12. KAISEN
KAISEN
Iwoke up to darkness.
Not the kind of darkness you get when you close your eyes or turn off the lights. Not the soft, familiar darkness of a bedroom at night.
This was absolute. Total. The kind of darkness that pressed against your eyeballs and made you question whether you still had eyes at all.
My first thought was that I was dead.
My second thought was that death shouldn’t hurt this fucking much.
Pain radiated from my side—sharp, hot, vicious.
The stab wound. The stitches pulling against skin that felt swollen and wrong.
Every breath sent a fresh wave of agony through my torso, and I gasped, trying to pull in air that felt too thick, too heavy.
Somewhere above me, air moved through a narrow vent.
Not enough to comfort me. Just enough to remind me that Amai wanted me alive long enough to suffer.
Where the fuck was I?
I tried to move, and my hand hit something solid. Cold. Rough.
Concrete.
I reached out with my other hand—more concrete. Above me, concrete. Behind me, concrete.
Panic slammed into me like a fist to the chest.
I was in a box.
No.
Not a box.
A hole.
I scrambled upright—or tried to. My head cracked against the ceiling before I could fully stand up, and stars exploded behind my eyes. I fell back down, gasping, clutching my side where the stitches screamed in protest.
“No. No, no, no, no!”
My voice sounded wrong. Muffled. Like the darkness was swallowing the sound before it could travel more than a few inches.
I pressed my palms against the walls, feeling frantically for a seam, a crack, a way out. There had to be a way out. There was always a way out.
But there was nothing.
Just smooth, cold concrete on all sides.
I was buried.
The realization hit me like ice water in my veins, and I lost my fucking mind.
I screamed.
I screamed until my throat was raw, until my voice cracked and broke, until I tasted copper on my tongue. I pounded my fists against the walls, against the ceiling, against every surface I could reach. My knuckles split open. Blood slicked my hands. I didn’t care.
I had to get out.
I had to get OUT.
“AMAI!” I screamed his name like a curse, like a prayer. “AMAI, YOU FUCKING COWARD! LET ME OUT!”
Nothing.
No response. No sound except my own ragged breathing and the thunder of my heartbeat in my ears.
I kicked at the walls. Threw my shoulder against them. Clawed at the concrete until my fingernails bent back and broke.
Nothing moved.
Nothing gave.
I was trapped.
The panic morphed into something worse—something primal and suffocating. I struggled to pull in a full breath. My lungs refused to expand properly. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t fucking breathe.
I was going to die in here.
Alone. In the dark. Buried alive like some fucking horror movie.
I pressed my back against the wall and pulled my knees to my chest, trying to make myself smaller, trying to find space that didn’t exist. My breath came in short, sharp gasps.
Hyperventilating. I knew I was hyperventilating but I couldn’t stop.
My eyes darted around, looking for a sliver of light but there was none.
The darkness pressed in on me from all sides.
I was drowning in it.
Drowning.
The word triggered something deep in my brain—some old, buried terror that had nothing to do with this concrete tomb and everything to do with water closing over my head, my lungs burning, Amai’s hands holding me under—
“Stop,” I whispered to myself. “Stop. Stop. Stop.”
I forced myself to breathe slower. In through my nose. Out through my mouth. In. Out. In. Out.
I could feel my hands going numb.
The panic didn’t disappear, but it receded enough for me to think.
Amai did this.
My brother put me in this hole.
The same brother who tried to drown me when we were kids because I took his toy. The same brother who’d spent our entire lives being Winston’s golden child while I was the fuckup, the disappointment, the one who always got whatever he wanted no matter the cost.
The same brother who stabbed me in front of Truth.
Truth.
Her name cut through the panic like a blade.
She’d been there. She’d seen the whole thing. Seen me on the ground, bleeding, helpless while Amai stood over me like some avenging angel.
She’d seen him win.
The humiliation burned hotter than the pain in my side.
I’d wanted to be the one she turned to. The one she trusted. The safe choice compared to Amai’s darkness.
But she’d watched me lose. Watched me bleed. Watched Amai take control of the situation with the kind of brutal efficiency that made it clear who the real predator was.
And now she was with him.
Probably at that lakehouse he thought I didn’t know about. Probably believing every lie he was feeding her about me, about the baby, about what kind of man I was.
Rage flooded through me, hot and vicious. My head felt too heavy to hold up.
Amai was making her believe I was the villain in this story. That I’d violated her. That I’d gone behind everyone’s back to steal what was his.
But that wasn’t the whole truth.
Yeah, I’d pursued her. Yeah, I’d used the sperm swap to my advantage. But I hadn’t orchestrated it. I hadn’t been the one to walk into that fertility clinic and demand they use my specimen alongside Amai’s.
That had been Winston.
Our father playing God with all our lives because he thought he knew what was best for the family legacy.
Amai didn’t know that part. He thought I was the mastermind. He thought I’d betrayed him deliberately, maliciously.
And maybe I had.
Maybe the moment I found out what Winston had done, I should’ve told Amai. Should’ve been honest. Should’ve said, “Look, I didn’t ask for this, but it’s happening, and we need to figure out what to do.”
But I hadn’t.
Because the truth was, I wanted it.
I wanted the baby. I wanted the family. I wanted the thing that Amai had been handed on a silver platter while I got nothing but scraps and disappointment.
And somewhere along the way—somewhere between meeting Truth at that park and watching her smile, watching her talk about her dreams, watching her be real in a way no one in our world ever was—I’d started wanting more than just the baby.
I wanted her.
Not as a prize. Not as a way to one-up Amai.
I wanted Truth Renois for herself.
I wanted her laugh. Her strength. Her refusal to be broken by the shit life had thrown at her. I wanted the way she looked at the world like it owed her nothing, but she was going to take what she needed anyway.
I wanted to be the man she chose.
And I’d fucked it all up by not being honest.
By playing the game the way Winston taught us to play it—with lies and manipulation and strategic moves instead of just saying what I wanted.
Now she was with Amai, and he was probably filling her head with poison about me. Telling her I was dangerous. Telling her I couldn’t be trusted. Telling her that he was the only one who could keep her safe.
And she was probably believing him.
Because why wouldn’t she? He’d just proven he was willing to kill for her. Willing to bury his own brother alive to protect her.
That kind of devotion was intoxicating.
I knew because I felt it too.
I’d do the same thing if our positions were reversed.
I’d burn the whole world down for her if she asked me to.
But she didn’t know that. She didn’t know me. Not really.
All she knew was what she’d seen: me bleeding on the floor while Amai stood victorious.
The humiliation of it made me want to scream again.
But I didn’t.
Instead, I sat in the darkness and let the rage settle into something colder. Something more useful.
Amai thought he’d won.
He thought putting me in this hole would break me. Would make me give up. Would eliminate me as a threat.
He was wrong.
I wasn’t breaking.
I was hardening.
Every second I spent in this concrete tomb, every breath of stale air, every throb of pain from my stab wound—it was all fuel. It was all ammunition.
Amai had made a mistake.
He should’ve killed me.
Because now I had nothing to lose and everything to fight for.
I had a child—maybe. Probably. The DNA would tell, but I felt it in my bones. That baby was mine. Part of me. My blood. My legacy.
The family I never thought I’d have because Winston made it clear I wasn’t worthy of carrying on the Landry name.
But I was worthy.
I was just as much a Landry as Amai. Just as ruthless. Just as capable.
I’d just been playing the wrong game.
I’d been trying to prove myself to Winston, trying to earn his approval, trying to be the son he wanted instead of the son I was.
Fuck that.
Fuck Winston. Fuck his approval. Fuck his legacy.
I didn’t need his permission to have a family. I didn’t need his blessing to claim what was mine.
That baby was made with my sperm. My DNA. My genetic material.
I didn’t choose it, but I claimed it.
And I claimed Truth too.
The thought should’ve disgusted me. Maybe it did. Maybe that was the part I hated most—that even in the dark, bleeding and buried, I still reached for ownership before honesty.
I guess I wasn’t so different from Amai as I liked to believe.
It wasn’t because she was a prize or a possession, but because I wanted her. Because somewhere in the middle of all this chaos and violence and family bullshit, I’d fallen for her.
For the way she refused to be a victim, even when life kept trying to make her one.
For the way she looked at me like I was a person, not just a Landry.
For the way she made me want to be better than the man Winston raised me to be.
I wanted to be the man she deserved.
But first, I had to get out of this fucking hole.
I reached into my pocket, feeling for my phone.
Gone.
Of course it was gone. Amai wasn’t stupid.
But then my fingers brushed against something else. Something Amai had missed in his rush to bury me alive.
My Apple Watch.
Still on my wrist.
Hope flared in my chest, bright and vicious.
I pressed the button on the side, and the screen lit up—a tiny square of light in the absolute darkness. It was almost blinding after so long in the black.
I had signal. Weak, but there.
My fingers shook as I navigated to messages.