Page 144 of Jayson
I fee rage. Horror. Bone-deep sorrow. All of it suspended in the air like the cage itself.
Scar turns his face away.
Mason lowers his eyes.
Kanyan’s knuckles are white on the lever.
My heart is thunder. My hands shake. My throat burns.
But I need the rest.
“And Keira?” I manage to ask. My voice is brittle, splintered glass holding back a scream.
“She saw.”
Those two words gut me more than any blade.
“She stumbled out of the room. I don’t think she even understood what she was seeing. She kept saying her head hurt, that the lights were too bright. Crying. Asking where Riley went.”
He pauses. Looks sick now. Looks somehow human. When he’s anything but.
“But she was too out of it. She couldn’t connect the dots. So we gave her another dose. Stronger this time. Buried her under it. Thought it would fade like everything else.” His eyes close. “She did forget.”
The weight of it presses into my chest until I can barely breathe. The kind of hurt that breaks a man from the inside out.
“You tried to take her,” I hiss, knowing with everything in me that it was him. “You fucking detestable…”
Saxon yanks me back by the collar just as I lunge, the move so fast it chokes off my next breath. I stagger, rage boiling over, but before I can recover, Scar steps in—broad shoulders blocking my path like a goddamn wall of concrete.
His stare is cold. Calculated. A silent warning carved in steel:don’t be a fucking idiot.
We need Maddox breathing. We need him talking. And as much as every part of me wants to crush his skull into the floorand watch the light drain from his eyes, Scar’s right—vengeance can wait.
But answers can’t.
“What did you do with Riley Kincaid’s body?” Kanyan asks.
“We buried her under a new church site downtown. New foundation was being poured. It was easy enough to slide her in before the concrete set.”
No one breathes.
“The site was sealed. No one ever looked.”
I want to throw up. I want to tear the cage apart and feed him to the chlorine. I want to go back in time and save that girl before her last breath was smothered under a coward’s hand.
I force the words out. “And Bishop?”
Maddox exhales. “Gone. He disappeared the moment Keira started remembering. She asked him about that night. She was putting things together, talking about voices she’d heard. He knew she was close. So he ran.”
“And you?” My voice is ice. “You ordered the hit.”
He nods, slow. “I had to. If she remembers everything—if she talks—it’s not just me. It’sall of us.”
I step back. The pool reflects across my boots like moonlight over a grave.
“You killed her once,” I say. “Drugged her. Broke her. Left her gasping in a memory you buried her in.”
I look up at him—and I don’t see a man. I see the kind of monster who struts into courtrooms in tailored suits, smiles for the cameras, and walks out clean, untouched, and smirking.
