41. Jayson
JAYSON
T he mirror never lies—but it doesn’t flinch either, which is more than I can say for the man staring back at me.
Black shirt, black suit, black tie: the uniform of a sinner who still hopes to pass for civilized. I slide a cufflink through the starched sleeve—silver skull, tiny rubies for the eyes—then pause, wrist trembling like I’ve spent the whole night mainlining fear. Because I did.
Behind me, Keira sleeps in the center of my king-size bed, curled small as a question mark.
The duvet gathers under her chin; with every fragile rise and fall of her ribs, something inside me cracks wider, a continental rift I can’t suture.
It’s obscene, how tiny she looks against the mountain of pillows.
Obscene, how easily the wilderness could have swallowed her whole last night.
A single pine needle still clings to her hair like a souvenir of the nightmare. I want to pluck it free.
I want to stay and listen to her breathe until the end of time. I want to rip whoever did this to her into so many pieces that even the vultures choke. Instead I fasten the second cufflink, watch the rubies glint like a warning flare, and force myself to turn away from the bed.
I fucking hate this.
Every instinct I have is screaming not to go, not to leave her, not even for a damn minute. But the meeting can’t be pushed, and Nina—reliable, ever-present Nina—had to rush out of town on some work emergency. Timing couldn’t be worse.
Keira’s in the house, alone. That thought punches straight through my ribs.
I grab my keys, every step away from her a betrayal.
My gut’s twisted. My jaw’s locked so tight it aches.
Logic tells me she’s safe. Cameras. Gates.
Steel-reinforced doors. But logic doesn’t erase the image of her trembling in a dark corner, or what it felt like to hold her broken and bleeding the last time she had a nightmare.
The moment my phone lights up, I hit speaker—I don’t even let the first ring finish.
Kanyan’s voice grinds through the line, low and steady, all gravel and heat. “We’re at the round table. Scar’s with me. Mason’s in transit. You good?”
I shoulder into the tailored suit coat, smooth the lapels, and reach back to adjust the Glock tucked beneath the waistband. Cold steel, warm rage.
“I’ve never felt more alive.”
“Good.” There’s a beat. The sound of movement—metal scraping, maybe the flick of a lighter. “We want answers, not bodies. But we’ll take both if you’re feeling generous.”
Keira stirs in her sleep behind me, twisting in the sheets like she’s fighting ghosts. A soft, strangled sound escapes her throat—some mix between a whimper and a warning.
My jaw locks. My free hand curls into a fist on the edge of the dresser, and the phone groans under the pressure of it.
I stare at my reflection in the mirror. Clean-shaven. Dressed to kill. But it’s the eyes that matter—flat, merciless. The kind of eyes men don’t come back from.
“No more nightmares,” I murmur. And I hang up.
The estate is quiet when I arrive, but the round table glows like something sacred.
Mason’s already there, arms folded, expression carved from stone. The devil behind his eyes doesn’t blink. He nods when I enter. A greeting with no warmth; just acknowledgment. We bleed on the same battlefield, and that’s more than enough.
Kanyan leans against the far wall, hulking in his tailored black. His arms are crossed, but it’s the stillness that gives him away—he’s thinking. Planning. Calculating the body count it’ll take to get to the root.
Scar’s seated to his right, one hand on the table, the other tapping against his thigh.
Lucky stands at the head of the table, blazer slung over the back of his chair, sleeves rolled to the elbow.
The cuff of his dress shirt rides just high enough to show the coiled ink on his wrist—a serpent tangled around the barrel of a pistol, the body of it disappearing beneath the glint of his Rolex.
Time and violence, tattooed together like gospel.
He looks calm. But it’s that particular Lucky Gatti kind of calm. The kind that means someone’s already dead and just doesn’t know it yet.
His gaze lifts to mine. “I came as soon as I could.”
His jaw ticks once, and I see it—the edge of restraint. He’s been waiting to let something off the leash. Something brutal.
I step forward, eyes on him. “I want to know what Richard Maddox wants with Keira Bishop. ”
The room stills.
Kanyan breaks the silence, voice deep and dangerous, like thunder clawing behind a locked steel door. “Might’ve been better to ask Keira,” he says. “I don’t imagine Richard Maddox is an altogether trustworthy narrator.”
My stomach turns. I see her again—in the woods, on her knees, breath fogging in the night air. Her tears, her trembling hands. Her memories bleeding through skin that still carried someone else’s fingerprints.
“I can’t ask her,” I say, voice quieter now. Rougher. “She doesn’t remember who he is.”
Scar lifts his head then, lazy and sharp. One brow raised. “Yet somehow he knows her.”
Mason leans forward, hands clasped, voice like ice cracking beneath feet. “What do we actually know about this man?”
Lucky’s already moving.
He steps toward the end of the table, presses a concealed button beneath the lip of the wood. A hidden panel hums open and a screen lights up on the wall, cutting through the low amber glow of the chandelier above.
The smiling face of a man in full police regalia pops up on the screen. Fifties. Salt-and-pepper hair. His smile is polished and false. The kind of smile that belongs to men who’ve buried their sins under concrete and citations.
Lucky glances at me. “I reached out to The Jekyll. He had no problem joining the dots.”
Kanyan steps forward, arms crossed, gaze hard. “Richard Maddox?”
“The one and only.”
Scar shifts in his seat, boot tapping against the table leg. “And what’s his connection to Keira?”
They all look at me when he asks it .
Like they can hear it in my voice. The obsession. The weight. The undeniable truth I haven’t admitted to myself.
Lucky turns back to the screen, giving me space I didn’t ask for. “Interesting story,” he starts. “Richard Maddox and Simon Bishop—Keira’s father—were thick as thieves from high school onward. They stayed close, all the way through Simon’s political climb.”
My jaw tightens. The name tastes sour.
Lucky continues. “They were in contact right up until Bishop’s disappearance a few weeks ago.”
Their eyes shift back to me.
No one speaks, but the silence is thick with memory—that night, the choice I made, the body I disposed of. We don’t name it, but we all know that’s the reason we’re here now. That one bloody, irreversible act set this all in motion. And none of us can pretend otherwise.
If Keira hadn’t walked through that bedroom door that night—haunted eyes, unaware of how close the blade had come—this conversation wouldn’t exist. We wouldn’t be sitting here dissecting her past, her safety, her fucking future.
Richard Maddox wouldn’t even be a name on our radar.
And Keira Bishop? She’d be a corpse. Another girl on a slab in a county morgue.
Another forgotten daughter whose death would’ve been swept under headlines and bureaucracy.
Two lines in a local paper. Tragic loss of former mayor’s daughter.
Suspected overdose. A quiet funeral. A grieving city that would’ve moved on by Monday.
And me? I wouldn’t have thought twice. Because I didn’t know her. Not then. Not the shape of her mouth when she smiles. Not the way her voice cracks when she remembers things she shouldn’t. Not the scars she carries under her skin—old bruises and silence.
And the thought of that—that there’s a version of this world where she dies anonymously, and I never even know her name? It fucking destroys me. Because now I do know her.
And I know what men like Maddox are capable of.
I know what kind of monsters protect their secrets with the bones of girls like Keira.
I don’t know how long he’s been plotting Simon Bishop’s demise, but I know how calculated this has all been.
He didn’t just want Bishop gone. He wanted his bloodline erased.
And Keira was supposed to be collateral. Now she’s the last piece left standing.
That’s what’s written across the glances they throw me.
They’re not just looking for answers. They’re asking a question I haven’t spoken aloud—not even to myself. How much does she really know? And how far am I willing to go to keep her alive?
I clench my fists in my pockets, feel my pulse drum through my knuckles. The answer isn’t complicated. It’s already carved into the way I breathe.
Farther than anyone expects.
Far enough that I won’t survive it, if she doesn’t.
I drag my gaze back to Lucky. “Spit it out. What are you not telling us?”
He nods, as if expecting that.
“Bishop and Maddox were deep in each other’s pockets. Financially. Politically. Criminally. But when Bishop lost his mayoral seat, Maddox disappeared. Not out of loyalty. Not out of fear of public backlash. No, he vanished because whispers were starting to surface.”
“Aviary,” Mason says, a growl under his breath.
Lucky nods. “Exactly. There were rumors—loose threads pointing to Maddox and his association with the Aviary. He buried them fast. Had them scrubbed, sealed, silenced. But the stain was still there. And Bishop knew everything.”
“So all this time,” Mason growls, voice low and tight, “we thought Mayor Bishop was the final link. The last piece of the Aviary’s puzzle.” His jaw flexes, the muscle ticking as if it might snap. “But he wasn’t. There are others.”
He leans forward, elbows on his knees, fists clenched so hard his knuckles crack.
“There’s more. There’s always more.” The words come out like broken glass, like they’re carving a deeper hole in his chest. “We burned him down thinking we’d ended it—but we were just scratching the surface, weren’t we? ”
“It was never going to be that easy,” I whisper.
Kanyan’s voice drops. “If Maddox wanted to protect himself, he couldn’t let Bishop live long. History or not, that kind of liability gets erased.”
“Aha,” Lucky says, lips curling in satisfaction. “The Jekyll traced massive payments into Bishop’s private accounts. Not government money. Not campaign funds. Personal. Recent. As recent as a month ago.”
“Blackmail,” Scar says flatly.
“Exactly,” Lucky agrees. “Bishop had leverage. But whatever it was… it was enough to make a man like Richard Maddox—Police Commissioner of this city—pay him to keep it buried.”
I speak then, voice low. Certain.
“And once Bishop stopped being useful, he became a threat.”
Kanyan finishes the thought. “Which means Maddox would have pulled the trigger, sooner or later.”
If we hadn’t; I think the words that are on everyone’s mind, but I don’t say them out loud.
“And now,” I say, thinking of Keira’s wide eyes, her nightmares, her broken memories, “he’s scared she knows something. That Bishop told her. Or worse… that she saw something she doesn't remember yet.”
Mason leans back in his chair, eyes narrowed. “That’d be enough to make a man like Maddox panic. ”
I nod slowly, hands clenched at my sides. “And when men like Maddox panic, they make mistakes.”
“Good,” Scar says, flipping a coin and catching it mid-air. “Then let’s help him make a few more.”