Page 152 of Jayson
The estate will be unlivable for six months. Maybe longer.
So we’re staying at the waterfront loft—open plan, exposed brick, the kind of place with too much light and not enough corners to hide in. It feels strange at first. Like we’re trespassing in someone else’s calm.
But Keira fills it quickly. Her books on every surface. Law school notes spread across the dining table. Fresh flowers in a cracked vase we found at a weekend market. Laughter where silence used to sit like smoke.
At night, she pulls me to the balcony, wraps herself aroundme like armor, and points out stars I never cared to learn before her.
“This one’s called Lyra,” she whispers against my throat. “It’s the harp.”
“Sounds fragile.”
“It’s not,” she says. “The strings are made of fire.”
I look around now—at this temporary peace, this pause between what was and what we’re building—and for the first time in my life, I don’t feel restless. I feel rooted. And the thing about roots? They grow deeper when the earth is scorched.
The libraryin our new house smells like possibility.
Ink. Aged oak. That faint trace of cedar that clings to me no matter how many suits I go through. Morning sunlight filters in through the arched windows, casting honey-gold stripes across the desk where Keira’s law school applications are stacked in near-perfect alignment. The name at the top?
Keira Victoria Northwood.
Keira Bishop no longer exists—not on record, not in the world that almost destroyed her. The new name is hers by choice.Northwood—woven from my mother’s maiden name and the future we fought for with blood and grit and bone.
She thinks I haven’t noticed how her shoulders square every time she signs it. But I do. I see the way she presses into each letter like she’s exorcising the past with a pen.
Watching her rebuild is addictive, and half the time I feel like a man eavesdropping on a sunrise.
Lucky and Kanyan want me as liaison—bridging our Enforcer network with the legal shipping empire my grandmother mothballed decades ago. Two rivers finally meeting: legitimate revenue by day, clandestine muscle by night.
And if I steer it right, we’ll fund shelters, scholarships, and survivor resources in the daylight—while kneecapping traffickers in the shadows.
It’s the first time I’ve ever looked at power and seen something good reflected back.
I tell Keira all of it when we crawl back into bed after lunch, tangled up in sunlight and linen. She’s still warm from the shower, her limbs wrapped around me like they’ve finally found somewhere to rest. She traces soft circles on my chest, listening with that quiet fire in her eyes.
“You could be the first benevolent crime lord since Robin Hood,” she teases.
“Robin Hood was an outlaw.”
“So are you.” She leans forward and presses a kiss to the scar above my eye. “Outlaws make the best reforms.”
“Think the board of directors will agree?”
“Let them disagree. Scar will glare. Saxon will grumble. Lucky will negotiate. And you’ll do what’s right anyway.”
Her faith in me burns hotter than any bullet ever fired at my chest.
I brush a lock of hair behind her ear. “You okay?”
She doesn’t lie. She never does.
“I will be,” she says.
And in that answer lives a whole cathedral of progress.
We make love with the curtains half-open, wrapped in golden light and soft sighs. No rush. No desperation. Just something sacred and slow. A conversation in the language we never needed words for.
Her nails rake across the scars life carved into me. My hands find new strength in the curve of her hips. And when she falls apart in my arms, she whispers my name like a secret that’s finally safe to say out loud.
