Chapter Six The Woman Behind the Knife #4
Jarvis hit Calia before she could aim again.
The gun skidded across the tile.
Calia clawed at his face, screaming, “You ruin everything!”
Jarvis pinned her wrist, but Calia twisted with wild strength, reaching for the gun.
Makayla saw it first.
She crawled, grabbed the pistol, and slid it away under a heavy cart.
Calia’s eyes found hers.
Pure hate.
“You,” Calia spat.
Makayla stood, chest heaving. “Me.”
Calia laughed suddenly. “You think this ends with me?”
Trevon cuffed her wrists with zip ties.
Calia did not fight now. That was worse.
Her smile returned, bloody at the corner.
“Selene already sent the board,” she said.
Jarvis froze. “To who?”
Calia looked at him, then at Makayla.
“To everyone.”
Trevon’s phone buzzed.
Then Jarvis’s.
Then Makayla’s.
A wave of alerts hit all at once.
Makayla pulled out her phone with shaking hands.
A new anonymous link had dropped across the city.
THE DRAVEN LEDGER BOARD — LIVE FILE DROP
Names.
Photos.
Old payments.
Videos.
Hospital records.
Club rosters.
Police names.
Judges.
Businessmen.
Private messages.
And at the top, a headline designed to destroy them all:
JARVIS DRAVEN HID ORIN DRAVEN’S CRIME NETWORK FOR YEARS — DIRTY LITTLE PROOF FOUNDER HELPED RELEASE FILES TO EXTORT THE CITY.
Makayla’s blood went cold.
Selene had done it.
She had mixed truth with lies and thrown it into the world before anyone could sort the pieces.
Trevon cursed. “This is massive.”
Jarvis stared at the screen.
Makayla looked at him.
The file drop was not just an exposure.
It was a bomb.
Some of the names were guilty. Some maybe not. Some files might be real. Some fake. Some edited. Some planted. And now Makayla’s name was attached to all of it.
Dirty Little Proof had become the weapon again.
Selene had made sure of it.
Calia laughed from the floor, breathless and ugly.
“You wanted dirty,” she whispered. “Now drown in it.”
Jarvis looked at Makayla.
For once, he had no command.
No plan.
No sharp answer.
Only the weight of his father’s sins, Selene’s setup, Calia’s jealousy, Maribelle’s pain, Niko’s fear, and Makayla’s name burning online beside his.
Makayla’s phone buzzed again.
A private message.
Unknown number.
But this time, no threat.
A video call request.
The contact name appeared as:
SELENE RUSK
Makayla lifted her eyes.
Jarvis stared at the screen.
Trevon said, “Don’t answer.”
Calia smiled from the floor. “You should. She likes an audience.”
Makayla looked at Maribelle, who held Niko tight.
Then at Jarvis, who looked like a man standing in the wreckage of a house he had spent years pretending was rebuilt.
Then at her own reflection in the dark phone screen.
She had made mistakes.
Big ones.
Pain had aimed her.
Enemies had used her.
But Makayla Serrin was done being a trigger in somebody else’s hand.
She answered the call.
Selene Rusk appeared on the screen, seated somewhere dim and elegant, calm as if the whole city was not exploding around her.
“Hello, Makayla,” Selene said.
Makayla’s voice came out steady.
“Run while you can.”
Selene smiled.
“Oh, sweetheart,” she said. “I’m not running.”
Her eyes shifted slightly, as if she knew Jarvis was listening.
“I’m announcing my press conference in one hour. By then, every person in Morrow Bay will believe Jarvis Draven protected his father’s network, and you helped him sell the truth piece by piece.”
Jarvis stepped closer.
Selene smiled wider.
“And Makayla?”
Makayla held the phone tighter. “What?”
Selene leaned toward the camera.
“Bring Amira if she wants her name cleared. Bring Maribelle if she wants her son to stay alive. Bring Jarvis if he wants to stop pretending he is not his father’s blood.”
The call ended.
Makayla lowered the phone.
The surgical room sat in wreckage around them.
Broken light.
Gun smoke.
Calia laughing quietly from the floor.
Maribelle crying into her son’s hair.
Jarvis silent beside Makayla.
Trevon already moving, already calling, already trying to build a wall against a flood that had entered every phone in Morrow Bay.
Makayla looked at Jarvis.
The hate between them was gone.
The danger was not.
Something hotter had taken its place.
Something heavier.
Trust, maybe.
Or the beginning of it.
Jarvis’s voice came rough. “You don’t have to stand next to me for this.”
Makayla looked down at her phone, where Selene’s ended call still glowed.
Then she looked at the boy hiding behind Maribelle.
At Calia on the floor.
At the building Orin Draven left behind.
At the dirty game that had finally shown its whole board.
Makayla lifted her chin.
“Yes,” she said. “I do.”
Jarvis held her gaze.
For one second, the whole room narrowed to them.
Then Makayla turned to Trevon.
“Call Amira,” she said. “Call Auntie. Get every clean file, every original video, every timestamp, every note Selene wrote, and every woman willing to speak.”
Trevon looked at her. “For the press conference?”
Makayla smiled.
It was not sweet.
It was not soft.
It was the smile of a woman who had finally learned the rules and was ready to break them better than the people who wrote them.
“No,” she said. “For ours.”