Page 3 of Jayson
If I go, I won’t leave. I know that about myself. I’ll sit down and rest between their graves and hope someone puts a bullet in me before the guilt does. Because I should’ve died too.
Everyone says I was lucky. But luck doesn’t feel like waking up in a hospital alone. It doesn’t feel like digging your nails into your arms every time you smile, just to punish yourself for feeling anything but grief.
And that’s the truth I’ll never say out loud:
I don’t survive things. I outlive them.
That’s not the same. Not when the silence in my chest grows louder every year. Not when the weight never goes away.
The elevator dings. I step out into the lobby level, shoving the memories back into the box I’ve been sealing shut for over a decade.
It’s a box with no lock. Just a quiet promise:not today.
I’ve got a job to do. And guilt doesn’t belong on the trigger.
But as I step out into the rain-soaked street, a whisper of my sister’s laugh clings to me like smoke.
And that tiny crack? It’s still there. Growing.
I walk with my hands in my pockets and my head down, rain sliding off my shoulders like it doesn’t dare touch me. I make itfive blocks before I stop. Just for a second. Just long enough to catch my reflection in a darkened shop window.
Not the man they say I am. Not the killer Dante Accardi handpicked. Not the soldier Mason trusts to handle the ugly work. Just… me. Eyes too old for my face. A mouth that forgot how to smile. And a scar above my left brow that Lila used to call my “thinking line.” Said it made me look serious. Said one day, I’d rule the world with it.
I press my palm to the glass like I could reach through it and pull back the boy I used to be. But there’s no boy left. Just bone and blood and the man I’ve become.
And still, I hear her.
Not the scream. Nor the silence after.
The laugh. That wicked, beautiful, too-loud laugh. The one that used to make my mother’s shoulders shake with joy. The one I thought I’d carry with me like a shield. Now it follows me like a ghost.
What would she think of me now?
What would she say, seeing her big brother with blood on his hands and nothing in his eyes? Would she still laugh? Would she run?
I step away from the glass before the ache crawls higher, before it gets dangerous. I’ve let it in too far already.
The phone in my pocket buzzes.
One word:
Ready?
I type back:
Always.
But it’s a lie. Because I’ll never outrun the truth. I wassupposed to die that day. They were supposed to live. And now? I kill so I don’t have to feel. But tonight—as I disappear into the rain with a pistol and a purpose—I can’t shake it. The sound of her laugh. The warmth I’ll never feel again. The weight of surviving something you didn’t deserve to walk away from. And the terrible, gut-twisting fear that maybe...Just maybe... That crack inside me? Isn't a break at all. Maybe it’s the start of something worse.
The part of me that wants to be human again.
2
JAYSON
Ifind Ghost downstairs, leaning casually against the black SUV like he doesn’t have a care in the world. Which, truth be told, he probably doesn’t. I mean, it’s not every day that a man gets a do over.
He’s wearing a black hoodie that covers his head and rides low over his brows. His jeans are loose fit but look like they were tailor made for him. His thing is steel-toed boots; in all the weeks I’ve known him, I’ve never seen his feet in anything but a pair of steel-toed boots.
