Chapter Eighty One

Melissa's POVThe sound of the gunshot rang inside my ears and it wasn't a noise but a feeling. A rhythm that tore through my chest and settled there, vibrating and heavy and then silence.For what seemed like forever, i couldn't move and my body was frozen and my mind shattered like broken glass as i wasn't sure if i was alive or if i was dreaming or if i was dead. The darkness was complete layered and cold like it was eating me whole."Jamal" My voice was hardly more than a whisper "Jamal, where are you?" i asked but nothing as the air was thick with smoke and metal and my fingers probed through the darkness, searching for something or someone but found only splintered wood and the sticky heat of something that might've been blood.Oh God."Jamal!" I screamed this time with my voice shattering and my heart thudded in my ears, loud and wild as the echo made it sound like the walls were coming down.Then, a groan, low, sounding and real.I moved toward it, my palms pressed flat upon t

Last Updated : 2025-10-07

Chapter Eighty Two

Melissa's POVThe voice was hushed... so hushed that i believed it had to be in my head."Melissa…"It drifted through the smoke and silence like a thread of air, near nothing, yet close enough to stop my heart. My body went cold and all my nerves screams at once."Mom?" The sound burst from my lips before i could stop it.Nothing, simply the creak of wood, the splat of wet something and the faint crackle of dying fire from the broken lamp as i looked into the fog, expecting the voice to return and my heart was thudding in my throat, so hard it drowned out thinking."Mom, is that you?" she askedNothing again, my voice shook "This isn't a joke, speak to me."Silence stretched out behind me too long and too deep as i called out into the last direction i had seen Jamal lying. Gun smoke and gunpowder scalded my eyes and i couldn't locate him, only the vague outline of his form on the ground that was close to the wreckage."Jamal?"Nothing.Fear tore through me like lightning and my finge

Last Updated : 2025-10-08

Chapter Eighty Three

Jamal's POVThe moment i identified that voice, my entire body went rigid and wasn't so booming, merely a soft whisper cutting through the darkness like the sound of a blade being unsheathed."Found you" it saidTwo words but they were weighted with enough baggage to stock a decade of hauntings.Melissa stood frozen next to me, holding the letter in her shaking hand as the hallway between us seemed to constrict further, dust and electricity weighting the air. Distantly with a pipe hissed and a light above us flickered.I automatically stepped in front of her "Stay behind me." i saidHer voice was little more than a breath "Who is that?" she askedMy pulse thudded in the nape of my neck and i knew who it was, his voice is so distinctive but if i speak his name out loud, it'll be real and when it was real, there'd be no going back."Jamal?" she encouraged."Shh" I snapped and my tone harder than i intended.Footsteps echoed again, nearer this time, measured, confident and unhurried and

Last Updated : 2025-10-10

Chapter Eighty Four

Melissa's POVThe echo of that voice clung to the walls long after the last syllable "Jamal… it's not over" It was near-human, too steady, too knowing and too tranquil to be possessed by a person who was not meant to be alive and my heart pounded so hard it hurt and the pungent smell of smoke and gunpowder lingered in the air, mixed with something else like burnt paper, guilt and a lie that had been incinerated.Jamal didn't move, he was just standing there immobile and staring at the spot where Lucien had come crashing down and his fist was still pressed around the gun, whitened and his eyes wandering off to some distant memory i couldn't reach "Jamal" My voice was hoarse and raw.He was still not speaking."Jamal!That burst through. His eyes flashed to mine but what i saw there made me shiver harder than his voice. with guilt and fear of a man unravelling at the seams."Who is she?" I gritted out around the lump in my throat "And what did Lucien tell you that you did to someone fo

Last Updated : 2025-10-13

Chapter Eighty Five

Jamal’s POVFor years, I’d imagined this moment differently, if it ever came at all.If she ever came back but not like this. Not standing between two women who both carried pieces of my soul and my ruin.The ghost in the black coat didn’t belong in this room. She didn’t belong anywhere in the living world because I’d buried her myself."Layla" I said her name as a curse like an old scar ripped open after years of pretending it was healed.Melissa's rapid breath was a knife through the silence "Layla?" she askedThe woman tilted her head to one side, that same calculating loveliness she'd always possessed "You remember my name."I steadied my gun against her "I remember everything."Do you?" Her eyes skirted over me, landing on Melissa "Because it seems like you've forgotten what you swore to protect.""Don't speak to her."Layla's smile was slow and frigid "You don't get to order me around anymore, Jamal."Melissa's voice quivered, confusion breaking through the shake "Someone tell m

Last Updated : 2025-10-14

Chapter Eighty Six

Jamal's POVThe gunshot still echoed in my mind long after the smoke had cleared, it wasn't sound, it was memory, nightmare and it was every one of my mistakes compounded into one deafening moment as Melissa was sprawled on the floor motionless, her hair spread in a dark aura on the chill marble and for a half-second, my brain would not accept it. I'd seen so many bodies fall already—too many—but never hers."Melissa…"Her name wrenched from me as a rasp, broken, strangled and i fell to my knees beside her, pressing my trembling fingers to her neck.A pulse was weak but present.I made a sound midway between a sob and a growl.Layla stood facing us, gun still trained and her expression was unreadable "She's not dead" she said quietly like that excused everything "It's just a warning."I stared up at her, my vision narrowing "A warning?""You wouldn't have listened otherwise" she said, her tone maddeningly even "You never do.""You shot her" My voice cracked with rage as i got to my fe

Last Updated : 2025-10-15