Chapter 34 Jasper
THIRTY-FOUR
JASPER
“Achat.” James’s gaze sweeps over the three of us, assessing. Taking in our weapons, our gear, the blood on our clothes. “With guns. How… dramatic.”
“Dramatic? You gave us forty-eight hours,” Talon says, moving to flank Dredyn on the left while I take the right.
Edmund Mercer moves slightly. Just a shift of weight, but I swing my weapon toward him instantly. He freezes, hands coming up slowly in a gesture of peace.
“Easy. No one needs to do anything hasty.”
Talon laughs. “Hasty? We’ve been planning this for months. There’s nothing hasty about it.”
“Then you’ve had time to think it through. Time to realize what you’re actually doing. This isn’t just about us, this is about the entire organization. You kill us, you declare war on the Syndicate. They will become your enemy.”
“We’re already enemies,” I sign. Dredyn translates automatically.
“No,” James corrects. “Right now, you’re problems, irritations. You kill us, you become targets. There’s a difference.”
“We’ll take our chances,” Dredyn says.
“Will you? You really think killing us solves anything? Cut off one head, two more grow back. That’s how the Syndicate works. That’s how it’s survived for generations.” The third man speaks for the first time, his southern drawl lazy but his eyes sharp.
“Maybe, but it sends the message that we’re not afraid. That we’re done playing by your rules,” Dredyn says.
“No,” James says, taking a slow step forward.
“What it does is make you fugitives, killers. Exactly what we’ve always said you’d become if you chose the girl over the family.
Let’s talk about survival, because that’s what this is really about, isn’t it?
You want to survive. You want the girl to survive. You want to be free.”
“And you want us dead. So we’re at an impasse,” Talon says.
“Are we?” James spreads his hands like he’s offering a reasonable compromise.
“I’m offering you a way out, right now. Walk away, forget this happened.
We’ll forget you killed our guards—self-defense, perhaps.
Regrettable but understandable in the heat of the moment.
You go back to your lives, we go back to ours.
Everyone survives the night. Everyone gets what they want. ”
“Except the girls you’re trafficking. They don’t survive. They don’t get what they want.”
Talon translates, and James’s mask slips for just a second, irritation flashing across his face before he smooths it away.
“That’s not—” the stranger starts, but James cuts him off with a raised hand.
“Let’s not insult their intelligence with denials.
” James looks at me directly now, and there’s something almost like respect in his eyes.
“Yes, the organization facilitates certain . . . transactions. Has for decades. Women, drugs, information, whatever moves power from one hand to another. But those operations don’t stop if you kill us, they continue.
New leadership steps in and nothing changes except that you three become fugitives with targets on your backs. ”
“Maybe,” Dredyn acknowledges, and I see James’s eyes light up. He thinks he’s winning, thinks he’s found the crack. “But at least we’ll know we tried. At least we’ll know we didn’t just roll over and accept it. That we didn’t become you.”
“Noble. Pointless, but noble. Tell me, Dredyn, has it occurred to you that you’re exactly like your father?
Standing there with a gun, ready to kill to protect what’s yours.
That’s what James does—what we all do. The methods are different, but at the core?
You’re not so different,” Edmund Mercer says.
“I’m nothing like him,” Dredyn says.
James sees it—pounces on it like a predator scenting wounded prey.
“Aren’t you? You kept secrets from your friends for years. You watched, you waited, you planned. You chose the moment to strike when it would cause maximum damage. That’s tactical thinking, son. That’s what I taught you. You are me. You just haven’t accepted it yet.”
“No.”
“Yes. And deep down, you know it. You know that pulling that trigger makes you a killer. Makes you someone who murders his own father. Can you live with that? Can you look Mara in the eyes and tell her you’re a patricide? Can you—”
“He ordered Evangeline’s death,” I sign, stepping forward.
Fuck this. He needs to hear this. “You. Killed. Her.”
The room goes silent.
James’s mask slips completely.
He did it. He ordered my sister’s murder, and he’s not even sorry. It was just business to him. Just another decision in a long line of decisions.
“She was going to expose critical operations. She discovered the trafficking network, started documenting it—collecting evidence, building a case. She was two days from going to federal authorities with proof that would have brought down not just the Syndicate, but dozens of affiliated organizations. Hundreds of powerful people would have fallen. So, yes, I ordered her death. It was necessary.”
“Necessary,” I repeat, and the word tastes like poison on my tongue.
“For the greater good. For the survival of the organization. For maintaining the order that keeps this country actually functioning. For—”
“For your power,” Dredyn interrupts. “Don’t dress it up; don’t make it noble. You killed a twenty-three-year-old girl because she threatened your empire. Because she had the courage to stand up to you.”
“I made a hard choice. The kind of choice leaders have to make.” James’s eyes bore into his son’s.
“The kind of choice you’re making right now.
So don’t pretend you’re better than me, Dredyn.
Don’t stand there on your high horse judging me when you’re covered in the blood of four men you just killed, not to mention the blood of all the people we’ve ordered you to kill before this as your job.
You’re already a killer, just like me. You just haven’t accepted that reality. ”
Dredyn’s gun drops slightly, the barrel drifting down from center mass. “No, I’m killing to stop you. To save people. That’s different. That makes it different.”
“Is it? Or are you just telling yourself that to sleep at night? Murderers always have justifications, son. Always have reasons why their killing was necessary, why their victims deserved it. I know you think you’re doing the right thing, but you’re not thinking clearly.
You’re emotional. You care about the girl, I understand that.
She’s pretty, she’s forbidden, she represents everything I wouldn’t allow you to have.
Of course you want her. But she’s poison, Dredyn.
She’s making you weak. Making you betray your family, your legacy, everything I built for you. ”
“Everything you built was rotten from the foundation,” Dredyn says, but he’s wavering. I can see it.
“Everything I built,” James corrects, taking another step forward, almost within arm’s reach now, “was power, security, the ability to control our own destiny instead of being controlled. And I was going to give it all to you—my empire, my legacy. You could have been next in line for the OCK seat. You could have had everything.”
“I don’t want it.”
“Then you’re a fool. You have ten seconds to lower that weapon and walk away. Ten seconds before this becomes something none of us can take back. Something that ends with you in prison or dead.”
“You already made it something we can’t take back the moment you killed Evangeline. The moment you tried to control Mara. You’re the one who made this inevitable.”
“Then you’re choosing this,” James says. “Choosing to throw away your future. Choosing to become a murderer. Choosing—”
The stranger moves.
It’s subtle—just a shift of weight, hand sliding smoothly toward his jacket pocket where something bulges slightly against the fabric.
A weapon. He’s going for a weapon.
“GUN!”
Everything happens at once.
Talon’s already firing—phut, phut—two shots, but the stranger is diving behind the table with surprising agility for a man his age. The shots spark off the polished wood surface, punching holes but missing flesh.
James lunges at Dredyn.
Father and son collide like titans. Dredyn’s gun goes flying, clattering away across the concrete floor, spinning into a corner.
James’s older, slower, but he’s been training his whole life.
Knows every dirty trick in the book and invented a few new ones.
His thumb goes for Dredyn’s eye socket, knee driving up brutally toward his groin.
Dredyn blocks, barely, before he gets an elbow into James’s ribs. I hear the crack of bone even from across the room. They go down hard, rolling, trading blows that would break a normal person.
“GO!” Dredyn shouts between gasps, pinned under his father’s weight. “Get them! Don’t let them—”
Edmund and the stranger are already through a door I didn’t even notice—concealed in the wall paneling. Probably a fire exit or escape route.
“Talon!” I don’t sign it—can’t afford the time. I just shout it and move.
We go through the door together, leaving Dredyn to face his father alone.