The gala high had been intoxicating, but the morning brought a different kind of chill. While Elias was caught in a whirlwind of back-to-back video conferences with European investors, Jax found himself back in the "fortress," though his role had shifted from guard to guardian.
He was in the estate's private gym, punishing a heavy bag with a rhythmic, brutal intensity. His knuckles were raw, but he welcomed the sting; it was the only thing that drowned out the noise of his own thoughts. He was free of the debt, but he wasn't free of the ghosts that had been born long before he met Elias Vance.
His phone, sitting on a weight bench, buzzed. It wasn't a standard alert. It was a high-frequency, encrypted pulse-a signal from a life he thought he had buried in the sand of North Africa.
Jax wiped the sweat from his eyes and picked up the device. The message was a single string of coordinates and a name that made his blood run cold: Kestrel.
"Damn it," Jax rasped, his heart hammering against his ribs in a way that had nothing to do with the workout.
Kestrel-real name Marcus Vane-had been Jax's second-in-command during his final, disastrous private military contract. The world believed Vane was dead, lost in the same ambush that had cost Jax his company and plunged him into the debt that Elias had eventually bought.
The meeting point was an abandoned pier in the East Bay, a skeletal structure of rotting wood and rusted iron that smelled of salt and decay. Jax arrived an hour early, his hand resting on the grip of the concealed pistol at his small of back.
"You always were a stickler for punctuality, Thorne."
The voice came from the shadows of a shipping container. Marcus Vane stepped out. He looked like a specter-gaunt, scarred, and missing his left eye, covered by a crude patch. This was the secret Jax had kept: the ambush hadn't been a tragedy of errors; it had been a betrayal. And Jax had let the world believe everyone died because the truth was far more shameful.
"I saw you on the news," Vane sneered, his one good eye tracking Jax with predatory hunger. "The 'Chief Security Officer.' The billionaire's favorite pet. You look soft, Jaxson. Silk suits and champagne have dulled your edges."
"What do you want, Marcus?" Jax's voice was a low, dangerous warning. "I mourned you. I paid for your 'funeral' with the last of my liquid assets."
"I want what's mine," Vane spat. "That ambush was supposed to set us up for life. You escaped with your life and found a sugar daddy to pay your tabs. I spent two years in a hole in the desert being interrogated by men who don't know the meaning of mercy."
Vane stepped closer, the smell of cheap tobacco and unwashed skin trailing him. "I know how you got that forty-two million, Jax. And I know about the 'vulnerabilities' in Vance's V-4 system. You're going to give me the back door, or I'm going to tell the world that the great Jaxson Thorne didn't lose his company to bad luck-he sold his own men out to cover his escape."
The lie hit Jax like a physical blow. It was the one thing that could truly destroy the fragile trust he had built with Elias. If the world-and Elias-believed Jax was a traitor who sacrificed his brothers for his own skin, the "Lion" would be hunted to extinction.
"I didn't sell them out," Jax hissed, his fingers curling into a fist.
"Who are they going to believe?" Vane countered. "The hero of the V-4 launch, or the man who rose from the dead with a diary full of your sins? Give me the codes by Friday, or I visit the Vance estate. I hear Elias is... delicate. I wonder how he'd handle a real mercenary."
Jax lunged, pinning Vane against the rusted metal of the container, his forearm crushed against Vane's throat. "If you even look at him, I will finish what that ambush started."
Vane choked out a laugh, his one eye wild. "You've got a weakness now, Jax. A silver-haired, forty-billion-dollar weakness. See you Friday."
Jax let him go, watching as the ghost vanished into the fog. He stood on the pier, the wind whipping his hair, feeling the walls of his new life starting to crumble. He had promised Elias no more secrets, no more shadows. But how could he tell the man who finally felt safe that the man he loved might be a monster in the eyes of the world?
Jax drove back to the estate in a trance. When he entered the penthouse, Elias was waiting for him by the window, a glass of wine in his hand and a soft smile on his face.
"You were gone a long time," Elias said, walking over to press a kiss to Jax's cheek. "Everything okay?"
Jax looked into those trusting grey eyes and felt the weight of the lie like a stone in his gut. He pulled Elias into a hug, holding him with a desperate, crushing intensity.
"I'm fine," Jax whispered into Elias's hair, the word tasting like ash. "I'm just tired."
The ghost was back, and this time, the price of silence might be the only thing Jax couldn't afford to pay.
