28. Keira
KEIRA
S adness doesn’t knock. It lets itself in. It moves slow, like fog over your ribs. You barely notice it—until you’re choking.
It’s not always crying in the dark. Sometimes, it’s brushing your teeth and wondering if anyone would notice if you didn’t.
It’s hearing laughter and forgetting how to join in.
Or scrolling through messages you’ll never send.
It’s being in a room full of people… and feeling like wallpaper.
It’s sleeping all day and still waking up tired.
Sadness is quiet.
That’s what makes it lethal. Grief doesn’t stomp or shout; it sinks claw-deep behind your ribs and waits for you to notice you’re bleeding. No cavalry rides in for a girl sitting alone with her silence. And I was raised to be polite—too polite to scream.
So I stand here on the landing, fingers gripping the banister, and let the hush gnaw at me.
Inventory time, my brain whispers, as if misery is a spreadsheet to reconcile :
Home? Gone—swallowed by mystery and evil and the inevitable questions that both will raise.
Family? Father dead, mother long buried, relatives vanishing like smoke the minute headlines turned toxic.
Friends? Empty group chats and unread apologies. The minute my father became public enemy number one, I too, became a pariah.
Future? University won’t touch the daughter of a scandal; the dean’s final e-mail was the politest exile I’ve ever received, even if I didn’t mention that part to Jayson. I know it was my choice to leave, but he didn’t have to make it so easy.
Freedom? Tricky. I’m married—to a man who killed my father—and living in a mansion that should be considered a gilded cage.
And yet, perversely, this is the safest I’ve felt in months.
Jayson Caluna never raises his voice, never raises a hand, never gives me the chilling smile my father perfected. He offers distance instead of threats; a locked door instead of a cage. Small mercies—but they count.
I force my stiff legs to move, descending the grand staircase one careful step at a time.
My stockinged feet whisper against cold floorboards.
Dawn light knifes through stained-glass windows, painting blood-red ribbons across the bannister.
Outside, thunder rumbles—it’s been pacing the horizon since midnight, as restless as my thoughts.
Last night’s sleep was a knife fight inside my skull. I won, but just barely. The nightmares snapped at my heels but never dragged me under. That passes for victory these days.
I round the corner into the kitchen and find Nina exactly where dawn always puts her—centered at the long oak table, steaming mug cupped in her small, fragile hands.
The room smells of fresh coffee and old lavender furniture polish.
Nina, Jayson’s grandmother, is the kind of woman whose spine was forged before the cool earth.
I swear nothing rattles her except maybe an empty sugar bowl.
Her eyes flick to me, cobalt and assessing. “Morning, child.”
“Good morning.” My voice scratches out, thin as paper. I tug the sleeves of my oversized sweatshirt over my knuckles.
“You look like sleep tried to drown you again,” she says, mild but not unkind. She gestures toward the coffeemaker. “Pour yourself a cup before you fall over.”
I obey, cheeks heating. The mug is navy with a faded anchor decal; it feels solid in my shaking hands. Steam curls up from the lip. I add sugar—two spoons—and cradle the warmth like a talisman.
Jayson is nowhere in sight. Disappointment flickers in my chest, swift and stupid. What does that make me? A captive with Stockholm-flavored curiosity, apparently. I shove the feeling down.
Nina tracks the movement, one silver brow hiking. “He’s out on the eastern lawn. Running laps while the sky decides whether it wants to unleash its fury.”
I picture it—Jayson in gray sweats, breath ghosting in the cold, stride ruthless. The image scrapes something raw inside me.
“He trains at dawn every day,” Nina adds, as though explaining sunrise to a tourist. “Keeps his nightmares on a leash.”
“Does it work?” I ask before I can stop myself. I wonder what sort of nightmares a man like Jayson has.
“For him? Sometimes.” She takes a sip, eyes never leaving mine.
I manage half a smile and sit across from her. The chair is heavy, handmade, old; everything in this house feels like it will outlast us all.
“You live here on your own,” I say, although it’s more a statement than a question. I haven’t seen anyone else around, and were it not for Lionel driving me to university, I wouldn’t have believed in his existence.
“Jayson’s the last of my family,” she confides. “The rest are all…gone.”
I swirl my coffee. “That must be hard. Do you… ever get used to it?”
Nina’s gaze softens. “No. You learn to carry it differently, that’s all.” She taps the rim of her mug. “Grief shifts its weight, but it never disappears.”
She sets her mug down with a quiet clink, the steam still curling in lazy tendrils from the rim. Then she lifts her gaze to mine—sharp, curious, unsettlingly perceptive. The kind of gaze that strips you bare without ever raising its voice.
“You’re on your own now, too,” she says.
It’s not a question. It’s not even pity. Just a statement full of soft certainty, like she’s already read the pages I’ve never let anyone see.
I blink. The words hit harder than they should. Because I never said it aloud—not to Jayson, not to Nina. I haven’t let myself fully feel it. But hearing it from her—this woman who’s half stranger, half unexpected anchor—somehow makes it real.
I swallow, unsure how to respond. “How do you know that?”
She shrugs, slow and deliberate, like she’s had time to observe me from every angle and isn’t afraid to call out what she sees.
“Because I’m observant,” she says simply.
“When your only family marries someone you don’t know, the least you can do is figure out who he’s letting into your house.
It’s the bare minimum. For your own safety. ”
A small pause. Her words hang in the air like smoke. Not cruel or suspicious. Just… honest and practical.
I nod, slow. “And? What did you find? ”
“That you’re not dangerous,” she says. “Not in the way that matters.”
“You’re watching out for him,” I say finally. “For Jayson. I get that.”
She nods. “Of course I am. He’s all I have left.”
There’s no softness in the way she says it. Just fact. A fact that wraps itself around me and tightens.
Because that’s what we are, the two of us—pieces of what’s left. Fragments held together by instinct and necessity. She’s guarding him. I’m trying not to break him. And we’re both sitting in a kitchen pretending this house isn’t one more grief away from going silent forever.
She lifts her mug again, eyes steady on mine.
“Jayson told me you’re not going back to uni. What will you do about your schooling?” She asks, turning the conversation in a different direction.
“I don’t know,” I murmur, staring at the dark swirl in my cup. “It was my whole plan. The only plan I ever had.”
Nina shrugs, practical. “There are other ways to learn. The world’s bigger than one campus.” She leans forward, clasping her hands. “Life laughs at plans. Make a new one.”
As if it’s that easy. As if the wreck of my life is fertile ground instead of salted earth. I bite my tongue against a surge of frustration.
Soft footsteps cut through the quiet. Jayson appears in the doorway, T-shirt damp, a sheen of sweat caught in the hollow of his throat. Bright blue eyes flick from Nina to me, stormy like the sea, then soften by a fraction.
“Morning,” he says, voice gravelly from the run.
“Morning,” Nina and I answer in unison. She hides a smile behind her mug.
He grabs a bottle of water from the fridge, twists the cap, downs half of it. Tendons flex along his forearm; a faint scar coils like smoke around his wrist. I catch myself staring and jerk my gaze back to my coffee.
“You okay?” he asks me, tone quiet enough Nina can politely ignore it if she chooses.
“Define okay,” I reply. The attempt at humor lands brittle.
Jayson’s expression shifts—concern, maybe guilt, definitely something that makes my pulse misbehave. He drags a chair beside me, careful to keep a cushion of space I didn’t know I needed until he left it.
Nina rises, collecting her mug. On her way past me she squeezes my shoulder—warm, steady, too knowing.
“Plans can change and still be worth making. Remember that.”
Her footsteps fade down the corridor, swallowed by the old house. What’s left behind isn’t silence; it’s a live wire humming between us.
Jayson shifts forward, forearms braced on the oak. Rainwater still darkens his hair at the temples; his T-shirt clings to a frame built for war, not breakfast tables. Yet his voice—low, even—shocks me more than thunder.
“Talk to me. What was that about?”
The question wedges behind my ribs. Nobody has cared to know anything about me since my life detonated. I sip coffee to ground me; the porcelain rattles when I set it down.
Outside, lightning forks across the glass. For a heartbeat, Jayson glows silver—angel, devil, I can’t decide—before darkness drapes him again.
“I don’t know what I want,” I admit, words gravel-rough. “University feels pointless. Friends? Gone. Family?” I huff.
He watches without blinking, as if memorising each splinter. Hope shouldn’t look like him—scarred lip, assassin’s eyes—but it sits between us anyway, trembling. He looks like a beautiful, beautiful demon .
“Nothing keeps me here,” I continue, voice rising. “Except… this.” I flick the gold band on my finger; the metal sings a bitter note. “An unwanted marriage you arranged while I was too shocked to fight you.”
His jaw tightens. Thunder rolls overhead, deep enough to rattle the chandelier. He doesn’t reach for me, and that restraint somehow hurts worse.
“You took every choice I had left, Jayson. You turned my future into collateral without asking if I wanted to stake it.”
“I know,” he says, the words dragged from somewhere raw. “But you know why I did it.”
“Knowing the reasons why doesn’t make it right,” I lean in, heat flooding my cheeks. “How long will I have to stay here, married to you, my life in limbo?”
A muscle jumps in his cheek. “You know I can’t answer that.”
“Is this a ’til death kind of scenario, then?” My laugh cracks—anger skinned by grief. “You decided the trajectory of my entire existence in thirty-seconds.”
He rakes a hand through wet hair, water flinging onto the tabletop. “Would you rather be six feet under like your father, Keira? That’s the only language we speak when it comes to protecting what’s ours.”
Regret flares behind his eyes. He exhales, voice softer. “I don’t regret taking you, Keira. But I regret every second you spend thinking it robbed you of a future.” He scrubs a palm over his face. His gaze locks on mine, thunder echoing our heartbeats.
Lightning flashes again; this time I don’t flinch. Jayson’s hand twitches. I let the distance remain, but the wire between us feels less like a noose, more like a lifeline.
Outside, the storm rages. Inside, for the first time, I feel the house start to breathe with us instead of against us—two unwilling conspirators, renegotiating the terms of survival .
A gust rattles the kitchen windows. Rain spools down the glass like silver threads.
“Storm’s here,” Jayson murmurs.
“Looks that way,” I reply.
I watch the doorway long after he leaves me to shower. My pulse steadies, matching the drum of rain on the roof.
Sadness may be quiet—but hope makes noise. Little clicks and ticks, like gears starting to turn after years of rust. I wrap my hands around my mug and listen.
The storm outside is loud, but inside these walls, something louder begins to grow.