Page 32 of Jayson
“I told you I’m not here to talk about the past,” I mutter.
Her laugh is low, bitter. “Aren’t you? You’ve been gone ten years, hiding from your own blood like it might infect you. You’d rather sulk in the shadows and pretend you’re nothing like him.”
“I’mnotlike him.”
“Youarehim,” she snaps. “And you’re me. And every ruthless bastard that ever sat at the head of this family. But you don’t have to be like him to take your place.”
I shake my head. “You don’t get it.”
“No,youdon’t get it,” she spits. “This house, this legacy, this family—it’s all slipping through my fingers because you’re too busy clinging to ghosts that already bled this place dry. Your father’s gone, Jayson. It’s time for you to step up and take your place.”
I swallow hard, but the lump in my throat won’t budge.
“You think I came back here because I care about this fucking house?” I say, voice low. “I came back because a job went sideways. Because a girl I wasn’t supposed to see was standing in a hallway she shouldn’t have been in.”
Her eyes soften. Slightly. But they don’t lose their grip.
“No, you came back because something in youwantedto,” she says. “Maybe it was guilt. Maybe it was your need for closure. But you’re back, and that’s the only thing that matters.”
She stands, slow. Crosses the room until she’s in front of me.
“You’re my only living blood,” she says, voice quieter now. “Everything your ancestors built—good and bad—is going to disappear if you don’t step up and decide what kind of man you want to be.”
“I’ve already made my decision,” I whisper.
“Have you?” she asks, tilting her head. “Because from where I’m standing, you’re still that boy in the hallway. The one who saw too much, felt too much, and never figured out what to do with it. You’re still that same boy, carrying all that grief and guilt.”
My chest tightens. I stare at the fire, not her. And all I can think of is Keira. Her silence. Her steel. Her eyes, haunted and haunting. It was like looking in a mirror and seeing my own reflection.What are you hiding, Keira Bishop?
My grandmother sighs, then lays a hand on my shoulder. Warm. Steady. The way she used to hold me when I was a child.
“You don’t have to be your father, Jayson. But youdohave to be someone. Decide who that is. Before someone else does it for you.”
And then she’s gone. Back into the shadows. Back into the bones of this house that never let go of anything without a fight.
I stay behind, alone. Burning. Bleeding. Trying not to hear that voice again—the one that keeps echoing from the basement floor.
15
KEIRA
The tea is warm in my hands, sweetened just enough to chase away the bitterness of being held in a place where freedom feels like a memory I can’t quite touch.
Nina smuggled me out of the basement and served me tea like it was contraband—still steaming, the smell alone making my throat ache with longing. When she handed me the delicate porcelain cup, she leaned in close and winked, her voice a whisper soaked in mischief.
“Against the rules,” she said, as if breaking them was a pastime she refused to outgrow.
And in that moment, I saw it.
Not the age in her hands, or the careful grace in the way she moved—but something sharper. Livelier. A flicker of rebellion dancing just behind her eyes.
She might have decades on me, but I get the distinct feeling that Nina could run circles around the youngest of us. That she’d out-joke a teenager, out-scheme a con artist, and still have time left over to steal the last cookie from the jar without ever getting caught.
There’s a wildness in her that hasn’t dulled. A spark that makes me think she was the kind of girl who climbed rooftops in her Sunday best and smiled while setting the world on fire.
And now? Now she’s sipping tea with a prisoner like it’s the most natural thing in the world.
Like she knows just how to slip past locked doors—and hearts—with a smirk and a story.
