Chapter 19 #4
Her eyes were wide behind her mask, pupils dilated. Her hand went to her throat where Maximus’s fingers had been.
“I can’t—” she gasped, the words fragmenting.
Lira’s breathing quickened, each inhale shorter than the last, her body trembling visibly now. Panic attack. She’d had them since childhood, since the first time their father had shown his true nature in front of her.
Greyson moved toward her, but Shadera was faster, stepping in front of his sister. She placed her hands on Lira’s shoulders, her movements careful but decisive.
“Look at me,” she said, her voice gentler than Greyson had ever heard it. “Through the mask. Find my eyes.”
Lira’s head jerked up, her chest heaving with the effort to draw breath.
“Good,” Shadera continued, reaching up to adjust Lira’s mask, straightening it softly. “Now breathe with me. In through your nose.” She demonstrated, her own chest rising with a deep inhale. “Out through your mouth.”
To Greyson’s amazement, Lira tried to follow, her breath still hitching but gradually slowing as she matched Shadera’s rhythm. Shadera continued the pattern, her attention fully focused on Lira, as if they were the only two people in the elevator.
“That’s it,” Shadera encouraged. “Again. In . . . and out.”
Greyson pulled his tablet from his jacket, wincing as the movement sent fresh pain lancing through his shoulder. He keyed in a secure code, bypassing the usual communication channels to connect directly to Chapman.
“Sir?” Chapman’s voice came through immediately, alert and concerned.
“We have a situation,” Greyson said, keeping his voice low. “Get to my floor. Immediately.”
He ended the call without waiting for a response, knowing Chapman would be there. The man had never failed him, not once in ten years of service.
Greyson turned back to the women, watching Shadera care for his sister as something shifted in his chest. The scene felt surreal, disconnected from the truth he thought he understood about Daggermouths.
They were supposed to be emotionless killers.
They weren’t supposed to care for other people, weren’t supposed to feel empathy, show kindness.
Pain pulsed from his shoulder, but he pushed it aside, compartmentalizing it as he’d been taught.
Physical pain was the least of what his father had inflicted tonight.
The bullet wound would heal. The sight of his father’s hand around Lira’s throat, of the gun aimed at his mother’s head—those wounds would fester like all the others, buried but never forgotten.
The elevator slowed, then stopped as rain began to drum against the glass box. Shadera’s gaze moved to the city beyond the window, cataloging, assessing, planning—Greyson could almost see the calculations behind her eyes.
The doors slid open to reveal Chapman standing at the threshold between doors, back straight, expression neutral despite the blood on Greyson’s suit, despite Lira’s obvious distress.
Shadera helped Lira to her feet as Chapman used his own key to unlock the door, stepping inside first to verify it was secure. He nodded once to Greyson before he ushered them inside.
“I need you to take Lira to Callum,” Greyson said to Chapman without preamble. “Tell him she doesn’t leave his side until I contact him. Not for any reason. Not for work, not for Father, not for anything. And use the service tunnels, not the main roads.”
Chapman nodded, already moving to retrieve a coat for her from the closet by the door.
“Grey—” Lira began, her voice still unsteady.
“Please.” He heard the desperation in his voice. “You’re not safe at home right now. Callum can protect you until we figure out our next move.”
“Then come with me,” she pressed. “If he can protect me then he can protect all of us.”
Greyson shook his head. “No one is safe around Shadera and me right now.” He placed his hand on her uninjured cheek, a rare gesture of physical affection. “I need to know you’re safe, Li. Please.”
“At least let me help you first,” she conceded, leaning into his palm as her eyes flicked to his shoulder.
“I’m fine,” he lied, ignoring the hot blood spreading down his side beneath his jacket. “This isn’t the first time. I doubt it will be the last.”
Something about those words seemed to break her completely.
She surged forward, wrapping her arms around him in an embrace that sent pain screaming through his shoulder.
He didn’t flinch, didn’t pull away. Instead, he gritted his teeth and wrapped his arms tightly around her, cradling his little sister against his chest as her tears soaked through his shirt.
“I hate him,” she whispered against his chest. “I hate what he’s done to us. I want him to die.”
“I know.” He brushed a hand down the back of her head. “I know, Li. Go with Chapman. Stay with Callum. I’ll fix this.”
Another lie, perhaps. But one she needed to hear.
She pulled back, fingers brushing his injured shoulder with butterfly lightness. “Promise me you’ll take care of this,” she said, gesturing to the wound.
“I promise.”
Lira turned to Shadera then, the movement hesitant, uncertain. “Thank you,” she said simply. “For in the elevator.”
Shadera inclined her head. “It was nothing.”
“It wasn’t nothing,” Lira insisted. Then, more quietly, “Take care of him. At least for tonight, please keep him safe.”
Before Shadera could respond, Lira turned away, moving toward Chapman who waited in the entryway, his patience infinite, his discretion absolute. Greyson followed her toward the door, opening it and pressing the button to call the elevator, then pulled Chapman back a step.
“No one touches her,” Greyson said, his voice low enough that only Chapman could hear. He pulled his gun out of its holster and slipped it to him. “If anyone tries, even Veyra, you have my authorization to use lethal force.”
Chapman’s eyes reflected his understanding. “Yes, sir. With my life.”
The doors to the elevator opened and in the next breath they were gone, leaving Greyson alone with Shadera in the suddenly too quiet apartment. The absence of others made the space feel larger, emptier, the silence pressing in and suffocating him.
Greyson stood motionless, his control maintained by the thinnest of threads. Now that Lira was gone, now that his focus on her safety no longer anchored him, he could feel something unraveling inside him—a coil of pain and despair that had been wound tight for decades.
Control. Everything in his life had been about control—maintaining it, projecting it, never letting it slip no matter what his father did, no matter what horrors he witnessed on the execution platform, no matter how much of himself he had to carve away to maintain the facade.
The sound of his own heartbeat thundered in his ears, the wound in his shoulder a distant concern compared to the rage building inside him.
It started in his fingertips, a tremor that traveled up his arms, spreading through his chest until his entire body vibrated with it. That control he maintained—always, always maintained—began to crack, fault lines spreading into gaping voids.
“You should sit,” Shadera said, breaking the silence. “Let me look at your shoulder.”
Her voice penetrated the fog beginning to cloud his thoughts, but he couldn’t bring himself to respond.
The sound of his father’s hand striking Lira’s face echoed in his ears.
The image of the gun pressed to his mother’s temple burned behind his eyes.
The feeling of powerlessness—familiar, suffocating—tightened around his throat.
“Greyson?” Shadera moved closer, her voice sharper now, more insistent.
For the first time in his life, Greyson found himself contemplating not just escaping from his father’s control, but something far more permanent. Something that would end his reign once and for all.
Something snapped.
His fist connected with the wall before he consciously decided to move as a sound more animal than human shredded his lungs.
Plaster cracked and gave way, pain shooting up his arm to mingle with the fire in his shoulder.
The physical sensation was cleansing, clarifying—a point of focus in the storm.
He tore the mask from his face, hurling it into the mirror above the entryway table.
Shards exploded outward like crystalline shrapnel.
His hands reached for anything, scrabbled for anything he could destroy.
The island stools were next. He picked them up one by one, slamming them against the counter, against the walls, the refrigerator until they were nothing more than twisted metal.
He dragged his suit jacket off his body as his heel connected with the coffee table. It flew across the room, flipping and splintering, as it connected with the entertainment center and shattered the thin glass television screen. The sound was like ice breaking on a frozen lake.
It wasn’t enough.
Nowhere near enough to contain the fury boiling through his veins.
“Fuck!” The word tore from him as his fist connected with the marble island, splitting his knuckles.
He tore through the apartment like a force of nature, upending furniture, shattering anything his eyes landed on. Each act of destruction felt like oxygen after too long underwater, like breaking the surface when he’d been drowning his entire life.
He swept everything from the counters with a single arc of his arm, dishes and glassware shattering on the floor. A liquor bottle flying toward the window.
Thirty-three years of obedience. Thirty-three years of swallowing his hatred, of playing the dutiful son, the perfect heir.
Thirty-three years of watching his father destroy everything.
And for what? For the privilege of living in a cage, of killing on command, of pretending the Heart’s poison hadn’t infected him to the core?
He was dimly aware of Shadera standing in the entryway, watching his rampage with calm eyes. Her presence registered like a distant signal through the static of his rage, but he couldn’t stop, couldn’t regain control. Not yet.