I step inside.
The smell hits first.
Blood, metallic and stale. Oil. Cold steel.
It settles into my lungs, familiar and wrong all at once.
I move quickly now, gun already in my hand, senses stretched tight as wire. Shadows cling to the walls. Every sound feels amplified, every breath borrowed.
Then I see him.
Jaxon is slumped in a metal chair at the centre of the space, wrists bound, ankles shackled, his body bearing the brutal evidence of myfather’s handiwork. His face is swollen, split open in places, dried blood painting him in dark strokes. Tape seals his mouth, cruel, unnecessary.
But his eyes lift the moment he hears me.
Sharp. Aware.
Alive.
Relief punches through me, fierce and fleeting, because if Jaxon is here, broken but breathing, then this was never the endgame.
It was only the misdirection.
And whatever my father truly wanted…
He’s already moved on to it.
I cross the space in seconds, tearing the tape from his mouth like it offends me by existing.
“Khai,” Jaxon rasps, the sound torn from a bruised throat. Urgent. Pained. Fear threaded through every breath. “This was a distraction.”
The words land heavier than any fist ever could.
My hands still as I cut through his restraints, my pulse roaring in my ears. “What do you mean?” I ask, though something dark has already begun to take shape in my gut.
He swallows hard, eyes locking onto mine. “He’s gone after her,” Jaxon says, breath laboured but relentless. “Your father. He lured her out.”
A beat.
“Hospital,” he adds. “ICU.”
The world fractures.
Because in that instant, I know, with bone-deep certainty, that while I was tearing through the city to save my brother…my best friend.
My father was closing his hands around the one thing I can’t afford to lose.
Something inside me splinters.
Not breaks,shatters.
The world lurches violently off its axis, and whatever restraint I had left disintegrates. I don’t remember deciding to move. I only remember the thunderous crack as my fist slams into a metal shelf, the shock vibrating up my arm. Then another blow. And another.
Glass explodes.
Steel screams.
A chair goes airborne, smashing uselessly against the wall.
