Page 1 of Jax (The Kansas City Reapers #3)

Stella

Pain woke me first. Then the blood. Then the chair. And finally, the awful realization that I wasn’t meant to die.

I was meant to be useful—bruised into obedience, and painted in panic.

Everything hurt. Not in the sharp, clean way that comes from a single injury, but in the deep, spreading ache of something dragged too far for too long.

My head pulsed with a mean, concussive rhythm behind my eyes.

My jaw throbbed. Zip-ties bound my arms, which were little more than tingling masses of aching dead weight, to the back of the chair.

My shoulders screamed from the unnatural angle.

My legs were bound just as tightly to the chair’s legs.

I tried shifting my weight, but the ties only cut in deeper, and I bit down on a hiss.

My mouth tasted like old pennies. I was bleeding.

Split lip. Probably a bitten cheek. Maybe more.

There was no telling what else they’d done while I was passed out.

The blindfold was scratchy and too tight, pressing into my temples like a vice.

A small sliver of dim light leaked in under the bottom edge of the rough cloth, but not enough to see anything useful.

Every breath came through my nose, slow and cautious.

The air reeked of wet concrete, mildew, and rust. Old building. A basement, maybe? Somewhere meant to rot quietly beneath the world.

I tested the restraints again—wrists first, then ankles.

There was absolutely no give. My fingers were already going numb.

My bare feet grazed the cement floor—slick, cold, and pitted.

I shifted my toes, felt the drag of grime and moisture.

My heart dropped in my chest when I realized that whoever these people were, they didn’t even care about putting down a tarp to make cleanup easier.

Were they that confident, or that ruthless? .

Calm down, Stella. You can’t afford to panic. If I was going to be raped and killed, I already would have been. So whoever these fuckers are, they must want something. But what the fuck could they want from a starving artist, barely able to afford the rent on my studio?

A low mechanical buzz hummed overhead as my thoughts spiraled through question after question.

A flickering light maybe, or ancient wiring.

Water dripped somewhere, steady and rhythmic, a metronome counting down to something I couldn’t see.

My pulse was too loud, my thoughts too slow.

Everything in me said move , escape , run , but my body was a cage, and panic was a mere breath away.

Somewhere nearby, footsteps. Not rushed. Not heavy. Just… deliberate. Confident.

I froze.

Two men, speaking just out of earshot. One voice calm, measured, the kind you only heard from people who never had to repeat themselves. The other answered in short, clipped responses. A subordinate, maybe. Someone who didn’t need details, just orders.

I tilted my head carefully, desperate to glean any information.

The movement was just enough to shift the edge of the blindfold.

That sliver of light grew just a bit, the colors blurry, trembling.

Through the sting, I caught a glimpse of one of the men: black leather shoes, shined so perfectly I could see the flicker of the overhead bulb reflected in the curve of the toe.

Slacks, neatly pressed. Structured. Clean.

Police? Maybe. The shape was right. The stance too.

Not wide-legged like a soldier, not slouched like a thug.

Just... still. Upright. Professional. I wanted to believe it was a hallucination, that the pounding in my head had conjured it, but deep down, I knew better.

Police, or someone wearing the role well enough to be dangerous.

They weren’t hiding, and that was the part that scared me the most. Whoever they were, they stood with the kind of boldness that belonged to people who weren’t afraid of getting caught.

Voices drifted in again. “...continued expansion...” “...fully operational...” “...shipments...”

One word I couldn’t catch. A name, maybe. Alex, maybe? Alexei? A detail too small to matter, or it could have been everything. I froze anyway, because fear always finishes the sentence for you.

Then, silence. Heels turning. One set of footsteps retreated.

And one came closer.

Slower now. Measured. The hair on my arms lifted. My body knew before my brain did; someone was watching me.

I stayed still. Breath shallow. Playing dead.

A chair creaked beside me, wood against concrete, and a shadow shifted.

Someone crouched. Then there were fingers in my hair.

Gloved. Cold. They slid from my scalp to the nape of my neck, threading through sweat-damp strands with a touch that wasn’t cruel or kind.

Just... exacting. Like a butcher evaluating a cut of meat.

“You’re awake,” the man murmured, his breath too close to my ear. Calm. Almost warm. “Good. Now we can finally have a little chat. Listen close, I’m only going to say this once.”

I swallowed hard, tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth. Blood had dried there like glue. I nodded blindly, not trusting myself to speak.

“You own a property at 2901 Lorene Street, in the industrial district. Some sort of art studio, if I am not mistaken. Correct?” His voice carried a quiet certainty that told me that whoever this was, he probably had more information about my studio than he was letting on.

I nodded timidly again.

“My employer has decided to acquire your property, and we aren’t interested in long, drawn-out negotiations.

So, this is how it’s going to work,” he said.

“You’re going to go over to the Recorder of Deeds office in Independence, and transfer the property to the name we give you.

You’ll find everything you need waiting for you back home. ”

His tone never shifted. No threat. No emphasis. Like it was just one more errand. “If you refuse, you won’t survive our next meeting. And my employer will acquire your property anyhow. I recommend you accept our generous offer.”

He didn’t ask whether I understood.

He rose. I heard the soft stretch of leather, the scrape of boots across cement. The door closed behind him, not with a slam, but with the deliberate click of something final. Like a coffin lid.

Silence settled in again, thick and heavy. I sat in it, bound, blindfolded, and bleeding. Not dead, just sharpened. They hadn’t killed me. That would’ve been wasteful. No, they’d carved something new out of what was left. They had bent bone and broken will until I fit the outline of their design.

And now they were waiting to see how well I wore it.

I sat in the echo of the man’s footsteps, in the void where his voice had been, breath rasping, heart hammering. I wasn’t a person anymore; I was a deliverable. A name on a list. A task in motion. Something to be checked off.

The chair bit into my spine, and my wrists throbbed against the zip ties.

Sweat clung to my skin, soaking into bruises I hadn’t even had time to count.

Heat built beneath my jaw, fury and fear braided so tightly I couldn’t pull them apart.

My eyes burned, not from tears, but from the pressure of holding them back.

I didn’t scream. Who would hear it? No one. There was nobody here. No other sound broke the silence. Just the creaking, dripping heartbeat of whatever building I was in. That, and the pulse thudding behind my ribs, cruel and relentless, reminded me I was still alive, whether I wanted to be or not.

A shift. The air changed. Pressure behind me, near my neck, so subtle I almost didn’t catch it.

I hadn’t heard anyone return. But I felt them. The silence thickened, and something cold touched my skin. A sting. Quick. A needle.

My body jolted, too late. Cold spread from the injection site in a fast, vicious bloom. My limbs went heavy. Thoughts slowed. My heartbeat skipped, echoed, softened.

The last thing I felt was the chair tilting back. The scrape of wood against cement. The sound of surrender, manufactured.

Then…nothing.

I woke up to sunshine and birdsong, and for a moment, I thought I was dead.

Not because it was peaceful, but because it was wrong .

Too bright. Too warm. Altogether too ordinary.

My brain couldn’t process the sound of chirping over the phantom echo of dripping pipes and leather soles on concrete.

I blinked open sore eyes and looked up at the ceiling.

Familiar. Cracked. Morning sunlight filtered through the blinds as if nothing had happened.

Like I hadn’t been tied to a chair with blood in my mouth and someone whispering threats into my ear.

But my body told the truth.

The pain hit in layers. First, the pounding behind my eyes, then the heavy ache in my shoulders, and finally the raw, searing throb that pulsed around my wrists like a siren.

I moved, and felt everything—sore thighs, a bruised spine, and the stiff pull of tendons that had been stretched past capacity.

My mouth tasted like metal and cotton. Even the skin along my neck itched like something had been pressed there too long, too hard.

I sat up slowly, and the room tilted sideways. I grabbed at the sheets, forcing my breath to steady even as panic tried to climb back into my throat. My feet found the floor, bare and too warm beneath me. Everything looked untouched. Staged. Sterile.

The silence was sharp, surgical. The hum of the refrigerator. The whisper of a breeze through the cracked window. Nothing out of place, but that only made it worse. Someone had put it all back. Like I was a doll that had been knocked off a shelf, and carefully repositioned so no one would notice.