Page 107 of Jayson
Their eyes shift back to me.
No one speaks, but the silence is thick with memory—that night, the choice I made, the body I disposed of. We don’t name it, but we all know that’s the reason we’re here now. That one bloody, irreversible act set this all in motion. And none of us can pretend otherwise.
If Keira hadn’t walked through that bedroom door that night—haunted eyes, unaware of how close the blade had come—this conversation wouldn’t exist. We wouldn’t be sitting here dissecting her past, her safety, her fucking future.
Richard Maddox wouldn’t even be a name on our radar.
And Keira Bishop? She’d be a corpse. Another girl on a slab in a county morgue. Another forgotten daughter whose death would’ve been swept under headlines and bureaucracy. Two lines in a local paper.Tragic loss of former mayor’s daughter. Suspected overdose.A quiet funeral. A grieving city that would’ve moved on by Monday.
And me? I wouldn’t have thought twice. Because I didn’t know her. Not then. Not the shape of her mouth when she smiles. Not the way her voice cracks when she remembers things she shouldn’t. Not the scars she carries under her skin—old bruises and silence.
And the thought of that—that there’s a version of this worldwhere she dies anonymously, and I never even know her name? It fucking destroys me. Because now I do know her.
And I know what men like Maddox are capable of. I know what kind of monsters protect their secrets with the bones of girls like Keira. I don’t know how long he’s been plotting Simon Bishop’s demise, but I know how calculated this has all been. He didn’t just want Bishop gone. He wanted his bloodline erased.
And Keira was supposed to be collateral. Now she’s the last piece left standing.
That’s what’s written across the glances they throw me.
They’re not just looking for answers. They’re asking a question I haven’t spoken aloud—not even to myself. How much does she really know? And how far am I willing to go to keep her alive?
I clench my fists in my pockets, feel my pulse drum through my knuckles. The answer isn’t complicated. It’s already carved into the way I breathe.
Farther than anyone expects.
Far enough that I won’t survive it, if she doesn’t.
I drag my gaze back to Lucky. “Spit it out. What are you not telling us?”
He nods, as if expecting that.
“Bishop and Maddox were deep in each other’s pockets. Financially. Politically. Criminally. But when Bishop lost his mayoral seat, Maddox disappeared. Not out of loyalty. Not out of fear of public backlash. No, he vanished because whispers were starting to surface.”
“Aviary,” Mason says, a growl under his breath.
Lucky nods. “Exactly. There were rumors—loose threads pointing to Maddox and his association with the Aviary. He buried them fast. Had them scrubbed, sealed, silenced. But the stain was still there. And Bishop knew everything.”
“So all this time,” Mason growls, voice low and tight, “wethought Mayor Bishop was the final link. The last piece of the Aviary’s puzzle.” His jaw flexes, the muscle ticking as if it might snap. “But he wasn’t. There are others.”
He leans forward, elbows on his knees, fists clenched so hard his knuckles crack. “There’s more. There’s always more.” The words come out like broken glass, like they’re carving a deeper hole in his chest. “We burned him down thinking we’d ended it—but we were just scratching the surface, weren’t we?”
“It was never going to be that easy,” I whisper.
Kanyan’s voice drops. “If Maddox wanted to protect himself, he couldn’t let Bishop live long. History or not, that kind of liability gets erased.”
“Aha,” Lucky says, lips curling in satisfaction. “The Jekyll traced massive payments into Bishop’s private accounts. Not government money. Not campaign funds. Personal. Recent. As recent as a month ago.”
“Blackmail,” Scar says flatly.
“Exactly,” Lucky agrees. “Bishop had leverage. But whatever it was… it was enough to make a man like Richard Maddox—Police Commissioner of this city—pay him to keep it buried.”
I speak then, voice low. Certain.
“And once Bishop stopped being useful, he became a threat.”
Kanyan finishes the thought. “Which means Maddox would have pulled the trigger, sooner or later.”
If we hadn’t;I think the words that are on everyone’s mind, but I don’t say them out loud.
