Page 109 of Jayson
What he didn’t expect—what no one expected—was thatsomewhere between control and capitulation, something shifted.
Months passed. And something in Allegra—sharp, proud, venomous—stuck in him. Like a blade lodged between his ribs. He started noticing the way her mouth twitched before she snapped. The way she sat like a queen in a room full of killers. The way she didn’t try to charm him, didn’t try to change him—just saw right through him. And that? That wrecked him.
Scar Gatti, the coldest son of a cursed legacy, started craving his wife. And Allegra? She made him work for it.
Theirs isn’t a fairytale. It’s fire and steel and long nights spent either fighting or fucking. But make no mistake—Scar would level cities for her now. He doesn’t say it. He doesn’t need to. It’s there in the way he watches her from across a room, in the way he speaks her name like it’s already half a threat.
Their love story? It didn’t start with flowers. It started with a cage. And turned into one of the hottest, most ruthless things I’ve ever witnessed.
I meet his eyes. “She almost died,” I remind him. “I almost killed her.”
“Shewilldie,” he counters, stepping closer, voice low and hard. “If you’re not thinking clearly. If you start treating her like something sacred instead of what she is—a ticking fucking time bomb wanted by one of the most powerful men in the city.
My throat tightens. I feel it then—the edge of the truth I’ve been pushing down.
Scar narrows his eyes. “You need to decide if she’s leverage or lifeline. Because right now? You’re looking at her like she’s both. And that’s a hell of a way to get yourself killed.”
The silence that follows is ugly. Tight. Unforgiving.
I nod once. “Message received.”
Scar studies me a beat longer, then sighs through his nose. “Just make sure you’re not the one putting her in the ground when this is over.”
Then he walks off, and I’m left alone, but the adrenaline doesn’t quiet the memory: Keira kneeling in the moss, whisperingDon’t give me to themlike a condemned angel. There’s only one cure for that sound, and it’s Maddox’s last breath.
It’safter midnight when I ease the bedroom door open.
Keira’s there—cross-legged on the bed, bathed in the dim amber spill of a single lamp. Her journal rests open in her lap, the pages crisscrossed in highlighter, her fingers smudged with ink and grief. Her eyes lift as soon as I enter.
And something in her lets go.
Relief softens the tight pull in her shoulders. Like maybe—for the first time all night—she doesn’t feel hunted.
I shut the door behind me, slow and soundless. Shrug off the suit jacket, let it fall to the floor like the weight it is. My tie’s already loosened. My ribs ache from holding too much inside.
She marks her place in the journal with a trembling finger, throat bobbing as she swallows whatever she’s been carrying alone.
“You were gone a long time,” she says, voice raw.
I cross the room, sit at the edge of the bed, and pull her straight into my lap. Her knees tuck in beside my hips, her arms wrapping around me like second nature.
“Recalibrating,” I murmur into her hair. “How was your day?”
Her breath stutters—part exhale, part sob.
“Lonely.”
I tuck a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “We found outwho Richard Maddox is,” I tell her. “Even if you don’t remember him, we know who he is and you’re safe.”
She lets out a quiet laugh, but it’s frayed at the edges. Her eyes shimmer, and one tear slips free, tracing the curve of her cheek.
“Thank you,” she whispers.
I shake my head. “Don’t thank me yet. Not until you sleep through a night without ghosts clawing at your throat.”
She places a hand on my chest, right over an old scar. Her fingers press gently into the memory of pain, of survival, of the line I crossed and never came back from.
“Then stay,” she says. “Be the reason the ghosts get bored and leave.”
