Page 50 of Jayson
When we pull up to the estate, the air feels heavier than it did when we left. Night’s settled over the grounds like a warning. I kill the engine, step out, and walk around to open her door. She doesn’t thank me. She just steps out, spine straight, chin high, like I haven’t already broken her world in half.
I lead her inside, past the echo of silence that coats the floorboards, and head toward the staircase. She follows… until she doesn’t. Two steps up, she freezes.
“Where are we going?” Her voice isn’t fearful. Just suspicious. Defiant. Like she’s already bracing for the next battle.
I don’t break stride. “I’ll show you to your room.”
Her eyes narrow, brows lifting. “Oh? I get my own room now?”
The sarcasm is razor-edged, but I don’t flinch. I’ve bled too many times in my life to let words hurt me.
I sigh, sharp and short, more warning than exhale. “I don’t have time for this, Keira. I’ve got work to do.”
She blinks, brows ticking higher—not with snark this time, but something closer to disbelief. She glances toward the windows. The sky’s ink-dark now, stars just starting to peek through the clouds. She knows. She knows the kind of work that only happens at night. The kind that stains your hands, your soul, your goddamn name.
She lingers there, in the foyer, her gaze dragging over the high ceilings, the columns, the ornate banister like she’s just now realizing the scale of the monster she’s married.
“What is it exactly that you do for work?” she asks, voice light, but there’s nothing casual in the way she tilts her head, as though genuinely curious. “Is that how you paid for this castle?”
I turn toward her slowly. Purposefully. Every inch of the movement is a warning. She’s testing me—again. Probing at the edges, looking for soft spots in the armor I never take off. She wants to know how far she can push, how close she can get before I push back.
I step into her space—close enough that she can feel the shift in the air. That drop in temperature that comes right before something breaks. She thinks I’m like the world she left behind. I’m not.
This house, these walls, this life—it’s built on blood and silence and bones buried so deep no one remembers theirnames anymore. She doesn’t belong here. But that’s the thing about cages—they’re only as strong as the souls they’re holding.
My eyes drag over her face, daring her to say something else. Daring her to keep poking the monster she now shares a last name with.
But before the words leave my mouth, the sound of a cane tapping across the floorboards cuts through the moment—sharp, steady, impossible to ignore.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
My grandmother’s presence hits the room like a raging storm.
We both turn instinctively, like children caught too close to the fire. And there she is—dripping elegance and danger in equal parts. Her silver hair swept into a severe twist, her cane carved from ivory and polished to a lethal gleam.
Her eyes—sharp as broken glass—land on Keira.
“No,” she says, her voice low, clipped, regal. “Ipaid for this castle, Keira.”
She pauses at the base of the stairs, the floorboards catching the soft thud of her cane as she plants it once more.
“And Jayson,” she continues, her gaze slicing to me, “inherited it. Along with all the ghosts that live here.”
Her words hang in the air like smoke—elegant, suffocating, inescapable.
And Keira? She’s smart enough not to reply. But I can see it in her eyes. She just realized this house doesn’t have a heart. It has a throne.
22
KEIRA
The room is too quiet. Like it’s waiting for something to wake up. Devoid of life, devoid of soul. It’s clean and well kept, but the ice floating on the air tells me this room hasn’t been lived in for years.
I step inside, and the door clicks shut behind me. The sound ricochets through my spine like a gunshot, sharp and final. This is my new cage—polished wood, heavy drapes, antique furniture that holds a wealth of history and not much else. I half expect a ghost to whisper my name from the wardrobe.
Jayson called it a “guest room,” but nothing about it feels welcoming. It feels lonely, empty. The bed is dark mahogany with clawed feet and a high headboard that towers against the wall. Two velvet pillows sit perfectly aligned—crimson against black. They’re beautiful, but they remind me of bloodstains on satin.
I hover near the edge of the bed like I’m afraid it might bite. The covers are tucked so perfectly, the pillows fluffed like they’re guarding some secret. I don’t want to sit—don’t want to crease the smooth surface or leave a mark that saysI was here. It feels wrong to touch something so perfectly untouched.
