KEIFER POV
Seeing her cry right in front of me felt like a knife twisting in my gut. Every sob that escaped her lips was a reminder of how badly I'd screwed up. God, I wanted to reach out—to wipe those tears away, to pull her into me and tell her I was sorry—but how could I? I was the one who put them there.
When she looked me in the eye and cursed me with Karma, I wanted to scream. I wanted to tell her, 'Jay, I'm already there.' I was suffering more than she could possibly imagine, watching the only girl I ever cared about look at me like I was a monster.
But I couldn't break. Not yet.
She turned and ran, and immediately, Ci-N, Felix, and the rest of the guys scrambled after her like lost puppies. I stood there, frozen, until only Yuri remained. The silence between us was heavy, suffocating.
"Look what you did," Yuri said, his voice cold and disappointed.
I rolled my eyes, forcing my mask back into place. I couldn't let him see the cracks. "What the hell? I thought we were clear about the plan from the beginning," I snapped, my voice steady despite the chaos in my chest.
"Fuck you, Keifer," Yuri hissed, stepping into my space. "You told me at the Christmas party that you had feelings for Jay-Jay. You admitted it!"
"Fine! Yes! I was attracted to her!" I roared back, the frustration finally boiling over. "But then everything went to hell when you got involved with your goddamn engagement plan!"
Thinking about that engagement still made my blood boil. It had backed me into a corner I couldn't find a way out of. I was trapped, playing a game I hated just to protect the future I was supposed to inherit.
Just wait, I thought, my jaw clenching so hard it ached. Once I get my inheritance,e, once I'm no longer under their thumb, this act won't last another second.
The silence in the hallway after the others left was short-lived. Yuri and I didn't just argue; we took out our frustrations on each other. By the time we made it outside, both of us were breathing hard, our faces marked with fresh bruises and split lips from the punches we'd traded.
I wiped a smear of blood from my mouth just in time to see Jay-Jay almost get leveled by a sleek car. My heart leaped into my throat. I moved to run to her, but my feet turned to lead.
Two guys stepped out.
The first one was a total stranger, yet he looked hauntingly familiar. He had Jay's facial structure, but while her eyes were a soft, warm brown, his were a piercing hazel. Jare. Her twin.
Then, the second person stepped out of the passenger side.
My breath hitched. My vision blurred for a second as my brain struggled to process the ghost standing in front of me. Percy.
A swarm of emotions slammed into me like a freight train. I was happy—beyond relieved—to see that my best friend was actually breathing. But that relief was instantly swallowed by a black wave of fury. He had been gone for years. He let the world believe he was dead. He never once reached out to me, not a single text or call to his supposed best friend.
And the worst part? He was her brother. All this time, the girl I was tormenting and the best friend I was mourning were connected by blood, and I was the last person to know.
I watched, paralyzed, as Jay-Jay turned into someone I didn't recognize
She screamed at them. She hit them. She was a whirlwind of rage and pain.
"Give me the keys," she demanded.
I saw Percy try to hide them. I saw the desperation in his eyes.
"PERCY REY COLLINES MARIANO! GIVE ME THE FUCKING KEYS!"
The way she yelled his full name sent a chill down my spine.
"Oh shit," I muttered under my breath.
I saw her snatch the keys. I saw the way she lunged into the driver's seat. Jare and Percy were shouting, chasing after the car, but she was already gone. The tires screamed against the pavement, leaving a trail of smoke and the scent of burnt rubber.
"I have a bad feeling about this," I whispered, almost to myself.
I didn't care about my bruises anymore. I didn't care about Yuri or the rest of the guys. I just looked at the empty road. She was driving like she had nothing left to lose, and for the first time, I realized that I was the one who had stripped her of everything.
"We have to follow her," Yuri said from behind me, his voice trembling.
"I know!" I snapped, already sprinting toward my car. My mind was racing faster than the engine.
Percy was alive. And Jay... God, it felt like I didn't know her at all. She has a twin brother? She can drive like a getaway driver in an action movie? And if she knew Percy was alive all this time, why didn't she say anything?
Who are you, Jay-jay? I asked myself, gripping the steering wheel until my knuckles turned white. All this time I thought she was just a clumsy, naive girl who needed a place to belong. I never realized she was a girl living in the middle of a mystery I couldn't solve.
By the time we reached the address, I was stunned. It wasn't just a house; it was a massive, high-security mansion
I saw the smoke first. Her car was crumpled against a tree near the entrance. Jare and Percy were already there, yelling her name, but I only had eyes for her.
Jay stepped out of the wreckage, and my heart stopped. The side of her head was slick with blood. Even from a distance, I could see the sheer terror in her eyes—not from the crash, but from the blood itself. She was staring straight ahead, her body stiff, desperately trying not to look at the red staining her skin. I didn't know the story behind it yet, but I knew one thing: seeing her own blood was killing her inside.
Suddenly, a piercing scream echoed from inside the house. It was a sound of pure, raw agony.
Maids came scrambling out of the front doors, looking terrified. Jare finally got the door to unlock.
"Took you long enough!" I barked at him as I ran up.
He shot me a look of pure hatred—a silent promise that we would settle this later—and bolted inside. I followed him, my boots thudding against the marble floors. As I ran through the hallways, I caught glimpses of gold-framed photos on the walls.
It was Jay. But not the Jay I knew. These photos showed a girl with a radiant, genuine smile, laughing with her twin and her parents. It wasn't the shy, forced smile she gave us at school. It was real. It was beautiful. And it was a version of her I had helped destroy.
Jare kicked the bedroom door open. Inside, it was chaos. Jay was a whirlwind of destruction, sobbing and throwing everything she could reach. When she turned her rage on us, screaming at us to get out, none of us could meet her eyes. We all looked away, the weight of our guilt finally crashing down.
Maybe she was right. Maybe we deserved to be yelled at. We were the villains in her story, and we had just forced our way into her last sanctuary.
But then, it happened. She took a step back and her foot landed right on a jagged piece of glass.
"AHH!"
I lost it. I completely lost my composure. Seeing her crumble, seeing the pain flare in her eyes—it tore me apart. I wanted to be the one to lung forward. I wanted to be the one to pick her up, to hold her, to tell her I'd handle the blood so she wouldn't have to see it.
But I stayed frozen. Because I realized, as Jare reached her first, that I no longer had the right to be her hero. I was the reason she was standing on broken glass in the first place.
So here we were. The president of Section E, reduced to silent spectators in a room that smelled of expensive perfume and sudden violence. I had to stand there and watch Percy wrap a bandage around the leg of the girl I loved—the girl I was probably obsessed with, if I was being honest with myself.
Jare was leaning over her, carefully dabbing at the gash on her forehead. Every time she hissed in pain or flinched, a jolt of electricity went through me. I wanted to roar at them to be more gentle, to move faster, to do it better. Better yet, I wanted to shove them aside and be the one to touch her. I wanted to be the one to heal the wounds I had essentially caused.
Then, Jare broke the silence with a question that stopped my heart.
"So," he muttered, glancing at her. "Still not gonna take out those brown contacts?"
My brain short-circuited. Contacts?
Jay-jay didn't say a word. She just reached up, her fingers trembling slightly, and pinched her eyes. One by one, she pulled out the thin lenses and dropped them onto the bedside table. When she looked up, the girl I thought I knew was gone.
Replacing the soft, chocolate brown were eyes the color of polished hazel—golden, green, and sharp. They matched Jare's perfectly. They were royal. They were haunting.
"What the hell?" Rory whispered, voicing exactly what the rest of us were thinking.
I shot him a lethal glare, silencing him instantly, but my own mind was reeling. Every detail of her life was a lie she had built to survive us.
"What the hell are you guys still doing here? Get the fuck out!" Jay yelled, her voice cracking but still commanding.
None of us moved. Not an inch. Maybe it was because we'd grown too close to her over the months, or maybe it was the sudden, overwhelming urge to protect this new version of her. We were anchored by a guilt that wouldn't let us leave.
Jay rolled her eyes, her hazel gaze rimmed with red from crying.
"Jay-jay... you never told me you had hazel eyes," Ci-N said softly, his voice small. He was trying to talk to her with that same old friendship, as if the last hour—hadn't happened.
Jay turned her piercing gaze toward him. The warmth he was looking for wasn't there anymore.
"Does it matter if I tell you or not?" she snapped, her words cutting through the air like a blade. "Or should I have told you guys sooner so you could use that as part of your damn plan?"
When she said those words, she didn't look at Ci-N.
She looked directly at me.
The accusation in those hazel eyes felt like a bullet to the chest.
I felt my heart shattering, but I didn't let a single emotion reach my surface. I gritted my teeth and forced my cold, unbothered mask back on. I stared back at her, my face a wall of stone, even as I felt like I was dying inside. I was the president of Section E; I couldn't afford to break, not even when the girl I loved was looking at me like I was the dirt beneath her shoes.
"GET OUT! ALL OF YOU!" Jay-Jay screamed. She violently jerked her head away from Jare's hand, refusing the comfort.
"Jay…" Jare started, his voice heavy with concern.
"Leave me alone! Just leave me alone!" her voice cracked, raw with a pain that made the air in the room feel thin.
Jare and Percy shared a look—a silent understanding that she had reached her limit. They gave a short, reluctant nod. Without a word, we were all ushered out of the room. The door slammed shut behind us, a final, jarring sound that felt like a gavel hitting a block. It was over.
As we stood in the grand hallway, the silence of the mansion was deafening. Jare didn't waste a second. He flagged down a maid and gave swift, quiet instructions to go in and clean up the wreckage in Jay's room—the glass, the ruined vases, the remnants of her outburst.
Then, Jare pulled out his phone. His face was no longer that of the protective brother; it was the face of a man about to go to war. He dialed a number and put the phone to his ear, his hazel eyes locking onto mine with a cold, predatory intensity.