30. Jayson
JAYSON
K eira hasn’t left her bedroom since breakfast. No footsteps in the hall, no soft hum of her voice on the phone she thinks I don’t monitor. Just hush. And hush is a lie I can’t tolerate.
So I stand outside her door, knuckles raised. I don’t knock—knocking implies permission. I twist the handle and step inside.
She’s on the window seat, knees to her chest, black jeans and a sweater swallowing her like she’s trying to vanish in plain sight. The glass reflects her face: haunted, hollow-eyed, lips pressed so tight that the color’s gone.
The moment she sees me, her shoulders stiffen. She doesn’t speak. Good. Talking wastes time unless it’s truth, and she hasn’t given me that.
“Up,” I say.
She stays where she is. “I’m fine.”
“That’s not what I asked of you.”
A flicker of annoyance passes her eyes, quick as lightning, but it dies as quickly as it appears. “What do you want, Jayson?”
“The whole story. No edits. No convenient silences. ”
She exhales, slow, controlled—like she practiced it in the mirror. “About what?”
“About your friend,” I say. “Start talking.”
I cross the room slowly, each step deliberate, letting the silence stretch like wire between us. She watches me from the window bench—tight-lipped, wide-eyed, braced for whatever comes next.
I sink into the chair beside her desk. It’s delicate, too narrow for my frame, the wood groaning under the weight of me. Still, I plant my elbows on my knees and lean forward, forearms braced, hands clasped like I’m praying—but I’m not.
I’m watching. And waiting.
Every inch of my posture says I’m giving you a choice. But the steel in my jaw says choose fast.
“I’m listening,” I tell her, voice low and level. “Make it count.”
The room holds its breath. So do I. Because whatever she says next? It changes everything.
Keira flinches, knuckles whitening around her knees. For a second I think she might bolt, but there’s nowhere to run. I’m the walls here.
She looks past me to the door, as if weighing whether she can make it. She can’t, and she knows it.
Her throat works. “It was… years ago.”
“Not old enough to be over.” I lean back in the chair, getting comfortable. “Let’s hear it.”
She swallows again, then nods—once, brittle. Words peel from her tongue like old paint.
“Riley lived two streets over,” she says, her voice soft. “It wasn’t far. Just a few blocks. But the distance between our lives… it felt like a continent.”
She stares past me, eyes pinned to something that doesn’t exist in this room. Something buried.
“She was from that side of town—the one with sagging porches and broken fences. The kind of place people whisper about but never really see. My father didn’t like me walking there, said it didn’t ‘reflect well.’ But me…” A ghost of a smile flickers. “I didn’t give a damn what anyone thought.”
A pause. Her fingers toy with the edge of the sleeve she’s twisted around her wrist. Like she’s winding herself tighter just to keep speaking.
“She was beautiful,” she murmurs, and there’s something reverent in the way she says it.
“Not in that polished, perfect way. She had this wild, sharp energy—like if you got too close, you’d catch fire.
Out of all our friends, she was the one people turned to watch when she laughed.
Even the adults noticed her. Especially them. ”
My stomach tightens, instinct flaring. I don’t interrupt. I just listen. Because I can already feel where this is going, and it tastes like copper on the back of my tongue.
She doesn’t blink. Doesn’t look at me.
“She was the bright thing that didn’t know it was living in the dark.” Her voice cracks, just once. “And we all know what happens to bright things, don’t we?”
Yes. We do.
And my fists are already curling into the shape of fury.
“One Friday we were cramming for midterms at my place,” she continues. “We stayed in the library. Around ten, Riley said she should head home. Her mom was strict about curfew, and my driver was off that night, so she decided to walk.”
She closes her eyes, breathing through the memory like it’s smoke. “I offered to go with her. She laughed. Said it was three blocks, hardly a trek across Europe.”
My fingers curl. I know how predators love short distances.
“She left through the back garden,” Keira whispers. “I watched her pick a rose on the way out, tuck it behind her ear. ”
Her voice fractures. “That’s the last time I saw her. The last time anyone saw her.”
I wait. There’s more—there’s always more.
“Police came. They questioned everyone. Dad said she probably ran away. That girls her age crave drama. They found the rose later, crushed by the pond.” She presses trembling fingertips to her lips, like she can keep the next words from escaping.
“I thought maybe…it was my fault. Maybe I should have walked with her.”
Shame flickers across her face like headlights. I know that look too well. It’s shame and guilt magnified.
“Go on.” I prompt.
She inhales. “That night is a blur. I blocked out so many things, I just couldn’t get a clear timeline of things. But then I started remembering little things. Things about that night. It was like a dream I was slowly remembering.”
“Trauma does that,” I point out.
“So many things about the night she disappeared started to become painfully clear a few months ago.”
Her voice is quiet—too quiet. But the words are a fucking grenade.
A few months ago.
I remember that timing like a scar.
That was when the Bishop headlines hit every major outlet.
Mayor implicated in high-level trafficking ring, codenamed The Aviary.
I saw his face on every screen in the city—pale, smug, still trying to smile through the blood on his hands.
And now… I see hers. Keira. Haunted. Cracked down the center.
It wasn’t just a scandal. It was a trigger. That’s when the puzzle pieces must’ve started snapping into place for her—ugly, jagged pieces soaked in memory and shame .
Her friend didn’t just go missing. She was taken. Sold. And her father… the one man who was supposed to protect her… He was probably the fucking auctioneer.
I feel sick.
All this time, I thought Keira was just collateral. An unfortunate witness to a murder. A pawn in a game she didn’t understand.
But now?
Now I realize she’s been living in a nightmare far longer than I thought.
This isn’t just about what she saw me do.
It’s about what she survived long before I ever touched her world.
And worse—what she’s only just started to remember.
No wonder she looks like that—like she’s been fighting shadows in her own head and losing every round.
She’s not unraveling because of me. She was already hanging by a thread. And I just happened to be the knife.
I clench my jaw, fists curling tight against my thighs. I don’t know if I want to kill her father’s ghost—or dig him up just to make sure he’s dead enough.
“What did you remember?” I ask her.
“Dad was always super friendly towards Riley, but the next morning when the police knocked on our door, he painted Riley in a bad light. He made it sound like she was a street kid who most likely ran away. He told the police he was alone that night, even though he had friends over. It didn’t make sense why he would lie about something like that.
” Keira’s gaze snaps to mine, pupils blown wide.
“Why would he lie about that, if he didn’t have something to hide? ”
I don’t answer. Rage is climbing my spine, hooking claws into vertebrae.
She continues like she can’t stop now, like the words finally have teeth. “I asked Dad about it later. He told me I was overtired. Hallucinating. But this morning, standing in that pantry… I smelled the cereal. It threw me back to that night so hard I could feel her hand leave mine.”
Tears slip free, but she swats them away, furious at their weakness. “I have no proof. Just memories that won’t line up straight. But something happened that night. Something ugly. And I think my father made it happen.”
She’s shaking, hair falling loose around her face, chest heaving.
I push off the chair, crossing the room until my shadow covers hers. I crouch, forearms on my knees so we’re eye-level.
“Listen to me.” My voice is low steel. “You know why I killed your father, right? I killed him because of what he was—a broker in bodies. That makes your father the most likely suspect in your friend’s disappearance.
Her lips part, disbelief bleeding into something darker.
“I don’t know the details,” I say, fighting to keep my voice even. “But logic says your father must have been involved.”
Tears tremble on her lower lashes, catching the lamplight like shards of glass—delicate but lethal. “Why would he do that?”
“Because that’s what men like him do, Keira.” My hands knot into fists on my knees. “Traffickers don’t see daughters or friends. They see currency.”
She lets out a sound I’ve only ever heard on battlefields—half-laugh, half-sob, raw nerve exposed. “I can’t even blink without seeing her.”
I reach out. Stop short before touching her cheek. She doesn’t flinch, but her eyes track the hover of my hand like she’s not sure which is worse—my touch or the void that the lack of it leaves.
“Your ghosts don’t want to stay buried,” I say quietly .
Her shoulders quake. “Why can’t I remember?” The words slide out on a whisper so thin it almost breaks. “I can recite every Friday sleepover, every homework session… but when I reach that night—” Her throat locks; her next breath rattles. “All I get is static.”
“Your brain’s protecting you,” I answer, softer now. “Trauma edits the footage. Slices out the worst frames so you can keep breathing.”
“But I need those frames.” Her hands claw at her own sleeves, nails pressing crescents into skin. “I need them to make sense of why she never made it home.”
I lean forward, anchoring my elbows to my knees so I don’t reach again. “Then you drag the memories back, one at a time.”
She shakes her head, hair spilling over her shoulder. “What if remembering kills me?”
“It won’t,” I tell her.
She looks up, eyes wrecked and shining—but not broken.
Her gaze holds mine, trembling but defiant, like some part of her is daring me to be wrong.
Then she inhales. Long. Shaky. But hers.
And with a breath that nearly guts me, she wipes the tears away before they fall, dragging her sleeve across her cheek like a warrior smearing warpaint.
“I don’t want to be afraid anymore,” she says.
“Then don’t be.” I sit back, finally letting the silence settle between us like a promise. “You’ve already made it through hell. You just forgot how loud your roar is.”
And for a moment—just a breath of it—there’s something in her eyes that looks like fire. Flickering. Hungry. Coming back to life.