Chapter 19 #5
Greyson went for the couch next, flipping the large sectional over as another scream ripped from deep inside of him.
The exertion sent a spike of agony through his injured shoulder, and Greyson stumbled, his vision blurring at the edges.
He caught himself against the window, leaving a bloody handprint on the glass.
His legs gave out, and he slid down the glass to the floor, chest heaving, the rage finally beginning to ebb, leaving exhaustion in its wake. His shoulder throbbed in time with his heartbeat, the pain no longer possible to ignore now that the adrenaline was fading.
The apartment lay in ruins around him, a battlefield of broken possessions, a landscape of destruction that matched the devastation inside him.
His ragged breathing sounded obscenely loud in the sudden quiet.
Shame crept in at the seams of his awareness—shame at his loss of control, at the animal violence of his outburst, at the knowledge that Shadera had just witnessed him break.
Another weakness revealed, another vulnerability exposed.
He leaned his head back against the glass, closing his eyes as he sucked in a ragged breath. Time seemed to stretch and contract around him, reality bleeding at the edges. He was pulling away from his body. Inch by inch. Like a tide receding from shore.
A soft sound pulled him back—footsteps approaching, giving him plenty of warning.
Greyson forced himself to look at her, to acknowledge what he’d done. He expected to find contempt or satisfaction in her eyes—some vindication at seeing her captor brought low. Instead, she stood a few paces away, holding a first aid kit in her hands, her posture suggesting caution but not fear.
“Are you done?” she asked, her voice steady.
Greyson nodded.
She approached slowly, as if he were a wounded animal that might still be dangerous.
“I won’t hurt you,” he said, the words emerging rough and raw.
“I would never—” He stopped, killing the lie before it could form.
He didn’t have to lie to her, didn’t have to pretend this was something it wasn’t.
They would both hurt each other if they had to, but at least, if nothing else, they were honest about that.
A corner of her lips tilted upward and she knelt in front of him, laying the kit on the floor beside her.
“I know.
She said it so matter-of-fact, as if she understood him on some fundamental level that others missed. As if the line between his controlled public persona and this private destruction made perfect sense to her.
“I’m going to clean that wound,” she said, nodding toward his shoulder.
“And before you tell me not to bother, remember that if you bleed out, I’m the one who’ll be blamed.
” She retrieved antiseptic and bandages without looking up at him.
“Can you move your arm well enough to pull it from the sleeve?”
Greyson nodded, complying and wincing as he undid the buttons and pulled his left arm free.
The bullet had passed through the meat of his shoulder, missing bone and major arteries—a warning shot, clean and not meant to kill.
His father was too precise a marksman to miss at that range if he’d wanted Greyson dead.
Shadera worked in silence, cleaning the wound with clinical detachment. Her fingers were gentle despite the efficiency of her movements, a contradiction that seemed to define her more and more with each passing day.
“I’m sorry,” Greyson said after several minutes of quiet. “That you had to see that. My father. What he really is.”
Her eyes met his, green and steady and unafraid.
“I’ve known what he is for a long time,” she said quietly, then paused. Her mouth quirked upward. “Besides, what you really should be apologizing for, little heir, is stabbing me with that fucking fork. Hurt worse than an actual blade.”
A startled laugh escaped him, cut short by the pain it caused. “Fair enough.”
They fell silent again as she worked, and something in the air between them, the energy, shifted.
Her hands stilled on his skin, lingering. He swore he imagined it when her thumb traced a soft circle over a scar and his breath hitched.
“I didn’t know,” she finally whispered, so softly he almost missed it.
Greyson looked up, finding her eyes fixed on his face, her expression stripped of its usual defenses. The emotion they held, the pain that seemed to reflect him, made his heartbeat stutter.
“Know what?” His voice was so foreign, so soft, as it left his lips. He fixated on her eyes, those beautiful fucking eyes.
She swallowed.
“What it was like. What you . . .” Her fingers slid down his arm, never leaving his skin. Greyson’s heart rate began to accelerate. “I knew he was a monster. But I didn’t know . . . I never imagined what it was like for you. Living with him.”
He couldn’t have anticipated the severity of the impact those words would hit him with, unexpected and devastating in their simple honesty. He looked away, unable to bear the weight of her gaze.
“No one does,” he said after a moment of silence, forcing his eyes back to her face.
Her hand fell away from his skin, slipping into her lap, and the sudden absence of her touch, her warmth, made his throat constrict.
Greyson forced himself not to reach for her.
“He killed my parents,” Shadera said, her voice almost a whisper. “Twenty years ago, I watched him kill my parents on that platform because they were from different rings. Because they chose love over law.”
She lifted her eyes back to his, and the pain he saw raging there could have brought him to his knees.
“I-I’m sorry.” She forced the words out.
“For what?” Greyson asked, genuinely confused.
She cleared her throat, bringing her hands back to his shoulder. He sucked in a sharp breath at the contact, not from pain—but comfort.
“For assuming you were just like him.” She secured a bandage over the entrance wound. “For thinking that because you’re his son, the Executioner, this was a life you chose. That you wanted to kill innocents—that you enjoyed it.”
The statement from her lips was a blade sliding between his ribs, finding the heart of a truth he rarely acknowledged even to himself.
He hadn’t chosen any of this.
“That doesn’t excuse what I’ve done,” he said, the words thick in his throat. “The choices I’ve made, the people I’ve—” He cut himself off, unable to finish.
“No,” she agreed, and there was no absolution in her voice, no forgiveness. “It doesn’t. But it explains more than I understood before.”
Her eyes moved over his face, studying him openly now. He wondered what version of him she saw at that moment—the Executioner, the heir, the broken man? All of them at once? All equally true, equally false.
“Earlier,” she started, changing the subject, “you said something about my mask bearing your mark. What did you mean?”
The question was a lifeline, a shift away from the truth of what he’d done, and he was grateful for it. He exhaled slowly, considering his answer.
“All Executioners have a mark,” he explained. “A symbol that identifies them, that becomes associated with their . . . work, in the Veyra ranks. Mine is a skull.”
“A tattoo?” she asked, her eyes scanning what she could see of his chest, noting the scars but no visible mark.
“Yes.” He hesitated, then made a decision.
If she was going to understand—truly understand the man they were up against—she needed to see. All of it.
Slowly, he pulled his shirt fully from his body, letting it fall to the floor as he turned away from her, presenting his back.
Her sharp intake of breath told him she saw it—the skull tattooed across his entire back, identical to the one on her mask.
Black ink embedded in skin that was a roadmap of scars and burns and lash marks.
Some surgical, most jagged and brutal. Evidence of years of “discipline” at his father’s hands.
“This is my mark,” he said quietly, still facing away from her. “My fucked up legacy.”
Her fingers brushed his skin, so light he might have imagined it if not for the warmth that followed the path of her touch as she traced one of the scars that crossed the skull.
“And these?” she asked, her voice reverent. “Are they your legacy too?”
Greyson closed his eyes, fighting the unexpected surge of emotion her touch evoked. “No. They’re my education.”
She reached for a pack of gauze and tape without speaking, quickly cleaning the exit wound before packing it and sealing it off.
Her fingers took one last dance across his flesh, feeling the ridges of his pain before her hand stilled against his back, a point of warmth in the cold room.
Then it withdrew, leaving him feeling strangely bereft.
“Greyson,” she said, and the sound of his name in her voice, without title or mockery or disdain, made something ache inside him. “Look at me.”
He turned, meeting her eyes. Shadera stared at him for a long moment, emotions raging in her gaze as she lifted her hands then hesitated. It only took a breath for her to make whatever decision she was deciding on as her hands came up to cup the sides of his face.
His breath caught in his lungs.
He’d never been touched like this. The mask prevented it. Even before he was required to wear one as a child, no hands had graced his bare cheeks.
Her thumbs swept over the surface in tandem, stilling on both sides of his nose. He didn’t breathe, didn’t blink for fear that she would pull away, that she would take this small intimacy away from him.
Shadera searched his face before her lips parted. “For this moment, I’m going to put aside my hate for you. I’m going to forget that you’re my enemy and speak to you survivor to survivor.”
Greyson swallowed then nodded, eyes never leaving hers.
Her hands flexed against his skin. “You deserved—deserve a better father. Love is not supposed to be cruel, and what he’s done to you .
. . it’s not your fault. You’re a better man than him, Greyson.
Now is the time to be that man.” She paused as his pulse pounded in his ears, ringing as if he were hearing for the first time. “Death doesn’t have to be your legacy.”
They stayed there, suspended in silence. Greyson didn’t know how long it had been when she removed her hands, when she stood in front of him and offered her hand.
“You need to sleep,” she said, her voice still gentle. “You’ve lost blood. You need rest.”
Greyson nodded. He didn’t dare speak, didn’t trust any of the words that were begging to be set free.
His fingers slid into hers, rising to his feet as he scanned the ruin around them. Tomorrow, he’d have to tell her the truth about the Vow, the core of the Heart. But tonight, he needed sleep. He needed distance. He needed clarity.
Shadera strode away from him without a word toward her room and as he watched her go, as those auburn curls swayed with every step she took, he realized the irony of it all.
The woman sent to kill him, was the only woman who had ever made him feel safe.