Page 24 of Jayson
“You abuse my kindness, so you get chained again, Keira.” I descend, every step echoing with her ragged breathing and my father’s ghost laughing in the rafters.Witnesses aren’t people. Remove problems.I tighten my hold until my biceps ache—because if I listen to that voice now, I’ll snap her neck before we reach the basement.
The cellar door yawns open—damp air, the tang of bleach from earlier promises. I set her on her feet; she staggers, catches the wall. I flick on the bare bulb. It buzzes like an angry hive.
She backs toward the bench. “What now?”
“You tell me, Keira.” I lock the cell door—metal grinding into metal. “Try that window trick again and I’ll board it shut.”
Her jaw trembles but she doesn’t break. “What if I need the bathroom?”
“You get ten minutes every six hours. Scream if it’s urgent—I’ll decide how urgent.” I turn to leave, pause with my hand on the knob. “And Bishop?”
She meets my eyes—defiant, terrified.
“Don’t tempt me. I’m more than happy to tie you up to a chair.”
I kill the light, shut the door, twist both locks. Her silence on the other side feels like a live wire humming in the dark.
Back up the stairwell, heartbeat still a hammer. Nina’s silhouette waits at the top—unmoving.
“You going to chain her?” she asks.
“Only if she makes me.”
“She already has,” Nina says, tapping her cane twice before turning away. “You just haven’t felt the weight yet.”
Her steps fade into the corridor; the house settles, creaking like an old lung filling with dusk. I lean against the wall—sweat cooling, muscles shaking—and finally feel it:
The chain’s already looped around my throat.
And I cinched it myself.
12
KEIRA
There are more monsters in this world than fairy-tales like to admit. There are the obvious ones—fangs bared, intentions loud as a snarl. There are the hidden ones—claws tucked behind silk and smiles. And there are the intimate ones—the ones who cradle you close, whisper they love you, and still leave bruises no one else can see. I’ve met all three.
Monsters weren’t under my bed; they sat at the head of the dinner table. “Home” was a gilded cage, and my father its temperamental warden. His power wasn’t the steady kind that shields and anchors; it was storm-power—thunderous, unpredictable, ice-cold once the wreckage settled.
Some rational corner of me always recognized the danger, but the child in me refused to believe the monster wore my father’s face.
So when Jayson Caluna’s bullets blossomed dark and final through my father’s body, it wasn’t shock that stole my breath. It was relief—sharp, silent, immediate. Every lie shattered at once, and truth flooded in.
Relief that the reckoning had arrived. Guilt that some savage part of me believed he’d earned it.
Now I sit on a rust-smelling bench, ankle throbbing from my failed dash through the pines. Those frantic minutes bought me a sprain, a locked door, and Jayson’s promise that the next window will be boarded shut.
Jayson isn’t my father—yet he’s no savior. Where the mayor was fire, Jayson is ice; where the old man was thunder, Jayson is silence humming like a live current. And inside that controlled stillness, I sense something fractured—something uncomfortably familiar. Monsters, I’m learning, are not always threats; sometimes they’re mirrors of your own true self.
I can’t decide which ache is worse—the father I lost, or the father I never truly had. I left for college to rewrite my life, convinced distance would be salvation. Fate laughed: escape one monster, collide with another.
My name is already inked on the final page of this story; whether I end as victim, accomplice, or witness depends on what I do next. I haven’t cried. I haven’t begged. I watched my father die and felt nothing but a hollow, echoing relief.
What does that make me?
Perhaps redemption is a bedtime story for the guilty. Perhaps some of us are built for shadow, destined to linger on the edge of the light—where monsters lay down their weary bones. It looks like hell, yet feels disturbingly like home.
My ankle swells, my escape route’s sealed, and Jayson will count every breath I take. So I breathe. I plan. I wait. Survival is still mine to choose—whether I crawl out of this darkness, or learn to own every jagged edge I inherited.
