London :
The heavy wooden doors of the conference room finally closed behind him. Keifer loosened his tie with one hand, letting out a sharp, exhausted breath. Hours of endless corporate talk, and all he wanted was to check his phone.
Honey Bee stepped forward, holding out Keifer's device with a expression that immediately made Keifer's stomach drop.
"Young Master..." Honey Bee started, his voice unusually quiet. "Your phone."
Keifer snatched it and swiped the screen open.
The notifications were a blur. 142 missed messages. 28 missed calls. Section E Group Chat. Felix. Ci-N. Edrix. Rory.
Before he could even tap into the chat, the screen lit up again. An incoming call from Felix.
Keifer pressed accept before the second ring. "Felix, what the hell is going on? Why is my phone blowing up—"
"Keifer." Felix's voice came through, hollow and dangerously unsteady. "Where have you been?"
"I was in a meeting. What happened?" Keifer's pulse hammered against his ribs. "Is it Jay?"
"It was a hit-and-run, Keifer."
The air vanished from Keifer's lungs. The quiet hall in London seemed to spin. "She got hit. She was in the ICU... we almost lost her."
"What?" Keifer's cold composure shattered instantly. He gripped the phone so hard his knuckles turned white. "Is she—where is she?! Is she okay?!"
"She woke up," Felix cut in quickly, though his voice cracked. "She just woke up a little while ago. She's alive."
Relief hit Keifer so hard his knees almost gave out, but it was immediately overtaken by sheer panic. "Put her on. Felix, put her on the phone right now. Let me talk to her!"
"I can't do that, Keifer."
"What do you mean you can't?!" Keifer roared, completely disregarding Honey Bee staring at him in shock. "Give her the fucking phone, Felix!"
"I said NO!" Felix snapped back, emotion finally overflowing. "She's weak, Keifer! She barely survived! The doctors said no stress, no agitation. She can't—she shouldn't talk to you right now."
"I'm her boyfriend, damn it! Let me hear her voice!"
"She's resting. And honestly? You being miles away in London shouting through a speaker isn't what she needs right now."
"Felix!" Keifer yelled into the phone, but all he got back was the hollow sound of the dial tone.
"Damn it!" He shoved the phone violently into his pocket, his breathing heavy and ragged as he paced the quiet corridor. Honey Bee took a small step back, keeping his head down, but Keifer turned on him instantly, his eyes burning with a dangerous mix of rage and terror. "Book a flight. Right now."
"Young Master, the chairman explicitly said—"
"I don't give a damn about what my grandfather said!" Keifer's voice echoed off the polished walls of the London high-rise, sharp enough to cut through glass. "Get me on the first plane to Manila. Private, commercial, I don't care. Just get me out of this fucking country!"
"Sir, please," Honey Bee tried to reason, his tone cautious. "If you leave before the signing tonight, everything you built here—"
"Do you think I care about a deal right now?!" Keifer grabbed Honey Bee by the collar, pulling him close, his voice dropping into a desperate, furious whisper. "She almost died, Honey Bee. She was lying in an ICU while I was sitting in a boardroom listening to old men talk about money. If I lose her, none of this matters anyway."
He let go, shoving his hands through his hair until it was a tangled mess, completely stripping away the polished heir persona he'd worn all morning. He pulled his phone back out with trembling fingers and tapped into the Section E group chat.
The messages were scrolling too fast for his eyes to keep up, but the fragments he caught pierced right through him:
Ci-N: WHERE IS JAYJAY 😭
Rory: She's still in surgery. Nobody leave the waiting room.
Edrix: Has anyone gotten hold of Keifer yet???
Yuri: He's not answering.
Ci-N: KEIFER ANSWER YOUR PHONE PLEASE
Keifer stared at the screen, his chest tightening so hard he could barely draw breath. They had been trying to reach him for hours. While he had his phone on silent to show "respect" in a business meeting, Jay-Jay had been fighting for her life on an operating table.
He opened a direct chat with Jay-Jay.
His last message to her was from yesterday: 'Eat your lunch. I'll call you tonight.'
She had replied with a stupid, energetic emoji that he hadn't even had the chance to laugh at properly.
He started typing, his thumb shaking over the keyboard.
'Jay. Please. Just tell me you're okay.'
He stared at the single checkmark. He knew she wouldn't see it. He knew Felix was right—she was hooked up to monitors, exhausted, recovering from a trauma he hadn't been there to protect her from. But the silence on the other end of the line was suffocating.
Keifer leaned his head back against the cold wall of the hallway and closed his eyes, fighting back the sting behind his eyelids. For the first time in his life, all the power, money, and influence of his name meant absolutely nothing. He was stuck on the other side of the world, locked out by the people protecting her, and completely powerless to reach the only girl who held his entire world together.
"Young Master," Honey Bee said quietly, looking down at his own tablet. "The earliest flight I can secure leaves in six hours."
Keifer opened his eyes, the terror fading into a cold, lethal focus.
"Six hours," Keifer repeated, his voice dangerously low. "Find out who was driving that car before I land."
Jay's POV (private conversation with June)
The quiet hum of the hospital monitors was supposed to be soothing, but to me, it was just annoying. My body ached in places I didn't even know existed—every shallow breath pulled painfully at my ribs—yet the heavy silence of the room felt far more suffocating than the bandages wrapped around my chest.
June stood near the edge of my bed, her usual sharp, professional posture completely intact despite the sterile setting. She swiped through her tablet with practiced precision before looking down at me.
"The accident wasn't an accident," June said, her voice dropping to a quiet, guarded tone meant only for the two of us. "It was a hit-and-run, but the Watsons were thorough. They covered their tracks nicely—stolen plate, wiped CCTV feeds in the immediate area, wiped server logs. Standard high-level cleanup."
I leaned back against the pillows, wincing slightly as the movement sent a sharp throb through my side, but I kept my eyes fixed on hers. "They're good. But not good enough."
"No," June agreed, a faint, cold smile touching her lips. "They left just enough of a digital footprint for me to trace the proxy payments back to the source. It didn't originate from the usual Watson shell companies."
She paused, eyeing the heavy wooden door for a fraction of a second before meeting my gaze again.
"It was Keifer's father."
My expression didn't even flicker. I didn't gasp, panic, or freeze. I just let out a slow, breathy exhale, staring up at the acoustic ceiling tiles. Keifer's dad. Of course. The man who viewed me as nothing more than a dangerous distraction for his precious heir.
Before June could elaborate, a muffled roar echoed through the door from the hallway outside.
"I SAID NO!"
It was Felix's voice, raised in a rare, furious yell that shattered the quiet of the hospital corridor.
"She's weak, Keifer! She barely survived! The doctors said no stress, no agitation. She can't—she shouldn't talk to you right now!"
I glanced toward the door, listening to the distant, crackling desperation of Keifer's voice leaking through Felix's phone speaker. I could practically picture him in London right now—losing his mind, tearing off his tie, ready to burn down the entire city just to get on a plane back to me.
Outside, Felix's heavy footsteps paced angrily before his voice faded down the hall as he continued to argue into the receiver.
June watched the door until the noise settled, then turned back to me, her face softening into a serious expression. "You need to rest, Jay. Don't take on unnecessary stress over this. Let us handle it."
"June—"
"I mean it," she interrupted gently, but with that unyielding tone she always gets. "I'll take care of it. Me, Michael, Alex, Sam, and Will are already on it. Will is tracking the local contacts he used, and Michael is handling security. You just focus on recovering."
I choked out a short, dry laugh, despite the sharp ache it flared in my chest. I looked up at June, letting a familiar, stubborn glint return to my eyes.
"Stress?" I smirked, resting my head back against the pillow. "June, you know me. You could point a loaded gun right at my head, and I wouldn't stress."
June raised an eyebrow. "Is that so?"
"Yeah," I replied, my voice dropping into a smooth, dangerous calm as my mind began running through scenarios. "Because if someone points a gun at me, I've already got Plan A to jam the trigger, Plan B to drop them before they squeeze it, and Plan C to make sure they're the ones taking the bullet instead."
I tilted my head back toward the door where Felix had been standing moments ago, my eyes narrowing.
"Which brings me to my first move," I added, leaving no room for playfulness in my voice. "Block him."
June blinked, taken aback for a second. "Block who?"
"Keifer. Block his flights, use our contacts to flag his passport, cancel his private jet clearance—whatever it takes. Ground him in London and do not let him set foot in Manila."
"Jay, he's going to tear the world apart if he finds out—"
"Make sure he knows it was me," I cut in, my tone absolute. "Tell Felix, tell Honey Bee, tell whoever he speaks to next: Jay-Jay personally ordered the lock on your flight."
I reached down and gripped the edge of the stiff hospital blanket, my jaw tightening as the anger finally surfaced behind my eyes.
"His father targeted me. This is my fight, not his," I continued, staring straight into June's eyes. "If Keifer comes back right now, he'll act on pure rage, blow up his own family's business, and fall right into his father's trap. I'm not letting him get ruined for my sake. This is my problem to solve, and I'm going to break his dad's scheme wide open before Keifer even steps off a plane."
June stared at me for a long beat. She looked for any sign of hesitation in my eyes, but when she found none, a subtle, respectful smile crossed her face.
"Understood," she said, her fingers already flying across her tablet screen. "I'll coordinate with the transport networks immediately. He won't be leaving London."
"Good," I murmured, leaning back as a cold, confident grin touched my lips.
Keifer's dad thought he could run me over while his son was trapped across the ocean. He thought I was just a target. He just played his hand—now it was time to show him mine.
Keifer's POV
The sleek leather armchair in the private lounge felt less like a seat and more like a cage.
I was pacing—or trying to—before my knees gave out from the sheer weight of the adrenaline crashing through my veins. Every breath I pulled into my lungs tasted like bitter frost. My coat was thrown haphazardly over a sofa, my tie long gone, my hair a disaster. Six hours until the earliest flight. Six hours of standing on the edge of a cliff while Jay-Jay was lying in a hospital bed thousands of miles away.
I stared down at my phone. The single checkmark next to my last text message to her was burning a hole straight through my sanity.
Just tell me you're okay.
Nothing.
I gripped the edge of the mahogany table, my knuckles turning white, my blood boiling with a dark, suffocating fury. Someone did this to her. Someone in Manila thought they could put their hands on her, hit her with a car, and walk away. I swear to God, the second I land—
The heavy glass doors of the lounge slid open.
Honey Bee walked in. But she didn't have her usual precise, effortless posture. Her shoulders were stiff, her jaw tight, and her eyes darted to me with an expression I had never seen on her before.
Caution. Almost... hesitation.
"Is the plane ready?" I demanded, my voice raw and sharp as a knife. I didn't wait for her to stand in front of me; I took three aggressive steps toward her. "Did you secure the departure slot? I don't care about the fines for breaking airspace protocols. Get the pilot on the line."
Honey Bee stopped a few feet away. She held her tablet against her chest like a shield.
"Young Master," she began, her tone uncharacteristically low. "There is a problem with your travel arrangements."
My eyes narrowed into slits. "What problem? Did my grandfather try to override the authority? I told you—"
"It isn't the Chairman, sir." Honey Bee swallowed hard, glancing down at her tablet before looking me dead in the eye. "Every private charter company under our network has just rejected our flight request. When I tried to book a commercial first-class ticket, the system flagged your passport with a temporary diplomatic hold. Your flight clearance for leaving London has been completely grounded."
A cold, dangerous silence fell over the room.
I stared at her, my mind short-circuiting. My family practically owned half the transit logistics in the region. Nobody grounded a Watson. Nobody.
"Who?" I asked, my voice dropping into a lethal, quiet whisper. "Who gave that order? Did my father call the aviation board?"
Honey Bee didn't answer immediately. She took a subtle step back, as if preparing for the blast radius.
"It wasn't your father, Young Master."
"Then who, Honey Bee?!" I roared, slamming my hand onto the side of the table so hard the glass coasters rattled. "Who the hell is stopping me from getting to her?!"
Honey Bee held up her tablet, turning the screen toward me. On it was a single, encrypted dispatch message sent directly from a private server in Manila, bypassing every Watson security protocol we had.
At the bottom of the black screen, written in sharp, unmistakable bold text, was a direct message:
'TELL KEIFER TO STAY IN LONDON. THIS IS MY FIGHT. HE DOES NOT GET TO INTERFERE.'
— J.J.
The world stopped.
The roar in my ears instantly died down into an agonizing, suffocating quiet. I stared at the initials on the screen. My hand froze in mid-air.
Jay-Jay.
"She... she did this?" I breathed out, the words barely escaping my throat.
"Miss Jay-Jay's contacts executed the lock ten minutes ago," Honey Bee explained quietly, her voice neutral now. "She personally authorized the restriction on your flight clearance. Felix just confirmed it with me over encrypted text. She made sure you would know it was her."
I stood there, completely paralyzed.
She woke up. She woke up from a bloody, life-threatening hit-and-run, surrounded by doctors and IV drips, and the very first thing she did... was lock me out of the country.
"She's out of her mind," I muttered, a bitter, breathless laugh ripping from my chest as I shoved my hands into my hair. "She almost died, Honey Bee! She was in the fucking ICU! And she's playing tactical games with my flight schedule?!"
"She knows who was behind the hit, sir," Honey Bee added gently.
That stopped me dead in my tracks. I snapped my head back to her. "What?"
"Her team traced the payment trail before we even got the police reports," Honey Bee said, her eyes darkening slightly. "Miss Jay-Jay knows it was your father."
The air was completely sucked out of my lungs.
My father.
The realization hit me like a physical blow to the chest, knocking the breath straight out of me. The secret meetings. The sudden pressure to pull me to London. The sudden "business emergency" that kept me trapped in boardroom meetings all day.
He didn't just send me away to work. He sent me away so he could clear the board. He tried to eliminate her while I was stuck across the ocean, completely blind.
My knees hit the edge of the leather chair, and I sank into it, staring blankly at the floor. My hands were shaking—not from fear, but from a sickening, overwhelming mix of betrayal and sheer, terrifying pride.
She knew. She knew my father tried to kill her. And instead of crying, instead of calling me to hide behind my back, she put a padlock on my jet so I wouldn't ruin her retaliation.
'This is my fight.'
"She's trying to protect me," I whispered, the realization twisting painfully in my chest.
If I flew back to Manila right now in a blind rage, I would execute my father's corporate empire, tear the Watson name to shreds, and walk straight into whatever legal and political trap he had set up for me. Jay-Jay knew that. She knew I would burn my whole world down for her, so she locked the door from the outside.
"Young Master?" Honey Bee asked quietly. "Should I attempt to override her network lock? It will take time, but—"
"No," I cut in, my voice trembling before settling into a cold, terrifying stillness.
I looked up at Honey Bee, my eyes burning with a dangerous, dark light.
"She wants me to stay here?" I said, resting my chin on my clenched fist as a lethal smile touched my lips. "Fine. I won't step on a plane."
I picked up my phone from the table, scrolling past the group chats, and opened my father's direct contact.
"If she's handling his hitmen in Manila," I murmured, my voice dripping with ice, "then I'm going to strip my father of every single cent, asset, and ally he has left in Europe before she even finishes her first day of recovery."
I looked up at Honey Bee.
"Get the file on my father's London offshore accounts. If Jay-Jay wants a war... I'm giving her the heavy artillery from right here."
Jay's POV
The faint blue glow of June's tablet illuminated the dim hospital room. My ribs still burned every time I drew a deep breath, but my mind was running too fast to care about physical pain.
"June, hand me the terminal feed," I said, leaning back against the pillows. "I want to see the financial movement of the Watson shell companies in Manila. If his father used local proxies, the money trail has to start at one of their regional banks."
June tapped her screen, pulling up our private network interface, but as the encrypted logs loaded, her brows pulled together in confusion. "That's strange..."
"What is?"
"The Manila assets aren't moving," June murmured, rotating the tablet toward me. "Because the European branch just froze them. Someone is initiating a aggressive, high-level hostile takeover of the Watson family's offshore holdings in London. They're systematically leaking internal audit reports, freezing liquid reserves, and blocking their European credit lines."
I stared at the cascading red numbers on the screen. The sheer speed of the execution was terrifyingly clean—relentless, cold, and undeniably calculated.
There was only one person on the planet with that level of clearance, that specific authorization code, and that level of pure, unhinged spite.
Keifer.
"That idiot," I muttered, a sharp mix of disbelief and annoyance rising in my chest. "He didn't just stay in London. He's trying to starve his father's entire empire from the top down."
"Jay, if he completely dismantles their European assets right now, his father will realize it's an internal attack," June warned quietly. "It'll push his dad into a corner. Desperate people do unpredictable things."
"He's going to blow his own standing in the family just to fight a war I told him was mine," I snapped, pulling the hospital bed table closer. "Set up a secure video line. Right now."
June didn't argue. Within seconds, the encrypted connection dialed through.
The screen flickered, and then his face appeared.
Keifer was sitting in a dimly lit office space in London. His dark hair was messy, his collar unbuttoned, and the sharp, cold shadows under his eyes told me he hadn't slept for a single second. The moment his gaze locked onto mine through the camera, his rigid posture shattered.
For a fraction of a second, the cold Watson heir vanished, replaced by a guy who looked like he'd been dragged through hell.
"Jay..." His voice came through the speaker, low, rough, and strained. He reached out toward the screen as if he could somehow touch me through the glass. "You're... you're awake."
"Keifer," I said, keeping my tone flat despite the twist in my stomach at the sheer desperation in his eyes. "What the hell are you doing?"
He blinked, his expression instantly hardening as he regained his footing. "What am I doing? You locked my flight clearance, Jay! You flagged my passport!"
"And you're currently burning down your own family's European reserves!" I shot back, wincing slightly as the raised volume pulled at my chest bandages. "I told you to stay out of it!"
"He tried to kill you!" Keifer roared, leaning so close to the camera his knuckles showed white against his desk. The quiet rage in his voice vibrated through the speaker. "Do you honestly think I'm going to sit in London and play by the rules while my father hires people to put you in the ICU?! I don't give a damn about the Watson empire, Jay! I will tear every single piece of it to the ground!"
"Get into your right mind, Keifer!" I demanded, staring straight into his eyes. "Look at me!"
He stopped, his heavy breathing filling the line.
"You think you're helping me?" I continued, my voice dropping into a smooth, unyielding steel. "If you destroy his assets now, he loses everything he has to protect. A man with nothing to lose is a man who shoots without thinking. You're going to make him desperate, and when he gets desperate, he won't care about corporate games anymore—he'll send real blood."
Keifer clenched his jaw, his eyes burning, but he didn't interrupt.
"This is my mess," I said firmly. "His hitmen tried to take me out on my turf. That means it's my problem to solve. I don't need a savior, Keifer, and I definitely don't need you destroying your future just to avenge a hit that failed. Pull back your team in London. Let me execute my plan."
Keifer stared at me through the screen for a long, agonizing moment. The silence stretched between us across thousands of miles, thick with tension.
"You're impossible," he whispered softly, a breathless, frustrated laugh escaping his lips before his face settled back into a dark, protective intensity. "You almost died, and you're still sitting there telling me how to run a war."
"Because I'm winning it," I replied, a small, stubborn smirk touching my lips. "Now stand down."
He let out a slow exhale, leaning back in his chair. "Fine. I'll pause the asset liquidation. But I'm watching every move from here. If your plan slips even an inch, Jay, I'm taking the whole board down."
"It won't slip," I said. "Now go get some rest."
I ended the call, the screen going black.
I leaned my head back against the hospital pillow, letting out a long breath I didn't realize I was holding. The room went quiet again, save for the rhythmic beeping of the heart monitor.
June stepped forward, closing her tablet. "That was impressive. He actually listened."
"He didn't listen," I muttered, staring at the blank screen of my phone. "He just bought me time."
I reached out to grab a glass of water from the side table, but as my hand brushed against the tray, my fingers hit something cold and metallic hiding right underneath the white medical napkin.
My pulse spiked.
It was an unencrypted flash drive, pressed flat against the tray. Attached to it was a small, hand-printed note written in dark black ink.
I picked up the paper, my eyes narrowing as I read the single line typed across it:
'Keifer's father wasn't the one who ordered the driver to hit the gas. Check the drive.'