“Yo! Khai,” Jaxon calls out as soon as he spots me, a cigarette hanging loose between his lips. “What’s with the middle-of-the-night meeting?”
Keys barely looks up, just gives me a nod from behind his laptop. The glow from the screen casts harsh shadows across his face, hair falling into his eyes, beanie pulled low like armour. His fingers never stop moving.
“I’ve been thinking about the last job,” I say, pulling a cigarette from my pocket and lighting it with steady hands. The first drag burns pleasantly. Grounds me. “The target mentioned my father sent him to deliver some sensitive documents to a safety deposit box.”
Jaxon’s posture shifts immediately, interest sharpening his expression. “Yeah,” he says slowly. “The file he saw. Yours and your brother’s names. That date.”
Keys keeps typing.
“I need that file.” I inhale deeply, smoke filling my lungs, easing the tightness coiled around my ribs. “If my father had one of his own men put down just for seeing the front of it, then whatever’s inside has thepower to hurt him.” I pause, letting the implication settle. “Which means it’s something I was never meant to see. Something worth killing over.”
Jaxon studies me for a long moment, really looks at me this time. Then he straightens, all humour gone. “Keys,” he says sharply. “Find the safety deposit box. Location, bank, everything.”
Keys nods once, already moving faster.
“I’ll pull our guys,” Jaxon continues, exhaling smoke as he points to himself. “Once we’ve got a location, we’ll retrieve it.”
Then his attention snaps back to me.
His eyes narrow.
“What the fuck happened to you?” he asks, stepping closer, anger flaring hot and sudden.
I grit my teeth. “I missed a few calls from my father.”
That’s all it takes.
Jaxon drags a hand through his hair, taking a few slow breaths like, he’s holding himself back from tearing something apart. He’s known me, and Liam, most of his life. Closer than blood. The anger rolling off him is thick and violent.
“That fucking old prick,” he mutters. “He’ll get what’s coming to him.”
The words land with weight. With promise.
Keys keeps working, code flashing across the screen. Jaxon moves off to make calls, voices low and lethal. And I stay where I am, smoke curling from my lips as my mind spirals.
What’s in that file.
Why my father buried it.
Why my brother’s name is tied to it.
And why, after all this time, the truth is finally clawing its way back to the surface, bloody, inevitable, and long overdue.
Chapter Thirteen
Emmy
I wake too early.
Not gently,draggedup from sleep like my body knows something my mind hasn’t caught up to yet. It feels as though I haven’t slept at all, like the night never truly loosened its grip on me.
I roll onto my side and glance at the clock on the wall.
4:09 a.m.
Fuck.
I don’t need to be at work until eight. There’s no reason for my heart to be beating this fast, no reason for my skin to feel tight and restless. And yet,
