Chapter Forty-Seven
Rygaard
Keifer moves first-sharp and fast, like a lightning strike. The blade of a knife I didn’t see him produce comes in low, aiming for my gut, but I pivot, and grab Keifer’s arm with a practiced twist that brings him in close,
For half a second, our faces are inches apart–breath to breath. I can see the split in his lip, dried blood crusting his teeth. Then the knife slices up, catching me along the ribs.
I grunt and shove Keifer back hard into the wall. It cracks with the force and he laughs–a short, breathy cackle that echoes with something broken inside him.
“You’re slower than you used to be.” His smile is all gums and madness as he utters those cruel words at me.
“Still faster than you think.” I rush him.
We collide like animals–grunting, snarling, slamming into the side table. The lamp shatters to the ground. My fist catches Keifer in the jaw, but not before I pull out my knife and slice a crooked line across his arm, causing him to drop his own knife.
Blood sprays.
Neither of us flinch.
Keifer lunges this time, aiming low. I grab his wrist, twisting until bones pop. He doesn’t scream. Then, he bites my shoulder, hard.
I howl and slam him into the bathroom door. It cracks off the hinges.
Both of us stumble inside, slipping on a floor slick with old water and new blood.
Keifer gets hold of the knife. I reach for a shard of broken mirror already on the ground. For a second, we just stare, two shadows ginning through gore. Then we lunge again, hands, blades, teeth, anything that could tear the other apart.
I jam my knife toward Keifer’s neck. He catches my wrist. We freeze, locked in a dead man’s grip, breathing ragged, faces close again.
My smile twists. “You gonna cry when I gut you? Like I used to do in school?”
His eyes flare. He breaks the lock and punches me in the throat, a savage, choking blow. I gag and buckle, but keep laughing even as I crawl across the floor.
Keifer follows, bleeding, seething, knuckles raw. My hand shakes, whether from pain or fury, I don’t know. The neon light from outside blinked red through the bathroom window, bathing the cracked tiles in hellfire.
I turn, now holding a jagged piece of the broken mirror, glass glinting in my hand.
“Let’s finish it here, asshole.”
We lunge–glass, steel, fists, elbows.
No grace.
Just pain.
The fight is clumsy and brutal, all survival and hate.
Blood splatters the broken mirror. Keifer’s scream echoes off the tile, but I don’t stop swinging, not until the glass drops from my hand, not until both of us are on the floor gasping like animals in a slaughterhouse.
Silence, then.
The sound of rain outside.
The slow drip of a faucet.
Our blood mixing on the floor like spilled ink.
I look down at Keifer, still breathing, but barely.
“You done?” I ask, voice hoarse.
He blinks through the blood in his eyes. “You still don’t get it. This never ends.” The motel room feels too small for what had just happened.
Blood slicks the bathroom tiles. Keifer lays half-slumped against the wall, one eye swollen shut, ribs rising and falling with ragged effort. The fight had drained us both.
I stand over him, knife in hand, chest heaving, lips split. Keifer coughs–wet, wheezing. Blood dribbles down his chin.
Still grinning.
I say nothing. My hands are shaking. Not from fear. From everything else.
I said I would kill for my Little Hellion.
Standing here, sweat-soaked, bloodied, breathing in the rot of this place, ending him feels like the right thing to do.
In a way, Keifer killed Presely, just like he killed our son.
The guilt has eaten me alive every night since I found out the truth.
No more.
I kneel down slowly. Close enough to see the madness flickering in his remaining eye. Close enough to smell the metallic tang of blood on his breath.
“You were wrong about one thing.” I say, my voice low. “It ends with us!” Keifer blinks. Confused. “Right now.”
Then the blade went in, clean, deliberate, final. Right under the rib cage. I pause until I feel the resistance break, until Keifer’s mouth opens in surprise, in pain, in something like understanding.
He gasps once.
Then again.
Then stops.
Silence.
For a long time, I stayed there, crouched in the blood, eyes locked on Keifer’s face as the light drained from it.
No last words.
No poetic justice
Just the end.
I drop the knife, listening as it clatters to the floor, sticky and red.
I stand slowly, every part of me aching, not just the body, but deeper.
The soul. If I still had one.
I don’t look back.
Outside, the rain is still falling, harder now, as if the sky wanted to wash the blood off the world. I walk out into it without flinching. The water hits hot wounds, but I welcome it.
The motel door shut behind me with a hollow click.
Presley was free now.
It’s a long drive home.
The storm broke somewhere outside the city limits, leaving the road damp and quiet. The world smelled like wet dirt and asphalt, cleaner than anything I had felt in years.
My hands are still red, knuckles torn open, the ache of the fight living under my skin. But the knife is gone.
So was Keifer.
Dead.
Finally.
No coming back this time.
My phone buzzes in the passenger seat.
One message. Are you okay?
I don’t answer right away. What does ‘okay’ mean?
By the time I pull into the gravel driveway, the sun is just starting to rise behind the trees. Pale light spills over the porch where she stands, barefoot, arms wrapped around herself. Her hair a mess. Her eye still shut from Keifer’s assault but the other wasn’t surprised.
“You did it.” Her voice is soft, not accusing. Just… certain.
I step out of the truck, slower than usual. Everything hurts. Not just my body, but the part of me that used to hope. The part I thought I buried a long time ago.
“I didn’t want you to see me like this.” I say.
Presley steps down off the porch and comes to me anyway.
“You’ve already seen the worst of me, Rygaard. And you’re still here.”
I don’t know what to say to that. So, I say nothing at all. Just stand there as she reaches up, touching my bruised face, tracing the healing cut near my eye. Her hands don’t flinch. “Was it bad?”
“Yes, but it needed to be done.”
She nods, like she understands more than she lets on. Then she takes my hand, the one that had done the killing, still raw, still trembling, and laces her fingers with mine. “It’s time to come back to me, Ry Ry.”
I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding.
The front door creaks open behind us.
Warm light spills out, amber, soft.
Safe.
It smells like coffee.
Rain.
Her.
I follow her inside.
I believe in redemption.
In her.
And for now, that’s enough.
But once she hears what I have to say… I don’t know if she’ll still feel the same way.
The storm outside mirrors the chaos in Presley’s chest as she stands on the porch of her childhood home, the place where I had once been just her brother’s shadow. But I wasn’t that anymore.
Not to her.
“I told you I’d ruin everything.” My voice cracks as I step into the light. My knuckles still bruised. My jaw clenched. “I never should’ve touched you.”
Presley takes a step forward. “You think this is ruined?”
“I made a deal to keep you safe.” I mutter. “Years ago. With your brother. I said I’d walk away if it meant protecting you from who I was, who I am.” I turn my back to her. “I’ve done things, Prez. Dark things. Things your brother knows. That’s why he warned you.”
“And he was right.” Presley says softly. “You are dangerous. But not to me.”
I turn back to her slowly, eyes shadowed. “You don’t know everything.”
She steps closer. “Then tell me.”
Silence pulses between us. “I didn’t just walk away back then.” I finally say, voice hollow. “I disappeared because my love for you would have cost us more than not being together. And your brother, he told me something. Something I didn’t understand until now.”
Presley blinks, tension rising. “What?”
“He said I wasn’t the only one keeping secrets. He told me if I ever came back, I’d learn the truth.”
Presley’s breath catches. Her mind is probably reeling through years of unanswered questions. Then I pull a worn envelope from my jacket, weathered and sealed with Rafe’s handwriting.
I watch her open it with shaking hands. Inside is a letter. And a photo.
A birth certificate.
Her brother… isn’t her brother.
Her parents aren’t her mother and father.
The truth unravels in a tangled knot of memory and clarity.
“Not only did I stay away because my father threatened your very existence, but also because I thought loving you was a betrayal.” I whisper. “But it was never wrong. Not like that.”
Tears slip down her cheeks, not from sadness, but release. “We lost years.”
I step forward and wipe her tears. “We have now. If you still want it.”
She doesn’t hesitate. “Always.”
I pull her into my arms as thunder rolls behind us, but inside, something cracks open and lets in light. Because sometimes, love isn’t a straight line. Sometimes, it’s a storm that tears through everything just to clear the sky.
“I’ll always want you, Ry Ry.” She admits.
“And I promise to be everything you want and so much more, Hellion. We will get through all of this.”
The studio was empty except for the low hum of the stereo still spinning in the corner.
Golden afternoon light poured through the windows, catching on the floating dust, painting everything in a soft haze.
Presley stood in the middle of the worn wooden floor, heart pounding harder than any beat she had ever danced to.
Across from her, Madame Dupanchane, the woman who had taught her every step, every reach, every leap, clutched something in her trembling hands. A photo. Old and faded. Presley saw her own eyes staring back at her from a younger woman's face.
“I didn’t want you to find out like this,” Madame Dupanchane whispered, voice catching in her throat. Presley’s hands shook as she was offered the photo. “But you deserve the truth.”
Presley stared at the picture, confusion knotting in her chest. Her mind refused to put the pieces together, refused to believe what her heart already knew.
“You’re... you’re saying…” She couldn’t even finish the sentence. Her mouth went dry.
Madame Dupanchane’s eyes filled with tears, not sharp or angry, but soft, full of years of regret, of prayers whispered into pillows late at night. “I’m your mother, Presley.”
The world tilted.
“So it’s true?” She gasped, stepping back, one hand clutching her chest as if to hold her heart together. “No, that's not... I have a mother. She…” Her voice cracked, all the lies she had been fed suddenly breaking apart under the weight of the truth.
“I gave you up,” Madame Dupanchane said, tears slipping freely down her cheeks now. “Not because I didn’t love you. God, Presley, I loved you so much it broke me. But your father left me. I was young, stupid, scared. I thought you’d have a better life without me.”
Presley shook her head, not because she didn’t believe her, but because she did . Because deep down, some broken part of her had always known there was something missing, some connection she couldn’t explain.
“And all this time…” She whispered. “You were right there. Teaching me. Watching me. Loving me... and I didn’t even know.”
“I never stopped loving you,” Madame Dupanchane said fiercely, stepping closer but not daring to touch her. “Every plié. Every pirouette. I was trying to tell you without ruining your life. I’m so sorry, baby. I'm so sorry.”
She dropped the photo. It fluttered to the floor like a falling leaf.
For one fragile second, neither of them moved.
Then Presley surged forward, throwing herself into her new mother’s arms. They collapsed against each other, sobbing, shaking, holding on like they could glue all the broken pieces back together.
“I missed you,” Presley choked out, voice muffled against her mother’s shoulder.
“I missed you every day,” Her mother whispered into her hair, cradling her like she was still that tiny baby she had once held and lost.
And in the golden light of the studio, with the world still spinning madly outside, they stayed wrapped together, mother and daughter, finding their way back to each other, one heartbeat at a time.