Page 141 of Jayson
I haul him upright, shove him into a wooden chair, and slap zip ties tight around his wrists. He groans. I spit in his face.
“You’re going to tell me what you did,” I whisper, leaning close, voice shaking with fury. “To the girls. To Keira.”
I pull the plastic tighter, making sure it digs into raw skin.
“And I promise you this?—”
I slam my boot into the base of the chair, anchoring it.
“—before this is over, you’ll beg me to finish it.”
He laughs through broken teeth, mouth dripping blood. “And you think the people I work for will let you walk away from this?”
Scar steps up behind me, cold and steady. He leans in just enough for Maddox to feel the heat of his breath on his ear.
“Best pray they don’t,” Scar murmurs. “Because we’re not done yet.”
We leave him tied to the chair, wrists zip-tied to the armrests, ankles strapped down with belts ripped from the dead. Blood pools beneath him, a sticky reminder of how this night ends. Shards of glass glitter across the floor, catching firelight like tinydaggers. Around him, bodies lie cooling—silent witnesses to our kind of justice.
Maddox shifts, groaning low, head lolling forward like it’s too heavy to lift. His breathing is ragged, sharp and uneven. Every exhale sounds like it costs him something.
Scar kicks one of the corpses aside and tosses a match into the hearth. The fire catches instantly. Flames bloom up the chimney, crackling to life, licking shadows across the cabin walls. The smoke curls sweet and thick—wood and blood and bourbon and fear.
No one speaks.
The only sound is Maddox, wheezing and shivering, trying to hold on to the last scraps of his arrogance.
I turn to Kanyan.
He’s standing by the window, staring out at the tree line like he can already see the next step.
“Where do we take him?” I ask.
He doesn’t answer right away. Just breathes—slow, controlled, like he’s tasting the weight of every consequence.
Then he turns, meets my eyes.
“Somewhere no one will hear him scream,” he says.
54
JAYSON
We rigged the pool two hours ago.
But it’s not for swimming. Not for therapy. Not to wash away sins. This water won’t cleanse. It will drag the truth out by its hair and make it scream.
The ferris wheel cabin came from an old amusement park Lucky found, half-swallowed by vines and time. He said it felt poetic—something that once brought joy, now rusted out and ready to break.
The metal groaned as we hauled it into the loading bay. It took hours to retrofit—reinforce the doors, seal the gaps, install the winch system. I welded the bolts myself, grinding sparks off steel with hands that needed to hurt.
We tested the tilt. We tested the descent. We made sure it could go under—and stay there.
It’s perfect now. A rusted confession box with no priest. Maddox sits in the center of it, shackled and slumped, wrists zip-tied to the bars.
Blood clots at his temple. His white shirt is soaked with sweat and dirt, half torn open. His feet are bare. He looks smallinside the cage now, despite the arrogance still clinging to him like a destructive scent.
But fear is creeping in. I can see it—just behind his eyes.
