Page 9 of Jax
She wasn’t meant for this.
She wasn’t meant for men like him.
My voice shook when it came. “How dare you drag her into this?”
“Youdragged her into this,” he replied, a slight edge to his voice now. “When you didn’t do as you were told. When you made uswait.”
The scream didn’t come out. It stayed lodged in my chest, heat and grief twisted into something dense enough to bruise from the inside. My knees buckled. I slid down the wall, folding hard onto the floor, arms cinched tight around my ribs, forehead to knees, shaking so violently my teeth clicked.
Violet.
Violet was gone.
Because of me.
The tears came quietly, hot and sudden, dripping onto my hands before I even registered them. They cut tracks down my face like shame with edges, raw and undeserved and real. I buried my face in my sleeve, willing myself to hold it together.
But nothing inside me was listening.
“She doesn’t know anything,” I rasped finally. “She’s just a kid. She’s not involved.”
“She’s insurance,” he said simply. “A guarantee that you’ll follow through.”
I curled tighter on the floor, cheek to cold concrete, breath stuttering like my lungs had lost the pattern.Differentechoed through me like a slow, dull blade.
“I see you’re beginning to understand. Good. Now, I understand that your new task is going to take time,” he continued. “But don’t take too long. The Dom Krovi’s patience has its limits. And we’d hate for anything to happen to your sister.”
I lifted my head just enough to whisper, “What do you want me to do?”
“For now, exactly what they tell you. And then, when you get an opportunity, you simply leave, and come back to your house. We’ll be watching for your return.”
The words hit harder than they should have, not a command, but a trap. A test. They didn’t want obedience. They wanted a performance. Camouflage. A trust I’d earn, only to turn on the ones who gave that trust. And if I mis-stepped, if I failed….
“Okay, I’ll do it,” I said. “Just don’t touch her.”
“That’s what we like to hear.”
Static hissed in my ear like a laugh.
And in that moment, I understood something brutal and irreversible. I had just become something dangerous, not because I wanted to, but because I had to. By blood. By fear. I would destroy anyone I had to if it meant getting her back.
Even if it meant becoming the thing I hated.
“It’s probably going to be somewhere isolated,” he continued, like reading from a report. “Tucked away. A cabin, maybe. Or a small compound. It will probably have a fence and a few cameras, the kind of protections that look impressive but aren’t. They won’t expect trouble from you. It shouldn’t be too hard to slip away once you know the place.”
He paused, not to give me space to respond, but to control the rhythm, to remind me that the pace belonged to him.
“Probably some old security guard posted out front,” he added offhandedly. “The kind more focused on his crossword than the perimeter. You’ll find your opening. Just don’t wait too long.”
Panic gripped my heart even tighter as he said that last line. The threat was clear as crystal. They wouldn’t keep Violet as their ‘guest’ indefinitely. The clock was ticking.
“I assume you understand what happens if you tell the detective about our little conversation here,” he said, his voice dipping into velvet, polished and unyielding. “Or if you forget your instructions. If youdisobey.”
He didn’t say her name again. He didn’t need to.
Then the line went dead. No click, no final threat, just silence, clean and deliberate, like the closing of a surgical incision. And it was worse than anything he could’ve said. The silence reverberated inside the room like a heatwave rising from scorched pavement. It didn’t feel like safety. It felt like abandonment. And I wasn’t sure which one hurt more.
I stayed on the floor, unmoving, eyes open but unfocused. The tears had dried, but the ache hadn’t eased. I wasn’t crying anymore, because I’d passed through grief and landed somewhere deeper. I wasn’t shattered. I was being scraped clean from the inside out, made hollow for whatever they meant to put in me next.
