Page 13 of Jayson
She stops just short of the bars and studies me. No words. Just a long, patient look that makes me feel like I’ve already said too much without so much as uttering a word.
Her silver hair is pulled into a perfect twist at the back of her head. Her clothes are simple but elegant—tailored slacks, a silk blouse, and a heavy black shawl. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think she’s on her way to hosting a high tea, but instead, she’s looming over a basement prison.
She lifts her cane and slides a plastic bottle of water through the gap between two bars. It clunks against the floor at my feet.
“I assume you’re thirsty,” she says, voice low and calm. “You’ve been down here a while.”
I hesitate. But my throat is fire. Every swallow scrapes like glass. I reach down, crack open the bottle, and drink. The water scalds on the way down, even though I know it’s cold. My body may have forgotten how to accept anything kind.
She pulls a chair close and eases into it with slow grace, setting the cane across her knees. Her hands fold over the handle like it’s a throne she rules from. And then she waits. Like this is some kind of game she always wins.
“Who are you?” she asks at last, her voice low, measured. “And how do you know my grandson?”
“Grandson?”
“Jayson.”
The name stills me—Jayson.
I hadn’t known it until now. But somehow, it fits. Sharp. Quiet. Final. Like a blade sliding into place.
I don’t answer.
He hasn’t killed me. Not yet. That has to mean something. Doesn’t it?
I don’t know the rules of this place—of him—and I’m not about to hand this woman ammunition that might shift the balance. Maybe she’s kind. Maybe she’s not. Maybe she’s another mask this house wears to keep me docile before it swallows me whole.
My pulse is still erratic, my skin cold, my hands curled in tight, useless fists.
I don’t speak. Not out of defiance, but out of survival. Because I don’t know how any of this ends.
The silence between us stretches thin as wire. The old woman doesn’t fidget or clear her throat—she simply waits, cane planted like a sceptre, gaze tuned to every tremor in my hands. The cell’s low light leaks across her pearls, igniting small, cold stars against her throat.
I’m not ready to die with the wrong words in my mouth.
At my silence, she tips her head, a bird of prey measuring distance.
“You’re younger than I expected.”
“And you’re nosier than I expected.”
A thin smile curves her painted lips—graceful, precise, utterly devoid of warmth. “I’m old, child. I earned the right to be nosy, back when men still thought curiosity was a sin in women.”
She isn’t wrong. Her posture alone could shame granite. High cheekbones, perfectly drawn lipstick, pearl earrings thatcatch the dim light like frost. She looks forged, not born—tempered by decades of storms that never quite broke her.
“I suppose you have,” I concede, softer now. Argue with steel, you’ll just dull your blade.
Her eyes narrow a fraction. That minuscule shift feels like a door locking behind me.
Silence folds around us, taut as a wire under slow tension. Somewhere in the bones of the house a pipe knocks, like the mansion is clearing its throat.
The old woman lifts a finger and traces a line along the rusted bar—testing the strength, maybe deciding if the cage is for me or for the monster who put me here. “He hasn’t told you who he is, has he?”
I shake my head, unsure if it’s safer to appear ignorant or perceptive.
“He would call that prudence,” she murmurs, mostly to herself. “I call it cowardice.”
Something flickers across her face—pride, regret, it’s hard to tell—before she smooths it away. “My grandson was raised in this house. I left for Italy when he was sixteen, but came back a year later.”
