
“I live with their ghosts already,” I answer, throat tight. “I don’t need to live with yours.”
He raises the tumbler, drinks, stares over the rim like he’s measuring coffins again. Then he sets it down with surgical precision, as if breaking the glass would give me too much satisfaction .
“You’ll come crawling back,” he promises. “The world will gut you. And when it does, remember who twisted the knife first.”
“I do.” I step away, heart hammering so hard it stings. “It wasn’t the crash that killed their memory—it was you. And I’m done pretending I still belong here.”
I turn, walk past the portraits, past the silent staff who pretend that the walls don’t have ears. Each footfall feels like nails in the coffin of the boy I was.
By the time the elevator doors slide shut behind me, I’m no longer Jayson Caluna, heir apparent. I’m the ghost of a son he murdered long before the crash ever happened.
And ghosts don’t crawl back.
They haunt.
Now, I sit in my grandmother’s study with the ghost of that night tangled in my lungs and the girl in the basement carved into my thoughts.
“You’re still watching her,” Nina says, as my eyes swing back toward the monitor.
I don’t reply. Because I am. And it isn’t about guilt. It isn’t even about control. It’s curiosity. Obsession. That twisted pull in the gut that says she matters—for a reason I haven’t figured out yet.
She should’ve cried. She should’ve screamed when her father died. She should’ve reacted . But she didn’t. Not a blink. Not a single crack in the surface. And now I can’t stop wondering:
Why does she wear her silence like it’s the only armor she’s ever known?