Chapter Eight
~ Jai ~
The bakery smelled like cinnamon and failure.
I caught it from halfway down the block, the sweet-bitter sting of burned sugar and yeast, and for a second I almost turned around and told Ashe we could just order a new laptop.
But the key was already in my hand, and Ashe was already doing that thing he did where he stood three feet behind me and looked like he could stop a truck with his forehead.
“Give me five minutes,” I said, fitting the key into the lock. “If you hear screaming, it’s just me finding out how many plants I killed.”
He nodded, once. That was Ashe for you. The man could convey an entire paragraph with a single tilt of the chin.
I pushed the door open and the smell hit me full-force: bread, yes, but underneath it, the faint ghost of coffee grounds and the must of a space that had been closed up for too long.
My boots hit the worn hardwood, and the floorboard by the kitchen creaked the way it always did, and I took exactly two steps before my brain caught up with my eyes.
The apartment was full of people.
Not just people. My people. My mother stood at the bookshelf with her back to the door, pulling paperbacks off the shelves one at a time and dropping them into a black trash bag with the calm, methodical efficiency of a woman who thought she was doing me a favor.
Each book hit the plastic with a soft, final thud.
My father sat at my desk, fingers moving across the keyboard of my laptop like he owned the place—which, to be fair, he probably thought he did.
And on the couch, a woman I had never seen in my life was filing her nails, one leg crossed over the other, looking about as invested in the proceedings as someone watching paint dry.
Ashe shifted his weight behind me. I felt it more than heard it—the subtle transfer of balance to the balls of his feet, the drop of his center of gravity by maybe half an inch. He was preparing, the way a man who’d spent his life preparing for worst-case scenarios always was.
I filed that under things I appreciated and would never, ever say out loud.
I cleared my throat. “It’s polite to knock,” I said.
My mother didn’t turn around. “This isn’t really your home, Jai.
It’s a temporary arrangement.” She reached for another book—one of mine, a paperback with a cover I’d sweated blood over—and held it by the spine, considering.
“You know Denise’s father was very understanding when I explained the situation. ”
I crossed the room in four steps. The floorboards complained under my boots. I reached past her shoulder, grabbed the book out of her hand, and set it back on the shelf. Spine out. In order.
She blinked at me. “Those are garbage, Jai. They’re not helping you.”
“They’re not yours.” I took the next one from her fingers, put it back. Alphabetical, by author. I could do this in my sleep.
My father’s chair scraped against the floor.
He didn’t stand, but his voice carried the weight of a man who expected to be listened to.
“That’s exactly where that garbage belongs.
Denise has graciously agreed to overlook your little phase, and once we’ve cleaned this up, we’ll arrange the engagement party. ”
I turned. “The what?”
The room went quiet. The only sound was the soft, rhythmic scrape of Denise’s nail file against her thumbnail.
My mother set the trash bag down and brushed her hands together like she’d just finished dusting. “Denise’s family is willing to overlook your little… hobby, Jai. That’s very generous of them.”
“Being gay is not a hobby,” I said. The words came out flat, stripped of all the things I wanted to put behind them.
My father’s jaw tightened. “Don’t speak to your mother that way.”
I looked at him, then at her, then at Denise, who had paused her filing to examine her work.
My mother’s aim was genuinely terrible—she’d missed the trash bag with two of the books, and one had landed behind the couch, splayed open like it was trying to escape.
I could see the spine from here: a romance novel I’d edited three times, the margins full of my handwriting.
The apartment felt smaller than it had a week ago. The walls were the same teal color, the same water stain in the corner by the window, the same crooked shelf where I kept my good coffee mugs. But something had changed. The air was thinner.
Or maybe I was just breathing wrong.
I turned back to the desk. My father’s hands were still on the keyboard, poised over the keys like he’d been interrupted mid-thought. The screen was angled away from me, but I could see the blue glow reflecting off his glasses.
I stepped closer. Looked at the screen.
The trash folder was open. Every manuscript, every draft, every file I’d ever saved—all of them, queued for deletion. The little progress bar at the bottom showed twenty-seven percent complete. He’d been at this for a while.
My chest did something complicated and unpleasant. I kept my face still.
My father was still talking. Something about family, about obligation, about what I owed them and what Denise’s father could do for my future. The words washed over me like static.
I was counting files. Running a damage assessment the way I’d been trained to do in a different life, when the things at risk were lives instead of sentences.
Twenty-seven percent. That meant most of it was still there. Still recoverable.
I reached for the laptop. My father’s hand came up, not quite touching mine, a barrier more symbolic than physical.
“Jai,” he said. “We’re trying to help you.”
I looked at him. Really looked. The lines around his eyes had deepened since the last time I’d seen him. His shirt was pressed. His tie was knotted with the same precision he’d used my entire childhood, the kind that said I am a man who believes in order, and you are a problem I am solving.
Behind me, Ashe hadn’t moved. I could feel him there, a presence as steady as a bulkhead.
Denise’s nail file clicked against her cuticle. She hadn’t looked up once.
The screen glowed blue. The progress bar inched forward.
Everything else stopped.
I crossed the room fast, my hand closing around the edge of the laptop before my father could react. He stood up, chair scraping loud against the floor, but I’d already pulled it free and turned it toward me, fingers already moving across the trackpad.
The trash folder was still open. Twenty-nine percent complete. I clicked cancel, then opened the folder proper and started scanning.
Manuscripts. Drafts. Outline documents I’d spent months building. The novel I’d been working on when Grace showed up—forty thousand words, halfway done, the file time stamped three days before the alley. All of it, queued for deletion like it was junk mail.
My chest did something I didn’t have a name for.
I kept my breathing even.
The files were still there. The system had been deleting in order, oldest first, which meant most of the active work was still intact. I selected the first folder—manuscripts—hit restore, and watched the progress bar fill. Then the next. Then the next.
My father’s voice rose behind me. “This is exactly what I’m talking about, Jai. You’ve buried yourself in this—this fantasy world, and for what? Denise’s father has connections at the firm. He can get you a real position, with benefits, with a future—”
I restored another folder. My hands were steady. My pulse was doing something else entirely, hammering against my ribs like it was trying to escape, but my fingers moved with the same precision they’d had in Kandahar, checking a weapon in the dark.
Some muscle memories you don’t lose.
“—throwing away everything we’ve built for you. Everything we sacrificed. Your mother and I did not raise you to—”
The last folder restored. I closed the laptop, tucked it under my arm, and turned around.
My father was standing with his fists clenched at his sides, his face flushed the particular shade of red that meant he was three sentences from something he’d regret.
My mother had gone still by the bookshelf, one hand still resting on a paperback she hadn’t quite decided to throw away. Denise was, remarkably, still filing her nails. The scrape of metal against keratin was the only sound in the room for a long second.
I looked at Ashe in the doorway. His expression hadn’t changed. He was watching the room the way a man watches a neutral zone, alert but not engaged.
“Call your boss,” I said.
Ashe pulled out his phone and dialed without hesitation. No questions. No raised eyebrow. Just the flat efficiency of a man who’d been given an order and intended to execute it.
The phone rang once. Twice. Braham picked up on the second ring, his voice low and rough through the speaker. “Wilson.”
Ashe held the phone out to me. His face was diplomatically, almost heroically neutral—the most neutral face I’d ever seen on a living person.
I took the phone. “It’s Jai.”
There was a pause. I could hear the shift in his breathing, the way the air changed when he recognized my voice. “Jai.”
“I need immediate extraction. Four men, armed. Cardboard boxes.” I kept my voice flat, even, the way you’d read coordinates over a radio. “You’re getting a roommate.”
Another pause. Shorter this time. “Location?”
“Bakery apartment. You have the address.”
“Ten minutes,” he said, and hung up.
I handed the phone back to Ashe. He pocketed it without looking at the screen.
My father was still talking. The words washed over me like rain on glass—something about respect, about the family name, about opportunities I was too blind to see. His fists were still clenched. The veins in his forearms stood out like cords.
I looked at all three of them. My mother by the shelf, her hand frozen on the spine of a book she’d been about to throw away.
My father at the desk, red-faced and righteous.
Denise on the couch, one nail half-filed, looking up at me with the mild curiosity of someone watching a car accident in slow motion.
I held the look for one beat. Long enough to make it deliberate. Short enough to make it dismissive.
Then I turned and walked to my bedroom.
The door shut behind me with a click that felt final. I braced my shoulder against it, listening to the muffled thud of my father’s fist hitting the frame, the rise and fall of his voice through the wood. My mother said something I couldn’t make out. Denise’s nail file kept clicking.
I braced my shoulder against the bedroom door until the latch clicked, then jammed my boot against the door for good measure. My father’s fist hit the frame on the other side, the wood vibrating under my palm.
“Open this door, Jai. This is not a discussion.”
It wasn’t. He was right about that much.
Behind him, I could hear my mother’s trash bag rustling—novels being shoved in, spines cracking, the particular sound of paper giving way under someone who didn’t care what was written on it.
Denise’s nail file kept up its metronomic click from the couch.
The soundtrack of a home invasion, scored for percussion and misplaced entitlement.
My heart pounded in three-second bursts. Steady, skip, steady. The kind of rhythm that used to mean incoming, back when incoming was something you could shoot at.
I ran a quick triage on the feeling in my chest and filed it under things to examine later, when I wasn’t standing in a bedroom with my father’s fist still hammering the door frame.
Betrayal was too clean a word. This was something older, something that lived in the marrow: the certainty that the people who were supposed to keep you safe were the ones most likely to take something you couldn’t replace.
The low rumble rose from the street and morphed into something specific: two engines, idling at a pitch that meant professional drivers keeping revs low.
I counted the footfalls on concrete—four sets, maybe five, moving in the kind of lockstep that didn’t happen by accident. Boot soles scraping wet pavement. The sound of men who’d been told to hurry but not to run.
The door shuddered. Not my father’s fist this time—something firmer, something that hit the wood with the flat of a palm and waited.
I tucked the box under my arm, laptop in my other hand, and took one last look at the room. The bed was stripped. The nightstand drawer hung open. The water stain in the corner looked exactly the same as it had when I moved in, and exactly the same as it would when I was gone.
I opened the door.
My father stood there, arm still raised, face frozen in an expression I’d seen a thousand times—a mix of anger and confusion that happened when his version of the world collided with something that refused to comply.
Behind him, my mother had the trash bag clutched to her chest like a shield. Denise had finally put down the nail file. She was watching the hallway with the alert curiosity of someone who’d paid for front-row seats to a show that had just gotten interesting.
Ashe was already in the hallway. He hadn’t moved from his position by the door, but somehow he’d acquired two more men—wolves, both of them, built on the same assembly line as their boss, standing at parade rest with their hands loose at their sides.
A third man was already coming up the stairs, a stack of flattened cardboard boxes under one arm.
“Mr. Flynn,” Ashe said. Not a question. A confirmation.
I nodded.
My father found his voice. “Jai, what is this? Who are these people?”
I looked at him. Really looked. The lines around his mouth had deepened since the last time I’d seen him up close. His tie was still perfect. His fists were still clenched.
And then Braham stepped into the apartment like he owned the entire block and was here to collect rent. He’d brought backup.
My chest did that thing again. Steady, skip, steady.
For the first time all day, I actually felt safe.