Author's POV
The dining room inside the Fernandez mansion was brightly illuminated, but the warmth of the overhead lights could not pierce the heavy, suffocating atmosphere that hung over the space.
On the surface, the event was supposed to be a celebration. It was Aries' birthday party, an occasion that would usually have the boys of Section E shouting, laughing, and causing absolute chaos around the dinner table.
A large, beautifully iced cake sat untouched in the center of the mahogany table, its candles long melted down into small pools of wax. Yet, absolutely no one in the room seemed to be celebrating.
Even Aries, the birthday boy himself, sat quietly at the head of the table, staring blankly at the luxury titanium tactical watch Keifer had gifted him. His expression wasn't one of joy; it was the look of a man carrying a heavy weight he couldn't put down.
The front door clicked open softly, breaking the tense silence of the house. Ava and Zoe walked into the mansion, their expressions guarded and tired.
Jane rose immediately from her seat, moving across the room to invite them inside and greet them with a gentle, appreciative embrace.
Ava and Zoe walked over to the head of the table, offering their soft blessings and quick birthday wishes to Aries before retreating quietly to a dim corner of the room to talk with Jane in hushed whispers.
The circle was growing larger, but the emptiness at the center of the room was only becoming more defined.
Keifer sat perfectly rigid in a chair near the corner, his arm pressed protectively against his stitched ribs. His mother, Serina, sat right beside him, her hands wrapped tightly around the shoulders of Keiren and Keigan, who were uncharacteristically silent. Across from them, Jane had returned to the table, her shoulder leaning gently against Yuri's arm, providing him with a quiet, grounding support.
Seeing the agonizing tension draining the life out of everyone, Ella stood up from her chair. "Let's watch a movie," she suggested, her voice soft but determined as she looked around the room. "We need something to divert everyone's mind, even if it's just for a little while."
A collective, quiet murmur of agreement passed through the room. Anything was better than sitting in this loud silence.
Ella quickly unlocked her phone, connecting it to the large television screen mounted on the wall. Within minutes, a movie began to play, filling the dark room with moving images and background music. Everyone tried their absolute best to focus on the screen, desperately trying to escape their own thoughts.
Suddenly, the television screen flashed black. The movie cut out completely. Ella frowned, tapping the screen of her phone, only to see the battery indicator flash red before the device shut down entirely.
She sighed, turning her head toward the girl sitting right beside her. "Ava, my phone just died. Is it okay if I connect to your phone to finish the movie?"
Ava nodded without hesitation, unlocking her device and handing the sleek metal phone over to Ella. But the exact second Ella plugged the display cable into the port, the phone did not play a movie
Instead, a loud, piercing ringtone shattered the quiet room.
Everyone froze instantly. The breath caught in everyone throat, watching the incoming call name.
The contact name flashing in bright, bold letters across the illuminated screen was a name that had haunted every single person in this house for one month and twenty-five days.
Jay 💗
The person calling was no one else but Jay.
Ava scrambled violently from her seat, her face turning completely pale as she lunged forward to grab the device. But before her fingers could touch the glass, Cin's reflexes kicked in; he reached out rapidly and slapped the screen, putting the incoming call directly on the speakerphone for the entire room to hear.
Ava understood the absolute desperation of the family surrounding her. She took a deep breath, her hands shaking as she stood over the phone.
"Jay...?" Ava called out, her voice trembling. "Hello? Hello, Jay...?"
There was an agonizing, thick silence on the other side of the line. The phone screen illuminated the dark room, buzzing with an unfamiliar frequency. Every single heart in the Fernandez mansion stopped beating. Nobody moved. Nobody even dared to breathe.
Then, suddenly, a slow, heavily trembled voice came through the speakers. "Ava... Ava..."
Zoe's eyes went wide, her posture stiffening instantly. She knew Jay better than almost anyone . Hearing the shallow, ragged cadence of that breath, Zoe understood immediately that Jay was badly hurt.
A trembling hand swiped answer, pressing the receiver tightly to her ear as Ava tried to pull the phone closer.
"Hello? Hello, Jay...?"
"Ava..." The voice on the other end was a ragged, distant whisper, sounding like it was pulling through a wall of absolute physical exhaustion and pain.
Before another word could be breathed, the device was violently snatched away from Ava's hand.
Jane had surged forward from her corner, her face twisted in a mixture of pure, heartless panic and raw desperation, her grip tightening so hard around the metal casing of the phone that her knuckles turned white.
"Jay?! Where the hell are you?!" Jane roared into the microphone, her voice cracking with all the pent-up agony of the last fifty-five days.
Silence stretched over the line—thick, suffocating, and heavy with unspoken secrets. The static hissed quietly through the speakers, a cold reminder of the thousands of miles separating them.
Finally, a low, cold breath broke the quiet on the other side. The voice didn't answer Keifer. It spoke directly to the soul of the house.
"I am coming back, Ate..."
Then — BOOM !
A massive, deafening explosion ripped through the audio receiver on the other side of the line. The sound of tearing metal and collapsing concrete echoed violently through the Fernandez living room.
"JAY!" everyone shouted at the exact same time, their voices rising in a single, terrified scream of pure panic.
The call cut out. The line went completely dead.
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The living room descended into absolute, chaotic madness. Ava's face was entirely stripped of color, her breath coming in short, panicked gasps as she scrambled to open her contact list.
Without waiting a single second, she hit the dial button, calling Jaxon's private line.
Right next to her, Zoe's fingers were flying across her screen, instantly opening an encrypted channel to Kian, her voice sharp and trembling as she demanded an immediate tracking sweep of the satellite tower Jay's signal had used.
"We needs to trace her right now!" Zoe shouted, her voice echoing off the high ceilings. "Kian, find that frequency before it drops off the grid!"
Before Jaxon or Kian could even pick up their respective lines, a sudden, heavy vibration shook the phone resting in Jane's tight grip. The screen lit up again, but this time, it wasn't an audio connection. It was an incoming video call originating directly from Jay's customized phone signature.
Jane didn't wait for permission. She swiped the screen upward, accepting the video feed, and slapped the device face-up onto the center of the dining table so the entire room could see the transmission.
As the screen flickered on, a collective gasp of pure horror rippled through Section E.
Jay was sitting there. She was slouched heavily against a rough concrete wall in what looked like a dark, ruined underground bunker. Her clothes were torn, covered in dark dust and streaks of fresh blood.
A deep, jagged cut ran down the side of her temple, blood trickling into her eyes, and her face was completely pale from physical trauma. She looked entirely broken, her breathing shallow and ragged as she struggled to keep her eyelids open.
"Jay!" Zoe shouted, throwing herself closer to the table, her tears spilling over her cheeks. "Jay, can you hear me?!"
Before Jay could even raise her head to respond to the screen, the camera angle shifted slightly, and another person stepped into the frame. The camera didn't show his face clearly—only the sharp, expensive line of a dark suit and the polished leather of his boots. He looked down at the bleeding girl with an absolute, heartless detachment.
He raised his eyes toward the lens, his voice calm, cold, and dripping with authority. "Ava, place the phone on speaker."
Ava didn't move. She stood frozen, her eyes locked onto the screen in terror. She did not comply with the order.
Seeing her refusal, the man in the suit didn't raise his voice. Instead, he deliberately raised his heavy leather boot and brought it down with crushing, brutal force directly onto the open, bleeding injury on Jay's right thigh.
Jay's eyes snapped open, her back arching against the concrete wall as she let out a sharp, agonizing groan of pure pain, her fingers clawing desperately at the dirt floor.
"Bastard! Leave her the fuck alone!" Percy screamed, his chair flying backward as he slammed his fists onto the table, his face turning an ugly, furious shade of red. He looked ready to tear the television screen clean off the wall with his bare hands. "Put your hands off her!"
The man in the suit didn't even flinch at the shouting. He kept his foot pressed firmly against the wound, applying pressure until Jay's groans faded into shallow, painful gasps. "Ava... place the call on speakerphone now. Don't make me repeat myself."
Ava's hands shook violently as she reached out, tapping the speaker icon to ensure the audio routing was wide open.
The man finally lifted his boot, stepping back slightly so the camera could capture the full width of the room.
He spoke directly into the lens, his tone smooth, calculating, and entirely lacking in mercy. "Your sister thinks she is a queen, Jaxon. She truly believed she could walk into my territory and dismantle the operations I spent an entire lifetime to create. She should have stayed in her lane. She should have never interfered with my business."
Suddenly, a new voice cut through the encrypted audio feed, patching in from Ava's secondary line. It was Jaxon. His voice wasn't a shout; it was a low, terrifying rumble that sounded like death itself walking into the room. The absolute, freezing rage in his tone made the entire room back away from the table.
"You should have never touched my sister, Vales," Jaxon whispered through the line, each word sharp as a razor blade. "Now... even the god of hell itself cannot protect your life from me. I am coming for you."
Vales let out a short, mocking laugh, his eyes flashing with a dangerous spark through the digital feed. "Come then, Jaxon. Let's see what's left of your family by the time you arrive."
With a sudden, sharp motion, the video feed cut to black. The call ended completely, leaving the Fernandez dining room in an absolute, dead silence.
On the other side of the world, inside the dark, concrete bunker, Vales slowly slipped the phone back into his breast pocket. He turned his body around, walking back toward the corner where Jay lay slouched against the wall, her breathing rattling in her chest.
He looked down at her pale face, a cold, cruel smirk breaking across his features.
"You should have stayed dead, Jean," Vales whispered into the dark room, his voice echoing off the stone walls as the shadows closed in around them.
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Keifer's POV
The black screen of the phone reflected the face of a man who had just watched his entire soul get crushed into the dirt.
For a few running seconds, the silence in the Fernandez living room was so absolute that I could hear the mechanical ticking of the watch I had just strapped onto Aries' wrist.
My eyes were frozen, fixed over the glass screen of the phone where her image had been just a moment ago.
My brain refused to process the data it had just received. The pale, blood-streaked skin. The deep, jagged crater on her temple. The absolute, agonizing groan that had ripped out of her chest when that piece of trash brought his boot down onto her open wound.
Jay. My queen. My life. My mutya.
She was supposed to be the untouchable force, the brilliant mind who was always three steps ahead of the world. Seeing her like that—broken, bleeding, slouched against a filthy concrete wall like a prisoner in a dungeon—sent a wave of physical, white-hot pain straight through my chest that completely tore open the internal stitches beneath my shirt.
I could feel the warm trickling of my own blood beginning to soak into my bandages, but I couldn't even feel it. The pain in my ribs was absolutely nothing compared to the violent, suffocating rage that was currently drowning my mind.
A low, guttural growl started deep in my throat, a sound that didn't sound human at all. The beast that I had spent the last month building up in the dark corners of London—the heartless monster that executed liquidations without blinking—broke out of its cage completely.
"Keifer..." my mother's voice called out from the corner, trembling with pure terror as she looked at my face. She tried to reach her hand out to touch my arm, but I violently stepped back, my eyes fixed entirely on the blank phone screen.
"Vales," I whispered, the name tasting like ash and poison on my tongue.
I turned my face slowly toward the boys of Section E. The air in the room dropped to an absolute freezing temperature. They all backed away a step, their eyes wide as they took in the expression on my face.
Percy was still breathing heavily, his fists clenched, but even he went quiet when he looked straight into my eyes.
The arrogant boy they knew was completely gone. There was only a cold, calculating animal left standing in his clothes.
I reached down, picking up the metal phone, my grip so violent that the aluminum frame groaned under the pressure of my fingers. I raised my right hand, looking down at the scars running across my knuckles, and bit my own lip until the skin broke, the taste of my own blood filling my mouth.
"Listen to me carefully," I said , my voice dropping to a low, lethal whisper that echoed off the high concrete walls of the mansion.
"I want Jay's location and that bastard history. I don't care if you loses the satellite signal, and I don't care if it takes someone's life . I want Vales"
"I swear this on my inheritance. I swear this on the name of my mother, and on every single drop of blood currently dripping out of Jay's body", I took a deep breath, the air burning my lungs as I promised myself.
"I am going to find this man. I will hunt Vales down myself. And when I lay my hands on him, death will be the greatest mercy he could ever beg for. I will dismantle everything he has ever built, I will tear apart every single person who carries his name, and I will make his life a living, breathing hell on this earth before I let him close his eyes for the last time. He will regret the very day he was born into this world."
Angelo stepped forward, his eyes bloody murderous, his face deadly serious. "Where are we going, Keifer?"
"To the private airstrip," I commanded, my hand flying to my side to press hard against my bleeding ribs as I turned toward the exit without looking back. "Get the weapons ready, Boss. The hunt starts right fucking now."
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Jaxon's POV
My private office was dead quiet, save for the low hum of the satellite servers tracing shipping routes across the European border.
I was leaning back in my leather chair, a folder of logistics data resting in my lap, when the encrypted line on my desk began to vibrate violently. The glowing screen displayed Ava's contact signature.
I let out a slow sigh, rubbing my temples. To be completely honest, the very moment Ava's call started ringing, my initial thought was that this was just going to be another one of her typical, exhausting sessions of constant bickering and complaints about hotel management, schools.
Ever since Jay had disappeared one month and twenty-five days ago, everyone's nerves were shot, and Ava usually called me just to steal my peace or pick an argument over how could I say calm when my sister was missing. But the truth is I know Jay from childhood and I know very well she isn't disappeared, she is fighting a battel alone. And now one can find her unless she wants . But I am always here to support her and protect her.
I prepared myself to hear her sharp, annoyed voice demanding something ridiculous.
But the exact second I swiped the screen and pressed the phone to my ear, my entire body went entirely rigid
"Jaxx... Jaxx, you need to listen to me right now," her voice gasped out.
It wasn't her bickering tone. It was a ragged, trembling sound filled with a raw, unfiltered terror that I had never heard from her in my entire life.
In less than a fraction of a heartbeat, I understood with absolute certainty that something profoundly serious and life-threatening had happened at the Fernandez mansion.
"Ava, slow down. What is happening?" I demanded, my voice dropping into a low, focused command.
Before she could even answer me properly, a strange, garbled audio frequency cut through her line. I could hear the distant, echoey acoustics of the Fernandez dining room in the background. Then, a cold, unfamiliar male voice broke through the speaker on her end, sounding sharp and entirely detached.
"Ava, place the phone on speaker."
A heavy silence followed. I could hear Ava's shallow, panicked breathing right next to the microphone. She refused to do it. She held her ground, keeping the audio routing strictly between the two of us, desperate to keep the threat contained.
But her refusal didn't stop the monster on the other end of the line.
Through the secondary audio leakage of her environment, a sudden, brutal shuffling sound cut through the speaker. And then, a sound tore through the line that completely shattered my sanity.
It was Jay.
It was a sharp, agonizing, guttural groan of pure, unadulterated physical pain. It sounded like her breath was being forcefully crushed right out of her chest, her fingers scratching frantically against a concrete floor as she fought through a wave of torture.
What the absolute fuck just happened to my sister?!
A wave of pure, blinding adrenaline hit my bloodstream like lightning, turning my vision completely red. The world around me vanished. The ruthless mafia leader inside me died in an instant, replaced by a lethal, protective brother whose entire soul was being ripped apart through a digital speaker.
My sister—our fierce, stubborn untouchable protector—was being broken like a prisoner in the dark, and I was stuck thousands of miles away behind a mahogany desk
"Ava! Put me through! What is going on?!" I roared into the microphone, my fist slamming down onto the desk so hard the wood cracked under the pressure.
Ava must have panicked, or the sheer terror of the situation finally forced her hand, because a second later, the audio clicked.
She placed the phone on speakerphone.
The television monitor on my wall suddenly synced with the incoming video packet Zoe had routed to my office. The screen flickered to life, and the image that appeared before my eyes will haunt me until the day I am laid in the ground.
Jay was slouched heavily against a stained concrete wall in a dark, ruined underground bunker. Her clothes were shredded, soaked through with dark dust and deep streaks of fresh, crimson blood.
A jagged, bleeding laceration ran straight down the side of her temple, the red fluid pooling into her eyes and dripping down her pale cheeks. She looked entirely broken, her breathing shallow, rattling, and ragged as she fought simply to keep her eyes open under the weight of her injuries.
Then, the camera angle widened, and the polished leather boots of the man in the dark suit stepped into the center of the frame. It was Vales.
He didn't even look at the camera as he spoke, his tone smooth, calculating, and dripping with an absolute, heartless authority. "Your sister thinks she is a queen, Jaxon. She truly believed she could walk into my territory and dismantle the operations I spent an entire lifetime to create. She should have stayed in her lane. She should have never interfered with my business."
The sheer arrogance in his voice made the blood boil in my veins. My chest felt like it was encased in iron, the agonizing sight of my little sister bleeding on a filthy floor tearing a hole through my heart.
The guilt of not finding her sooner was a physical weight crushing my throat, but I forced the grief down, channeling every single drop of my pain into a cold, lethal focus.
I gripped the edge of my desk, my knuckles turning stark white as I leaned directly into the microphone. My voice wasn't a shout anymore. It was a low, terrifying rumble that carried the absolute weight of a death sentence.
"You should have never touched my sister, Vales," I whispered through the line, each word sharp as a razor blade cutting through the static. "Now... even the god of hell itself cannot protect your miserable life from me. I am coming for you."
Vales let out a short, mocking laugh through the digital feed before the screen suddenly snapped to absolute black, the call cutting off completely.
I stood entirely alone in the silence of my office, my hands shaking with a violent, uncontrollable rage. I reached down, opening the lower drawer of my desk, pulling out my gun.
"I swear this on the blood he just drew," I growled into the empty room, a deadly, unbreakable vow settling deep into my bones. "I will hunt him to the dark edge of this earth. I will tear down every single wall he hides behind, and I will make his existence a living, breathing hell before I let him die. Vales is a dead man walking. No one touces my sister and except a happy life. I am coming Vales."
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Author's Note
Hey, my absolutely beautiful readers and keepers, ❤️
First of all, I want to send the biggest, warmest, and most heartfelt gratitude to all of you for your support and love .
I want to take a very special moment to say a massive, glowing thank you to midnight_etude. for the absolutely wonderful, beautiful birthday wish you sent my way! It completely touched my heart and brightened my entire week during a very stressful time.
Now , I want to take a very special moment to apologize because I unfortunately completely missed celebrating the wonderful midnight_etude's real birthday with you all on the platform due to everything happening in my personal life. I felt so bad about missing the actual date, so I am officially declaring this chapter a celebration of her star birthday! 🌟✨
This high-intensity, emotional chapter—filled with Keifer's bloody oath and Jaxon's deadly vow—is my special, dedicated birthday gift to midnight_etude!
I wanted to give you an update that would leave your heart pounding, and I hope this special gift made yor day more interesting. 🎁🎂
Please continue to take care of yourselves, keep your hopes high, and let's keep supporting each other in the comment section below!
With all my love and cute wishes,
[Tia_Peral] ✨🌈🐾
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