Page 5 of Jax (The Kansas City Reapers #3)

And then I saw her, not in the mirror, not in the room, but in my memory.

Violet, barefoot in my apartment, holding a wooden spoon like a microphone, singing too loud and off-key while the smell of burned toast drifted from the kitchen.

Her hair smelled like lavender. Her hugs always lasted too long.

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?”

“ You dragged her into this,” he replied, a slight edge to his voice now. “When you didn’t do as you were told. When you made us wait .”

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. Different echoed 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 you disobey .”

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.

When the door finally opened, I didn’t register the sound so much as the shift in pressure; the air changing around me. Then a shape filled the doorway, a man stepping into the light, and a voice I recognized, low and steady and entirely human, reached me through the fog.

“Hey,” Detective Mercado said. I didn’t look up. “Sorry that took so long.”

His footsteps were slow, cautious, and measured, like someone approaching a wounded animal. I hated how accurate that felt.

“You okay?”

I forced myself to lift my head. I met his eyes with the dull clarity of someone halfway through drowning. My voice barely worked. “Yes, Detective. Just... stress.”

He frowned, not deeply, not in alarm, just enough to show he was concerned. But he didn’t push. He didn’t press. And that almost broke me all over again. I wanted him to ask. I wanted him to know something was wrong. But I couldn’t give it away. Not yet. Not without losing Violet for good.

“Please, I think we can dispense with the formalities. Call me Quinn. After all, we’re going to be seeing each other semi-regularly for the foreseeable future.” He offered a hand to help me stand up, and I took it shakily.

“And why is that, Detec—Quinn?” I already knew the answer to the question, but I was hoping, praying that I was wrong. His next words dashed those hopes.

“You’re being moved to a secure location, as I said.” He said. “Off-grid. We’re pulling in a team. You’ll be safe there until we can figure out what the Dom Krovi want with your art studio.”

He said it like reassurance. Like this was what safety looked like.

But I understood the truth now. I understood what was happening behind the scenes, where no one else could hear.

I wasn’t being protected.

I was being delivered.

I gave him a slow, small nod, knowing that anything more would have exposed me. My heart was already racing again, not with panic this time, but with something far worse, something that settled deep and cold, certainty.

The placement was happening. The plan was in motion. They’d gotten me exactly where they wanted. And this team I was about to meet had no idea that I was the threat already living in their house.

I stood slowly, every muscle aching, every inch of me still vibrating from the weight of what I now carried. I didn’t look in the mirror again. I didn’t want to see myself like this, what they’d made of me. I just kept my eyes ahead.

They’d built the perfect weapon.

Wrapped it in fear.

And sent it through the front door.