19. Keira
KEIRA
M onsters don’t live under the bed.
They live upstairs. In the corner office. At the head of the dinner table. They smile while pouring you orange juice. Kiss you on the forehead with the same mouth they use to order someone’s death.
I’ve always known my father was a monster. Not in the way people whisper when their dads raise their voices. No. My father didn’t have to yell. He had power. Control. Influence. He didn’t need to shout. Because he could ruin you quietly.
And he did. He ruined everyone who got too close. He taught me early on that survival wasn’t about being good. It was about being useful. Silent. Sharp. You learn fast when love comes with conditions.
I used to think maybe he could change. That if I was perfect enough, careful enough, invisible—he might learn to love something he wouldn’t want to destroy.
But monsters don’t change. They evolve. And daughters like me? We either get eaten alive... or we impose conditions of our own.
Jayson is not the same kind of monster like my dad was. No— this one’s different. Quieter. Colder. A monster who doesn’t pretend to be anything else.
And still, somehow, it feels worse.
Because Jayson doesn’t lie to me. He doesn’t play pretend.
He looks me in the eye and tells me the truth— that this is what I need to do in order to survive.
It’s not love or commitment or any sort of bond except a contract signed in blood, stolen vows.
A piece of paper to keep me breathing, not to bind us in devotion.
And yet… something inside me still cracks. Still aches. Because I used to dream about love.
I used to imagine lace and slow dances and someone choosing me because they wanted to—not because they had to.
But this isn’t a dream. This is survival. And my choices are all casualties. Marry the man who killed my father. Or risk being lowered into the ground beside him.
I tell myself it’s not forever. That the novelty will eventually wear off and I’ll get my freedom. I’ll find a way out. Like my name on that marriage license will just be ink on paper-and eventually, the ink will fade…
But the worst part? I’m starting to wonder if the version of me that walked into this mess is already gone.
If I’ve already been gutted and replaced by someone colder.
Someone hungrier. Someone who knows what it means to survive a world of monsters…
only to walk willingly into the arms of another one.
The memory hasn’t fully let go of me when I hear the door creak open upstairs. I hear the sound of heavy boots before Jayson comes into view.
His footsteps echo down the stairs like a thunderous warning. Each step deliberate. Controlled. But beneath that—there’s tension. Cold fury.
When he reaches the bottom, I’m already sitting up straighter, because whatever part of me learned how to survive years ago still reacts to a presence like his.
He pauses just outside the bars. And he looks at me. Really looks, like he sees me. Not like I’m a liability, or a girl with too many secrets.
Something’s shifted. Like he senses the fracture I’m trying to hold together with a breath and a too-tight grip on this damn blanket.
My throat is thick. Not with tears—I’m not even sure I remember how to cry—but with something heavier.
Shame. Rage. Regret. Guilt. That quiet, coiled ache of being seen when you didn’t give anyone permission to look.
Jayson moves closer, until the bars are the only thing separating us. His voice is quiet now, almost cautious.
“The officiant will be here in an hour,” he says, voice clipped—like punctuality might make this less brutal.
I meet his gaze, every bone in my body locked against the tremor in my chest. “Hear me, Jayson.” My words are steel, cold and certain. “Saying yes doesn’t make me yours.” I let the weight of the moment settle between us. “And it damned sure doesn’t make me feel any safer.”
He smiles, but there’s no warmth in it. “Safety’s a myth, anyway.”
I stand there, cold and shaking, while Jayson watches me from the other side of the wall of steel between us. The bars feel thinner than ever.
And in that moment, I realize the truth. The cage isn’t these walls. It’s him. It’s this deal. It’s the future he’s forcing down my throat. And God help me—it’s the fact that some sick, broken part of me isn’t entirely sure I want to run.
He leans in a little. Maybe he’s afraid that if he gets too close, I’ll disappear. I don’t know why that would affect him except maybe his freedom might be in question.
“What did he do to you?” The question is razor sharp and comes completely out of left field.
I look away. “You didn’t blink when he died,” he continues.
“You looked at his body like it was nothing but a relief that he was finally gone. I’ve seen women fall apart over monsters.
Seen them try to mourn men who didn’t deserve their grief.
” His jaw tightens. “You didn’t even blink. ”
I force myself to meet his eyes.
He doesn’t react to my silence. But something shifts in him too.
His stance softens. His eyes lose that calculated sharpness, if only for a second.
It’s not pity; it’s recognition. We sit in it—this awful, suffocating stillness that presses down like a noose around my throat.
The kind of silence that doesn’t just linger—it seeks.
Circles the room like smoke looking for something to choke.
And then, he breaks the moment with the smallest shift—his eyes flicking away like he can’t stand the weight of mine anymore.
He shrugs, slow and deliberate, like he’s physically shaking off the ghosts clinging to him.
The ones I know don’t just sit on his shoulders—they bury themselves into his spine.
When he finally speaks, it’s quiet. Like he’s afraid the words might break if he says them too fast—or that I might.
“Why are you pretending it doesn’t hurt?” he asks, voice frayed at the edges, unraveling in that way people only do when they’ve carried pain for too long. “Because from where I’m sitting, it looks a hell of a lot like you’re drowning.”
He doesn’t look at me when he says it. He fixes his eyes on the floor, like it’s safer than meeting mine. Like if our gazes lock, he’ll see something in me that mirrors something in him—and neither of us is ready for that kind of reflection.
I shift in my seat, suddenly too aware of how small I feel in this room.
How cold the air feels against my skin. How loud the silence is when you’ve built your whole life around blocking it out.
Because noise is easier. Chaos drowns out the thoughts I don’t want to hear.
The grief. The shame. The rage I’ve been swallowing since I was old enough to know the world doesn’t make space for girls like me unless it’s to own, use, or bury.
Jayson thinks I came home randomly. A fluke visit.
Some daughterly instinct or misplaced affection.
But what he doesn’t know is that I haven’t set foot in that place since the day I left for college.
Not even for birthdays. Not even for holidays.
I built my life around avoiding that house.
This city. My own name . I erased it all. On purpose.
Coming back wasn’t part of the plan. The fact that I was even in the city this weekend… that I walked through that door just hours before blood hit the walls—it wasn’t fate. It was bad luck. The kind I can’t seem to outrun.
I glance at Jayson, watching him as he cements his eyes on mine. Something passes between us. A beat. A breath. A thing neither of us is ready to touch, but both of us feel.
“You weren’t supposed to be there,” he says quietly. And to me, it sounds more like an apology, a resignation. Like maybe he’s been turning that one sentence over in his head since the second he saw me.
“I know,” I whisper back. “I wasn’t supposed to come home at all.”
He nods—slow, deliberate. Like he’s sorting through years of ghosts before deciding which truth to let slip between his ribs. And when he speaks, his voice is low, frayed at the edges. Not aimed at me exactly, but drifting toward me like an echo in a still room.
“You’re not the only one who stopped going home,” he says.
The words hang there. Quiet. Casual. But they land with weight—like a secret that’s been dying for air.
He doesn’t look at me when he says it, but I hear it all the same. And I feel it—even more than I understand it. The grief tucked behind his tone. The unspoken history. Whatever he left behind that made walking away easier than staying. And just like that, something shifts between us.
The space—once thick with suspicion and silence—changes. Loosens. Not into comfort, exactly. We’re not there yet. But into something quieter. Sharper. Like a ceasefire held together by the thinnest thread of recognition.
Two broken people. Two frayed souls. Sitting in the wreckage of other people’s choices, pretending like we’re not bleeding out in real time.
We don’t speak for a long moment. But this time, the silence doesn’t feel like it’s trying to choke me. It feels mutual. And for a flicker of a second, I realize something I hate myself for thinking:
He hasn ’ t hurt me.
Not once. Not even when he had every reason to. And that fact—quiet and jagged and unsettling—hits me harder than I want it to. Because isn’t that the bare minimum? Isn’t that what I’ve learnt to expect by now?
It’s an unexpected kindness. And maybe that’s what scares me most. Because kindness has always come with strings and consequences. Especially with monsters.