Keifer's pov
Jay went limp in my arms.
The world stopped. The shouting, the crashing of crates, the smell of gunpowder—it all faded into the background as I watched her eyes flutter shut.
Panic, cold and sharp, clawed at my chest. "Jay! Jay, look at me!" I choked out. Aries and Percy abandoned their fights, rushing over to form a protective circle around us, their faces pale with worry.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a flash of white. Elara didn't scream.
She didn't hesitate. She snatched the heavy metal rod Clyde had used and swung it back, her eyes fixed on his pathetic, sniveling face. She was going to end him right there.
BAM.
The gunshot echoed like a thunderclap in the enclosed space.
"Ouch," Elara hissed. It was the most emotion I'd ever heard from her. She stumbled back, the rod clattering to the floor as a bloom of crimson erupted on her arm. She gripped her bicep, her teeth gritted in pain.
"Elara!" Angelo yelled, rushing to her side with the others, but my attention was pulled back to the girl in my arms.
Jay's eyes flickered open, wincing in agony. Even as she struggled to breathe, her first instinct was to reach out toward Elara.
"Elara..." she whispered, her voice a fragile thread.
"Don't move, Jay," I pleaded, holding her closer.
"Well, well. My son. Look who finally decided to join the party."
The voice was like a snake sliding over gravel. I looked up, and my blood turned to ice. Standing on the elevated catwalk, flanked by a dozen fresh guards with their red laser sights dancing across our chests, was the Monster.
Monster. He stood there, impeccably dressed despite the chaos, laughing as if this were all a game he'd already won.
"Don't you dare call me your son," I spat, my voice dripping with pure, unadulterated loathing.
He ignored my rage, leaning over the railing with a mocking tilt of his head. He looked at the bruised, bloodied, but defiant group below.
"I have to admit," he mused, "Section E is really something else. To survive the mansion, the guards, and find this place? Impressive. A waste of talent, really."
He leveled his gaze at me, his smile widening. "But it's time to stop playing hero, Keifer. You're a Watson. And Watsons always destroy what they love."
I roared every curse I knew, my voice cracking with a rage that felt like it would tear my throat apart, but it was useless.
We were outnumbered and outgunned. His men swarmed us, kicking our weapons away and forcing our hands behind our backs.
The cold bite of the zip-ties returned, and once again, we were dropped onto the floor like sacks of rice.
My father stepped down from the catwalk, his polished shoes clicking against the concrete with a terrifying rhythm.
He stopped in the center of the circle we had formed—a circle of broken bodies and shattered hope.
He stood there, towering over us, and slowly pointed his finger at each of us in turn: me, Jay, Angelo, and Elara.
I looked at Elara. She was kneeling, her face ghostly pale, clutching her arm where the bullet had torn through.
Blood was pouring between her fingers, staining the floor, but she didn't make a sound. She just stared at him with those hollow, glass-like eyes, her hand clamped tight over the wound to stop herself from bleeding out right there.
Next to her, Jay was slumped, her breathing shallow from the blow to her back. Every time she winced, a piece of me died.
"A pathetic sight," my father whispered, standing in the middle of our misery. "The heir, the bastard, the ghost, and the girl. All of you, brought to your knees by the very thing you tried to escape."
He looked at me, his eyes devoid of any human warmth. "You thought you were saving them, Keifer? Look at them.
They are bleeding because of you. They are tied because of you. This is the Watson legacy. We don't save people. We break them."
Jay's pov
My body was screaming. Every breath felt like a jagged piece of glass sliding down my spine, a reminder of the metal pipe that had nearly snapped me in two. Around me, the warehouse had fallen into a deathly, suffocating silence, broken only by the heavy breathing of Section E.
I looked at Elara; she was still clutching her arm, the crimson liquid seeping through her fingers and pooling on the concrete, but her eyes weren't filled with the pain of a victim. They were burning with a cold, predatory anger that matched the fire in Keifer and Angelo's gaze.
Keizer—the man who shared Keifer's face but possessed the soul of a demon—yawned. He adjusted his silk tie as if he were at a boring board meeting instead of a massacre. "Let's finish them," he sighed, his voice echoing off the rafters. "I am bored now. The suspense has lost its flavor."
He stepped toward Keifer first, the heel of his shoe grinding into the floor. He leveled the cold barrel of the gun against Keifer's forehead.
My heart stopped. I tried to scream, but only a choked sob escaped my throat. Keifer didn't flinch; he just glared upward, his jaw set so tight I thought his teeth might shatter.
"Too easy," Keizer murmured, a sick smile spreading across his face. He swung the gun away and pointed it at me. "How about the heart? If I kill the heart, the body dies anyway, right, Keifer?"
"Don't you touch her!" Keifer roared, struggling against his ties until the plastic cut deep into his wrists. "Kill me! You want the legacy? You want the power? Take it and let them go!"
Keizer just laughed, a hollow, terrifying sound. He moved the gun again, resting the muzzle against Elara's temple. Then he swung it to Angelo, then to Calix, and finally to Felix. He was playing a game of Russian Roulette with our lives, treating us like characters in a script he was tired of writing.
"Look at you all," Keizer mocked, pressing the gun into Felix's shaking head. "The loyalty. The screams. It's so... sentimental."
He looked at the boys, enjoying the way they trembled, the way they pleaded for each other's lives. Every time the gun moved, a fresh wave of screams broke out from the group—except from one person.
Elara.
She sat perfectly still, the blood from her arm dripping steadily, her face a mask of absolute stone. Even when the barrel pressed into her skin, she didn't blink. She didn't gasp. She just stared through Keizer as if he were already a ghost.
When he completed his twisted circle of terror, he paced back to Elara. He didn't just stand there; he reached down and balled his fist into her hair, yanking her head back with a sickening force.
"You are so stubborn," Keizer hissed, his face inches from hers. "Why aren't you screaming? Everyone else has the decency to beg, but you? I want to hear you scream. I want to hear the sound of your spirit breaking."
He pressed the cold, metallic mouth of the gun directly against her forehead, the barrel digging into her skin. "Scream," he commanded.
Elara didn't flinch. She didn't weep. She simply let out a long, weary sigh and met his gaze with an expression so bored, so utterly unimpressed, that it was more insulting than a slap.
It was the look of someone watching a bad movie they'd already seen a thousand times.
Veins popped in Keizer's neck. He tightened his grip on her hair, jerking her head again. She tightened her jaw, the muscles corded with tension, but her silence remained absolute.
"Who do you think you are? Huh?" Keizer sneered, his voice rising to a manic pitch. "A hero? Some kind of savior? You are nothing but a piece of shit, just like my bastard son over there. You're all just insects under my boot."
"Leave her alone!" I screamed, my voice cracking, my body straining against the ties until I felt the skin on my wrists begin to tear.
Keizer threw his head back and laughed—a loud, barking sound that echoed off the high rafters. "Oh, I see now," he said, looking at me with wide, crazed eyes. "I finally come to know why Keifer chose you. The fiery little protector. But you're also just a fucking piece of shit after his inheritance. Just another moth drawn to the Watson gold."
"Shut your fucking mouth!"
Keifer roared, his voice a guttural sound of pure animal rage. "Don't you dare speak to her! Don't you dare mention her name!"
Just as the tension reached a breaking point, the massive warehouse doors swung open with a heavy, metallic groan. A surge of hope hit me like a physical wave—backup? The police? Keigen?—but that hope dissolved into ash the moment the figures stepped into the light.
It wasn't a rescue.
A phalanx of fresh gunmen marched in, led by a man with a face as cold as a tombstone. It was Dylan, Keizer's personal hitman and the most ruthless shadow in the Watson empire.
He walked in with a clinical, detached air, his eyes scanning the room until they landed on his master.