Keifer's POV
One month and twenty-five days.
That is exactly fifty-five days of pure, unadulterated hell. Fifty-five days since Jay walked out of that smoke-filled basement and vanished into thin air, taking the very light of my life along with her.
People look at me now and they see a billionaire heir, a man who successfully claimed his staggering inheritance a month ago, a man who sits at the top of a corporate empire in London.
But internally? I am completely empty. I am just a hollow shell of a person walking through an endless, freezing winter. They don't know how tough every single second without her is.
Every tick of the clock feels like a physical blow to my chest. Every minute feels like a whole year dragging me down into the dirt. I don't know how I am supposed to survive this level of agonizing pain.
Without Jay, the world has no color. She was my queen, my entire life, my mutya, my wife in every way that mattered to my soul. And now, I don't even know where she sleeps at night.
The danger surrounding my family after that horrific dinner with Keizer Watson forced my hand. I couldn't keep my mother, , and my brothers, Keiren and Keigan, anywhere near the city.
The shadows of my father's empire are too long, too ruthless. I had to ask them to pack up everything and hide far away at our isolated countryside farmhouse, a place where the grid couldn't track them.
So here I am, entirely isolated in London, stuck under a mountain of crushing office work, endless legal battles, and surrounded by a pack of vulture relatives who want nothing more than to watch me bleed so they can pick apart my bones. They smile at me in boardrooms, their eyes tracking the bandage wrapped tightly around my ribs, wishing the bullet that hit me last week had finished the job.
But they don't understand what I've become. To protect my family, to secure their absolute safety from the remnants of my father's syndicates, I crossed a line that can never be uncrossed.
I joined a ruthless, high-tier mafia league operating on the European side. It was a simple, brutal transaction: I finish their high-stakes tactical tasks, and in return, they grant my family total, untouchable protection.
That league gave me the one thing I desperately craved—the absolute, fucking freedom to hunt down every single bastard who ever tried to hurt my Jay or threaten my family.
When I am on the field for the league, the human side of Keifer Watson shuts off completely. A dark, terrifying monster takes over my body. I become a ruthless beast, moving through the shadows with a heartless, cold fury. I don't negotiate. I don't show mercy.
When I face the men who cornered Section E in that basement, the men who made my brother shake with fear, , the man who try to threatened my queenmy vision goes entirely red.
I hunted them down one by one, breaking their operations, tearing apart their lives, and leaving nothing but ruins behind me. I wanted them to feel a fraction of the terror they inflicted on my queen.
Last week, during a raid against a hidden warehouse, a sniper's bullet tore straight into my side. I nearly died on that cold concrete floor, losing an immense amount of blood before my private tactical team dragged me out.
But do you want to know the pathetic truth? During that entire shootout, during the moment the lead ripped through my flesh, I didn't even care about the pain. I didn't even remember why or how I got stuck in that crossfire.
The only image in my mind, the only thought echoing in my head, was Jay. I was thinking about her smile, her stubborn voice, her fierce eyes.
I am so deeply drowned in my own suffocating guilt that I welcome the physical pain. It is the only thing loud enough to quiet the screaming inside my chest. I made a blunder mistake in the past.
I failed to protect her when she needed me the most, and now I am pushing my broken body far beyond its physical limits just to punish myself.
The only things that occasionally pull me back to my original, human self are the members of Section E. Even across the miles, their chaotic, crazy group chats and stupid, relentless check-ins force me to take a breath.
And somehow—I don't even know exactly when or how it started—Aries and I began talking to each other. It is a strange, quiet bond built entirely on our shared agony over Jay. We still haven't officially forgiven each other for the past mistakes and old rivalries.
The tension is still there, sharp as glass. But despite that, we talk. Aries has been secretly helping me from the back end, feeding me underground intelligence, tracking movements, and making sure my mother's farmhouse remains entirely
uncompromised.
But even with all the wealth, the mafia power, and the successful hunt against our enemies, everything feels completely useless without her.
I haven't heard her voice calling me asshole in the last one month and twenty-five days. I haven't had a single glimpse of her beautiful face. I am constantly haunted by a terrifying question: How will I face her when she finally comes back? She won't forgive me easily. I know the walls she builds around her heart are thick, and I broke her trust. I want to make up for my blunders with every single breath I have left, but the fear of her cold gaze leaves me breathless.
To cope with the distance, I tried my absolute best to help Jane. I knew Jane was drowning in her own loneliness, missing her twin sister like hell. So every week from London, I curated music playlists and sent contemporary dance tracks to her device—anything to keep her mind from spinning out into the dark, anything to make sure she didn't feel abandoned.
I was genuinely so happy when I heard the news about Yuri and Jane . I found out that Jane had finally chosen to give him a second chance, allowing him to restart their life from the start after his severe hospital scare.
Hearing that gave me a tiny, fragile spark of hope in my own dark world. I hope that one day, when the storm clears, Jay will look at my scarred hands, see my absolute repentance, and give me a chance to love her again.
Two days ago, I finally boarded a flight back to the Philippines. The corporate legalities in London are settled, the vulture relatives have been forced back into their corners, and the European tasks are complete.
My mother and brothers have safely returned from the farmhouse, and they are currently staying at the Fernandez mansion for extra security.
Today is Aries' birthday.
I am currently sitting in the back of a black car, staring at a small, sleek box resting on the leather seat beside me. Inside is a rare, luxury tactical watch—the exact one I know Aries has been eyeing for a very long time but could never track down. It's my silent way of saying thank you for the secret help, thank you for watching over the house while I was becoming a monster across the ocean.
Jane was the one who insisted I should come to the mansion today. She told me the house needed its family back together.
As the car pulls up to the massive iron gates of the Fernandez estate, my chest tightens with a familiar, heavy ache. I look out at the gravel driveway where we all ran through a cloud of white smoke fifty-five days ago.
I am waiting for you, Jay. Every single second is a battle, every minute is a year, and my heart is completely breaking in the silence. I don't know how much longer I can survive without you. Just please, wherever you are, find your way back to me.
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The rain outside the window pane in my private London study had been falling for hours, a steady, rhythmic drumming that matched the cold, mechanical processing of my mind.
Before me sat five different monitors, each displaying separate financial statements, legal briefs, and real-time security tracking feeds from our properties in Southeast Asia. My fingers flew across the keyboard, responding to an urgent email from our
asset management team in Switzerland.
A sharp, stabbing pain flared suddenly in my lower right side. I gasped, my hand flying to my ribs, pressing hard against the white medical bandages hidden beneath my dark silk shirt.
The sniper's bullet from last week had left a jagged, deep purple crater in my flesh. The stitches were tight, pulling painfully against my skin every time I leaned forward or took a deep breath.
My personal doctor had explicitly ordered me to remain flat on my back for at least two weeks, warning me that a single sudden movement could reopen the internal arterial tear.
But I didn't care. I welcomed the pain. I wanted it to burn hotter.
When the physical agony got loud enough, it temporarily drowned out the hollow, empty silence that had taken up permanent residence in my mind. For fifty-five days, I had lived in a world completely devoid of her light.
Every time I closed my eyes, I didn't see the numbers on my financial spreadsheets; I saw Jay's fierce, protective stance in that concrete basement. I saw the way she had looked at me right before the white smoke canister exploded, a look full of an absolute, unspoken goodbye that I had been too blind to stop.
The telephone on the corner of the mahogany desk began to vibrate, its red light flashing rhythmically. I reached out, my hand steady as I flipped the scrambler switch and picked up the receiver.
"Speak," I commanded, my voice flat, cold, and entirely stripped of any human warmth.
"The asset transfers for the secondary Watson estate accounts in Amsterdam have cleared, Mr. Watson," a deep, heavily accented voice responded from the other end of the encrypted line. "Your father's remaining legal associates signed the final waivers without a fight. They have completely removed themselves from the European logistics network."
"And the syndicate cells operating near the northern docks?" I pressed, my knuckles turning white against the plastic of the phone. "The ones who supplied the weapons to Dylan's security detail?"
"Dismantled, sir. The local authorities raided their main warehouse facility at three o'clock this morning based on the data packets you uploaded to their secure server. The cell leadership is currently in maximum security custody. They won't be recovering from this strike."
"Good," I muttered, my jaw tightening until the bone clicked painfully. "Ensure the private security guards at the countryside farmhouse are doubled by tonight. My mother should not see a single unfamiliar vehicle or drone signature within five miles of those front gates. If anyone steps onto the grass without clearance, take them down."
"Understood, Mr. Watson. The perimeter remains entirely uncompromised. We are monitoring the feeds around the clock."
I hung up the phone, leaning my head back against the leather headrest of my chair, staring up at the dark decorative molding of the ceiling.
The vulture relatives who lived in London—my father's cousins and uncles who had spent decades waiting for him to fall so they could snatch up the inheritance—had spent the last four weeks trying to find a legal loophole to freeze my accounts.
They thought I was just a young, traumatized boy who had fled the Philippines after a family tragedy. They thought they could scare me in the boardroom with complicated corporate lawsuits and threats of public exposure.
They had absolutely no idea what kind of monster they were dealing with.
The moment Jay disappeared, the human part of Keifer Watson had been buried deep in the dirt. To protect my mother and brothers, , my wife , to ensure that Keizer Watson's old syndicates could never reach them again, I had willingly handed my soul over to the European mafia league.
I became their ghost, their tactical blade in the dark. In exchange for their absolute, untouchable global protection network, I spent my nights planning and executing high-stakes tactical liquidations against their fiercest business rivals.
When I was on a mission for the league, my mind went entirely blank. My vision went red. I became a cold, calculating beast that moved through the shadows with a heartless, silent fury.
I didn't ask questions. I didn't show mercy. When I cornered the mercenaries who had stood in that basement threatening Keigan, I didn't see human beings; I saw targets that needed to be erased from the face of the earth.
I broke their supply chains, burned down their warehouses, and left nothing but ashes behind me. I wanted every single bastard who had ever made my queen shake with fear to realize that there was a monster hunting them in the dark—a monster that carried their names written in blood.
The physical pain in my side flared again, a sharp, white-hot needle that made my eyes water. I closed them tightly, a ragged breath escaping my lips. I am doing this for you, Jay, I whispered into the empty, silent room.
I am clearing the path. I am destroying every single hand that ever tried to hurt you. So when you finally decide to come back to your family... you won't ever have to leave them.
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The digital clock on the dashboard of the black town car read 6:45 PM by the time the vehicle finally pulled up to the high iron gates of the Fernandez mansion.
The heavy metal bars slid open with a slow, grinding sound, allowing the car to roll smoothly over the dark gravel driveway. The headlights cut through the thick grey evening fog that had settled over the property, casting long, dancing shadows across the wide concrete columns of the main entrance.
I sat in the back seat, my fingers tracing the smooth, cool edges of the small, velvet-lined gift box resting on my lap.
The car came to a complete stop near the front porch. The driver stepped out quickly, opening my door and holding a large black umbrella over my head to shield me from the light evening drizzle.
I stepped out onto the gravel, my boots making a sharp, crunching sound in the quiet courtyard. My side still throbbed with a dull, heavy ache, but I kept my posture perfectly straight, my shoulders square beneath my custom coat. I refused to let anyone in that house see that I was broken.
The heavy wooden front door swung open before I could even reach the top step.
Jane stood in the warm light of the hallway, her slight frame wrapped in a dark woolen sweater, her eyes instantly locking onto my face. She looked exhausted, her face pale, but when she saw me, a faint, genuine look of relief crossed her features.
"You actually came," she said softly, her voice carrying a gentle cadence that reminded me so much of her twin sister it made my chest physically ache.
"You insisted I should be here, Jane," I replied, offering her a quiet, respectful nod as I stepped into the warmth of the foyer. "I wouldn't miss his birthday after everything he's done to keep the farmhouse uncompromised."
"He's in the main dining room with the rest of Section E," Jane said, turning to lead the way down the long hallway. "They're trying to keep things normal, but... it's hard. Everyone is still walking on eggshells."
As we walked toward the back of the house, the low, familiar sound of Section E's voices began to filter through the air. For a brief second, it felt like stepping back into the past, back to a time before the dinner, before the smoke gas, and before the silence.
I stopped by the open doorway of the dining room, my eyes scanning the faces gathered around the wide mahogany table.
Aries sat their, a paper birthday crown sitting slightly crooked on his messy hair. Tiger was standing next to him, waving his arms wildly as he recounted a ridiculous story about a car chase he had watched on television, while Felix and Rory were laughing quietly in the corner.
Yuri sat near the edge, a glass of water in his hand, his eyes tracking Jane's entry with a soft, steady gaze that told me everything I needed to know about their new beginning.
Aries looked up, his eyes meeting mine across the noisy room. The laughter around the table died down slightly as the boys of Section E noticed my presence.
The atmosphere grew instantly tense, the old weight of our shared history settling over the space like a blanket of ice.
I didn't hesitate. I walked straight down the length of the room, stopping right next to Aries' chair. Without saying a word, I reached into my coat pocket and placed the sleek gift box directly onto the table in front of him.
Aries stared at the box for a long moment before raising his eyebrows at me. "What's this, Watson? "
"Open it, Aries," I said, my voice low and level. "And happy birthday."
He reached out, flipping the silver latch on the box and lifting the heavy velvet lid. The moment his eyes fell upon the blackened titanium watch, his breath caught sharply in his throat. He sat perfectly still, his fingers hovering over the glass face of the watch as if he couldn't believe it was real.
"Where the hell did you find this?" Aries whispered, his head snapping up to look at me, his eyes wide with a mixture of shock and deep appreciation. "The distribution lines for this model have been entirely locked down since January."
"I have my ways," I replied, a tiny, almost invisible smile touching the corner of my lips. "Consider it a thank you for keeping the farmhouse feeds clean while I was away. I don't like being in debt ."
Aries let out a short, dry laugh, shaking his head as he lifted the watch from its velvet cushion and strapped it tightly onto his wrist. "Stubborn bastard till the end, aren't you, Watson?"
"Always," I murmured, turning to pull out an empty chair near the edge of the table, sitting down heavily as a sharp pang of pain shot through my stitched ribs.
Jane walked over, placing a warm cup of tea directly in front of me, her fingers resting lightly on the ceramic rim for a second before she stepped back. "We were just about to cut the cake, Keifer. I'm glad you're sitting with us."
I looked around at the faces of Section E, seeing the dust on their clothes from their daily chores, the tired lines around their eyes, and the quiet, collective effort they were making just to keep this house from falling apart into the ground.
They were crazy, chaotic, and entirely foolish at times, but as I sat there listening to Blaster start up his loud story again, I felt the cold, monstrous edges of my mind begin to soften just a fraction.
For the first time in fifty-five days, the beast inside my chest went quiet, allowing the human boy to take a single, deep breath of warm air.
But even in the middle of the warmth, even with the music playing softly in the background and my friends laughing around me, my eyes kept drifting toward the empty chair at the far end of the dining table.
The space was completely vacant, a silent, gaping wound in the center of our circle that nobody could fill.My hand tightened around the warm ceramic of my tea mug, my gaze tracking the steam as it rose and vanished into the high ceiling of the dining room.
Every single second is a whole year without you, Jay, I thought, my heart breaking silently against my ribs in the dark. I am sitting here with the family we fought to protect, but the throne next to mine is empty.
I don't know how much longer I can keep this mask from cracking. Just please... hear my voice in the dark. Come back to me, my queen.
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Author's Note
Hey, my lovely, cuties ,loyal, sweet, beautiful readers !! ❤️
First of all, I want to deeply, truly apologize for not being able to upload anything over the past few days. I know you all wait so patiently for updates, and it breaks my heart when I have to leave you hanging.
I also want to give you a small heads-up that my uploading schedule might be a bit irregular and unpredictable for some time, and there is a very heavy, sad piece of news that I need to share with you all.
Recently, my family and I received some devastating news. My grandfather has been heavily unwell, and the doctors suspect that he may be diagnosed with liver cancer at its absolute last stage. We are still waiting for the final, official medical confirmations and reports from the specialists, but unfortunately, most of the clinical signs and diagnostic chances show that it is true.
I am completely devastated by this situation right now. It is incredibly hard to focus when someone you love so deeply is facing such a massive battle.
Between my academic studies, these immense real-life tensions, and taking care of my family, things have become incredibly overwhelming.
I am trying my absolute best to write and upload chapters in between whenever I can catch a single free moment to breathe, so I hope you can understand if the updates take a little longer than usual. Your patience and emotional support mean everything to me right now. 📜✨
On a completely different note, I have been seeing a lot of discussions online, and I want to take a moment to motivate all beautiful readers/keepers:
Please, do not lose hope! I know many of you were heartbroken and confused because Andres was not present at Ashtine's recent concert. Neither he commented anything about that.
But let's look at the bigger picture with a sensible mind. Maybe, just maybe, he chose to stay away intentionally to protect Ashtin from the massive wave of toxic trolls and negative media spotlight that fans might have thrown at her if they were seen together.
It is completely unfair and wrong to hate someone, judge their character, or troll them mercilessly on social media right after knowing just one side of a story without understanding the hidden, deeper truth of the other side.
I know my readers and the keepers are incredibly sensible, mature, and empathetic souls. I know you won't participate in that kind of negativity. Let's keep our hearts clean, stay positive, and continue sending nothing but love and support to Ashdres! 🌟💫
Also, on a very serious note regarding our writing community, I recently heard about a terrible case of book plagiarism involving the wonderful author Cutepoke.
I have read her books earlier, and they are filled with so much hard work, unique creativity, and pure dedication. It is incredibly disrespectful, lazy, and deeply hurtful to copy an author's intellectual property, steal their storylines, and claim their hard work as your own. Plagiarism tears down the very spirit of the community.
We must stand together against this! Please head over to Cutepoke's profile, show her your massive solidarity, and let's give her all the love and support she truly deserves right now! 📚🛡️
Thank you all for being my absolute rock during these difficult personal times.
Sending you all the biggest, warmest, and softest hugs in the universe! Take care of yourselves, stay kind to one another, and keep your hopes high.
With all my love and cute wishes,
-Tia Peral✨🌈🐾