Page 23 of Jayson
“I trusted you not to run.”
“You told me ten minutes,” I shoot back. “I took them.”
Something in his gaze cracks, but it’s not mercy. It’s more like darkness. “You’re bleeding.”
“Careful, or I’ll think you actually give a damn.”
Wrong answer. He hauls me off the tree, spins me; my back slams his chest, his arm locking around my waist like iron. I kick, but the bad ankle folds and the world tilts. He catches the fall, one hand gripping my thigh just above the bruise, mouth at my ear, his breath fire against my skin.
“You want out?” he growls. “Fine. Next time jump higher—because the ground won’t be what kills you.Iwill.”
I shudder—hate, fear, something warm and liquid. He feels it, tightens his hold.
Then he lifts—effortless—and carries me back toward the house, my fists pounding uselessly at his arms, the forest closing behind us like a grave.
“Let me go!” I hiss.
“Not a chance in hell,” he answers, voice low.
“What are you going to do to me?”
He doesn’t reply. He just stalks towards the house. Each step is a verdict: I didn’t make it far enough. And next time, if thereisa next time, there’ll be no mercy on this earth that could save me from his wrath.
11
JAYSON
The front door slams behind us—oak and iron shaking the frame like it wants to splinter under the rage riding my pulse. Keira’s struggling, one hand fisted in the collar of my hoodie, but her ankle’s shot and her weight is nothing in my arms. Gravel still clings to the soles of my boots; it scatters across the foyer as I cross the threshold.
Nina’s cane taps once—twice—across hardwood. She glides from the corridor, sharp as a guillotine’s edge, silver hair coiled severe.
Her gaze spears the girl first—mud-smeared face, torn sweatpants, blood on her socks—then lifts to me. “You found your little runaway.”
“Didn’t have to look far.” I tighten my grip when Keira tries to twist free. “She made it thirty meters into the pines.”
Nina’s mouth thins. “And you let her jump from a second-floor window on that ankle?”
“Wasn’t my idea.” My voice sounds like gravel. “She wanted freedom. Gravity gave her the receipt.”
Keira hisses something vile under her breath. I ignore it. Nina doesn’t.
“Child,” Nina says, cane tip angling toward Keira like a bayonet, “you won’t outpace him while you bleed. Save your strength for battles you can win.”
Keira stares—pride and fear at war in her eyes—but she quiets.
Nina turns to me. “You going to keep patching holes after she tears them, or will you secure the seam?”
The words land heavy—loose thread, again. “I’m taking her downstairs.”
“Then take advice with you,” she says, voice low but lethal. “Pain bends faster than kindness, but kindness holds longer once you’ve bent the mind.” Her cane cracks once on the hardwood. “Don’t break what you still need.”
The warning sours in my gut. I nod—too slight to be respect, too obvious to be defiance—then shoulder past her, carrying Keira toward the old service stairs.
She goes rigid when we hit the first landing. “Put me down.”
“Not happening.”
“You’re hurting me.”
