Page 118 of Jayson
Glass crunches underfoot as I enter the hallway. Another bastard charges me from the laundry wing, screaming in Russian.
I let him come.
At the last second, I pivot. Elbow to the throat. He stumbles. I drive my knee into his spine. He drops. Then I shoot him point-blank in the back of the skull.
There’s no time to play.
His body slumps to the ground, and with it comes the silence. Complete and utter silence, overwhelming the room with its presence.
“JAYSON!” I roar.
Silence. There’s too much of it. It settles over the house like a predator, thick and suffocating. My chest tightens, ribs clenching around my lungs like a vise.
And then, there’s movement. Subtle. Faint. But there. A floorboard creaks upstairs. Just one. Like a whisper in the bones of the house.
I bolt. Guns up, breath sharp, blood roaring in my ears. I take the stairs two at a time, vision tunneling. My boots thud against the wood—heartbeat, thunder, war.
And that’s when the shot cracks out of nowhere. A whipcrack of agony.
It tears through my side just beneath my ribs—burning, violent, unforgiving. The impact sends me sideways into the railing. My gun hits the wall with a thunk.
I taste copper immediately. The inside of my mouth floods with it. I stagger. Legs wobble. Shoulder slams the banister. Black spots flicker at the edges of my vision.
Breathe, Kanyan. Fucking breathe.
The pain’s white-hot, slicing clean through sinew and bone, but I lock my jaw and keep moving. One hand clamped over the wound, the other dragging my gun back into place.
That’s when I see the bastard who shot me at the top of the stairs.
He steps out from the shadows like he’s on stage—tall, calm, cocky. A thin smirk plays over his face like he’s already won.
He raises his weapon—slow, precise. He wants to savor this. But fate’s not on his side today.
Click. His gun jams. He’s out of bullets. And his face—thepanic that replaces that arrogance? That’s the last good thing he’ll ever feel.
I shoot him in the thigh. Crack. He drops with a howl. I shoot the other leg for balance. Crack. He collapses fully, blood spurting, hands scrabbling at the floor.
I’m already charging. Blood leaking from my own side. Rage turning everything red. I drive my shoulder into his chest with the full force of fury and gravity behind me. We crash together, bodies slamming to the floor so hard the boards groan.
His ribs crack beneath me—one, two, I stop counting. But I’m not done. Not even close. I climb over him, straddling his chest. He’s gasping now. Trying to crawl. I grab his hair. Slam his head into the floor.
Once. He screams. Twice.
Something breaks. Three times. His face starts to split. I keep going. Over and over until there’s no face left to recognize—just bone and pulp and the sick sound of wet meat against wood. Only then do I stop. Only then do I push off the ruin of him, panting, sweat and blood coating my skin like warpaint.
And only then do I look up—and see Jayson.
He staggers down the hall, shirt torn and soaked in blood. His jaw is split, nose bleeding, and one eye’s nearly swollen shut. But he’s alive. He’s breathing. He’s upright. His grip on his weapons is still solid. Gun in one hand. Knife in the other. He’s every inch the soldier I built.
Our eyes lock across the destruction. For half a heartbeat, time stops. I feel the floor sway beneath me, not from weakness, but from the sheer weight of relief that slams through me like a freight train.
He grins, teeth bloody and eyes alight with that familiar Moreno family defiance.
“Took you long enough,” he rasps, voice gravel and fire.
I don’t waste my breath on a reply. Because behind him, ashadow moves. A soldier, creeping from the far room, blade in hand, steps silent—but not silent enough.
I raise my gun. Bang. The man drops mid-lunge, skull detonated into the wall. Blood splashes across the white trim like punctuation.
