JAY JAY POV
The tears started falling, and as much as I hated showing these assholes any sign of weakness, I couldn't stop them. My chest tightened with every sob I tried to swallow.
"Jay…" Ci-N called out, his voice small, but I couldn't even look at him.
"Why?" I whispered, the word feeling like lead in my mouth. I finally managed to meet his eyes. "I treated you like my own brother, Ci-N. And this is how you—" I cut myself off. I didn't even want to finish the sentence. The betrayal tasted more bitter than the tears.
Then there was Keifer. The person responsible for every single ounce of this hell was standing right in front of me.
"I really hope karma is real," I said, my voice trembling but sharp as I glared at him. "Because one day, you're going to feel exactly what I'm feeling right now. And when that day comes, I'll be the one laughing while you break."
He just stood there, his expression cold and untouchable. He looked like he didn't give a damn.
The silence that followed was suffocating. I expected him to say something—to defend himself, to yell, or even to mock me with that signature smirk. But he did nothing. He just stared at me with those unreadable eyes, as if I were nothing more than a minor inconvenience in his grand plan.
"Is that all?" Keifer finally asked, his voice devoid of any emotion.
His indifference was the final blow. It was worse than a physical hit. I wiped my face with the back of my hand, smearing the tears and salt against my skin. I felt a coldness starting to settle where my heart used to be.
"Yeah," I breathed out, stepping back. "That's all."
I looked at the rest of them—the boys I thought were my family, the group I thought I belonged to. Section E was supposed to be a sanctuary for the misfits. Instead, it had become my cage.
"Don't follow me," I warned when I saw Ci-N take a step forward.
"Jay-jay, wait—"
"I said don't!" I snapped, my voice echoing in the empty hallway.
I turned my back on them and started walking. Every step felt heavier than the last, but I didn't look back. I couldn't. If I did, I might have stayed, and I was done being the person who stayed when everyone else was busy leaving.
As I pushed through the exit doors, the cold air hit my face. I didn't know where I was going, but for the first time in a long time, I knew exactly who I couldn't be around anymore.
Section E was behind me now.
But I'd only managed to take a few steps when the screech of tires tore through the air. A sleek car swerved and slammed on its brakes, stopping inches away from me.
"JAY-JAY!" Felix yelled from behind me, his voice full of panic.
The force of the sudden stop and the shock of it all sent me staggering back until I tripped and hit the pavement. My heart was thumping against my ribs like a trapped bird. I stared at the car. I knew this car. I knew it all too well.
The doors flew open.
"Oh shit! Jay, are you okay?"
My twin brother, Jare, came rushing out of the driver's side, looking like he'd just seen a ghost. But it was the person stepping out of the passenger side that made the world stop spinning.
It was Percy. The stepbrother that everyone—including the guys standing behind me—thought was dead.
"Baby sistah, are you hurt?" Percy asked, his voice casual as if he hadn't just returned from the grave.
I could feel the stares of the Section E boys boring into my back. I didn't need to turn around to know the look on Felix's face—it would be pure, unadulterated shock.
Jare reached down and hoisted me up by my arms. Once he saw I was standing, he actually had the nerve to laugh. "Seriously, Jay? Why do you always feel the need to jump in front of moving cars? Is it a hobby now?"
I didn't say a word. I just looked him dead in the eye, swung my backpack back, and slammed it right into his chest.
"OWWW!" he yelled, doubling over. "What the hell was that for?"
I didn't answer him either. I turned on my heel and swung the bag again, catching Percy right in the shoulder.
"SIS! STOP! You're hurting your handsome brother!" Percy yelped, trying to dodge my next swing.
"Say 'handsome' one more damn time and I will actually kill you!" I screamed at him, swinging my heavy backpack again for good measure.
"Ouch! Jay, chill!" Percy tried to block his face, but I wasn't having it.
I turned my fury on both of them, my voice cracking as the realization of their presence finally hit me. "You two left me! For two years! You let me believe I was alone, and now you just show up out of nowhere acting like nothing happened?"
I swung the bag again, hitting Jare in the arm and Percy in the ribs. "I hate you! You left for two years and now you want to come back? Now you want to play big brother?"
"Jay-jay, we had reasons—" Jare started, his playful smirk finally fading into a look of guilt.
"I don't care about your reasons!" I yelled, my chest heaving. The pain I'd been feeling from Section E's betrayal was mixing with the two years of abandonment from my own blood. I was a mess of anger and relief, and the only way to deal with it was to keep swinging.
Behind me, the silence from the Section E boys was deafening. I knew they were watching this play out like a movie they couldn't understand. To them, Percy was a ghost. To them, I was the girl with no one.
"Give me the keys," I said, my voice dropping to a low, dangerous hiss as I stared at Percy.
Percy's eyes widened, and he immediately tucked his hand behind his back. "I—I don't have them!"
"PERCY REY COLLINES MARIANO! GIVE ME THE FUCKING KEYS!" I yelled, my patience snapping like a dry twig. I didn't care that Keifer was watching. I didn't care that Ci-N looked like he was about to cry. I just needed to be in control of something for once.
"Jay!" Jare warned, stepping toward me.
I lunged at Percy. He started backing up, stumbling over his own feet as I chased him down. "No! Jay, calm down!"
"Give it!" I reached out, my fingers clawing at his hand until I felt the cold metal of the keychain. I wrenched them out of his grip with a strength I didn't know I had.
"JAY-JAY!" Jare yelled from the other side of the car, his face pale.
"Jare, get her! Stop her before she gets into an accident!" Percy shouted, finally finding his voice.
Jare dived for me, reaching out to grab my displacement, but I was too fast. The adrenaline was screaming through my veins. I ripped the driver's side door open, slammed it shut, and shoved the key into the ignition before they even reached the handle.
VROOOM!
The engine roared to life, a mechanical growl that echoed off the school walls. I didn't look at Jare pounding on the window. I didn't look at Percy's terrified expression.
And I definitely didn't look at Keifer.
I slammed the car into gear, the engine's roar drowning out the shouting behind me. I knew exactly where I was going: the old house. The place where we lived before everything turned to ash.
As the wind whipped through the open window, my mind drifted back to the days when we were actually happy. Me, Jare, Mama Reycee, and Papa Jasfer. We were a perfect, golden family. Then Percy joined us after his own accident, and honestly? It turned into the best year of my life. I had two brothers who treated me like a princess because I was the only girl—the youngest, the most spoiled. Jare was the prince, and I was the crown jewel. Our grandparents showered us with love until we didn't know what sadness felt like.
Then, the world shattered.
The "accident" took our parents first. I remember the suffocating silence of the house, the way I tried to drown my grief in tennis. I practiced until my arms were bruised and my bones literally snapped, but the physical pain was easier to handle than the hole in my heart.
Two weeks later, our grandparents were gone too. Another "accident." We all knew it was a lie, a setup. Jare and Percy were consumed by a thirst for blood and revenge, but I begged them to stop. I couldn't let my brothers become the very monsters that destroyed our family. I suppressed my own rage, burying it deep just to keep them human.
When I turned sixteen, they decided I wasn't safe anymore. I was the easy target, the "weak" link. So they sent me to the Philippines, straight into the arms of my biological mother, Jeana.
That was the beginning of my real hell.
My trauma with blood didn't start with a paper cut; it started when my stepfather used me as a punching bag for his anger. And Jeana? She did nothing. She watched. The scar on my leg still throbbed—a permanent reminder of the day she pushed me into a pile of broken glass. The doctors told me I'd never play tennis again. If I pushed it, I'd lose the use of my legs entirely.
She took the one thing Papa gave me—the one thing that calmed my anxiety. Tennis was my heartbeat, and she silenced it.
I hated her. People say it's wrong to hate your mother, but she wasn't a mother. She was a spectator to my destruction. It was only when I moved in with Lola, and then later Tita Gemma, that I felt a flicker of warmth again. Tita Gemma treated me better than my own blood ever did.
I didn't care about the speed limit. I didn't care about the safety of the car. The gates of the old estate recognized the vehicle and swung open immediately, but I didn't even bother to hit the brakes. My vision was a blur of tears and old memories.
CRASH.
The car slammed directly into a sturdy tree near the main entrance. The impact jerked my body forward, and my forehead cracked against the steering wheel with a sickening thud.
For a second, the world went black. Then, the throbbing started. I could feel a warm, sticky liquid beginning to trickle down my skin—forming a line toward my eyebrow.
Don't look at it. Don't look at it.
I knew if I saw the red on my fingers, the trauma would swallow me whole. My breath hitched in my throat as I forced myself to unbuckle the seatbelt and stumble out of the smoking car.
"JAY!" Jare's voice roared from behind. He had managed to follow me, and now he was frantically pulling at the car door, his face a mask of terror.
I didn't even look at him. Stupid, I thought bitterly. Use the face recognition. It still works. The security system Papa installed was state-of-the-art; the gates had opened for the car, but the house would only open for us.
I ignored my brothers and marched toward the grand mahogany doors. The scanners flashed blue as they recognized my face, and the locks clicked open.
Inside, the house was just as I remembered—preserved in a haunting, perfect silence, except for the small staff of maids who kept the place running even while we were in New York.
"Ma'am Jay?" one of them gasped, dropping a dusting cloth when she saw the blood on my face. "Oh my god, you're bleeding! Someone call a doctor—"
"GET OUT! EVERYONE!" I yelled, my voice echoing off the high ceilings like a gunshot.
"But Ma'am, your head—"
"OUT!" I screamed, my lungs burning. "LEAVE ME ALONE!"
The maids scrambled, terrified by the sudden outburst from the girl who used to be so sweet. They hurried through the servant's entrance, leaving the house in a deafening, hollow silence.
I didn't stop. I ran up the stairs, my legs heavy but driven by pure adrenaline, and reached my old room. I slammed the door shut and turned the lock, collapsing against the wood.
The room was exactly as I'd left it: my old tennis trophies, the soft bed, the smell of home. But I wasn't the princess anymore. I was a broken girl in a bloody dress. I slid down to the floor, burying my face in my knees, trying to ignore the pulsing pain in my head and the sound of my brothers pounding on the front door downstairs.
I was home, but for the first time in my life, I felt like there was nowhere left to run.
The walls were closing in on me. The silence of the house was mocking me, reminding me of everything I'd lost and all the lies I'd been living. I snapped. I started grabbing anything within reach—pillows, vases, books—and hurling them across the room. The sound of porcelain shattering against the floor felt like the only thing matching the state of my heart.
Crash. Smash. Thud.
I reached for my tennis trophies and the framed pictures on my nightstand, but my hand froze. I couldn't. Those were the only pieces of my soul that hadn't been stepped on yet. My grip tightened on a glass lamp instead, and I sent it flying toward the door just as the wood began to groan under the pressure of someone kicking it.
"JAY-JAY! PLEASE! OPEN THE DOOR!" Jare's voice was raw with desperation.
I didn't answer. I just reached for the next thing to throw. With a final, violent crack, the door frame splintered, and the door swung open.
I froze, breathing hard, my hair a tangled mess and my forehead slick with blood. My brothers were there, but behind them stood the last people on earth I wanted to see: Section E.
"What the hell are you assholes doing here?" I screamed at them. I knew I was a crying mess, my face smeared with dirt and blood, but I didn't care. I wanted them to see what they'd helped break.
"Jay... you're bleeding," Yuri said, his voice trembling as he stepped forward, his eyes wide with genuine concern.
"Thanks, Yuri! Really, you're a lifesaver for pointing that out!" I barked, my voice dripping with sarcasm and venom.
"Jay, stay where you are. Don't move," Jare commanded, his eyes darting to the debris-covered floor. He started picking his way through the glass toward me.
"Tell them to get out!" I sobbed, backing away from him. I didn't want to be touched. I didn't want to be "saved." "I said get them out of my house!"
I took another step back, my heel coming down hard on a jagged shard of the vase I'd just smashed.
"AHH!" The sharp, white-hot sting shot up my leg, and I collapsed toward the floor.
"Jay! Don't look down!" Percy yelled, lunging forward. He knew my history; he knew that one look at the blood on the floor would send me into a full-scale panic attack.
Before I could hit the ground, Jare caught me. He lifted me effortlessly and carried me to the bed, tucking my injured foot away from my line of sight. The room was silent for a heartbeat, the only sound being my jagged sobs.
Then, the silence was shattered.
"WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU THINKING?!" Keifer roared. He stepped into the center of the room, looking around at the destruction I'd caused. He looked furious, his fists clenched at his sides. "You drive like a psychopath, you almost kill yourself, and for what? Because you're throwing a tantrum?"
I snapped my head up, my eyes burning as I glared at him through the haze of tears.
"Don't you dare fucking yell at me!" I screamed back, the force of it making my chest ache. "Don't you dare stand in my house and act like you have any right to judge me! And most of all... don't you dare fucking act like you care about what happens to me!"
The rest of Section E stood frozen, caught between their fear of Keifer and the sheer shock of seeing the "weak" Jay-jay stand up to him while bleeding out.
"You're the reason I'm like this!" I pointed a shaking finger at him. "So take your 'King' attitude and get the hell out of my room"
For a split second, the mask slipped. I saw it—a flash of raw, aching sadness in Keifer's eyes. It was a look I'd never seen from him
But as quickly as it appeared, he shuttered it away, replacing it with that cold, unreadable stare that made me want to scream.
He didn't move. Not an inch.