JAY POV
The transition from "Wedding Guest" to "League Assassin" happened in a heartbeat. The midnight blue silk of my dress, which had felt so elegant seconds ago, now felt like a restriction I needed to tear through.
My heart hammered against my ribs, but it wasn't the flutter of a bridesmaid; it was the rhythmic thrum of a soldier preparing for a breach.
Keifer stepped in front of me, his back a broad wall of tailored black wool. He didn't look back, but his voice was like iron, vibrating with a protective instinct that bordered on feral.
"Jay, take the girls and the kids. Get inside the upstairs suite. Now."
I stared at his back. Every fiber of my being screamed to stand beside him. I had spilled more blood than half the men standing in this courtyard combined. But I saw the way his hand was trembling slightly—not from fear, but from the desperate, suffocating need to know I was safe. I saw Keiren's wide, terrified eyes, and Mia clutching my blue silk dress with white-knuckled hands.
"Okay," I whispered.
Keifer stiffened. He expected a fight. He expected the Queen to demand her place on the frontline. But I knew something he didn't. I knew that if I stayed out here in this dress, I was a target. If I went inside, I became a ghost.
I nodded to the girls, my voice shifting into a command tone they couldn't ignore. "Inside! Everyone, move to the north wing! Lock the doors!"
I ushered Freya, Raaki, Ion, and the others toward the villa doors. We moved in a panicked swarm, the kids tucked in the center.
As we crossed the threshold, I caught one last glimpse of Keifer. He was pulling a handgun from his waistband, his face shifting into the cold, merciless mask of a reaper.
Once the heavy doors slammed shut and the locks clicked, the girls began frantically piling furniture against the entrance.
"Jay, what do we do?" Freya gasped, her face pale.
"Stay here," I said, my voice eerily calm.
"Keep the kids under the heavy oak table. Don't open this door for anyone but me."
"Where are you going?" Ion asked, grabbing my arm.
"I'm going to make sure there's a tomorrow," I said, pulling away.
I didn't stay. While they were distracted with the kids, I slipped into the shadows of the service hallway. I ran toward my room, the midnight blue silk of my dress ripping as I vaulted up the stairs.
I tore the dress off, leaving the expensive fabric in a heap. I pulled on my tactical gear—black carbon-fiber leggings, a compression top, and combat boots. I strapped my twin daggers to my thighs and tucked my customized Glock into the small of my back.
The "Maid of Honor" was dead. The "Bloody Crimson" had returned. I climbed out the window, scaling the stone facade until I reached the flat rooftop. From here, the entire garden was visible.
I looked down and froze.
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KEIFER POV
The moment the doors clicked shut behind Jay, the air in the courtyard turned sub-zero. A part of me was relieved she went inside so easily, but another part of me—the part that knew the Queen—was suspicious. There was no time to dwell on it.
Nearly forty men were spilling out of the SUVs. They all wore black ballistic masks, their eyes cold and hollow behind the glass. They moved with a synchronization that told me they weren't mercenaries. They were League.
"I asked the girls to go in," I muttered to myself, checking my magazine. "I thought Jay might protest... but she just went. Something is wrong. She's up to something."
But the first line of attackers was already upon us.
"Angelo! Yuri! Aries! Sir Alvin!" I roared. "Section E! Formation Delta! No one enters that house!"
The courtyard erupted into a symphony of violence. I lunged at the first man, parrying his rifle barrel upward as the muzzle flashed.
I drove my elbow into his throat, feeling the cartilage shatter, then seized his weapon and used it as a club to crack the temple of the man behind him. I didn't use bullets unless I had to; I wanted them to feel the weight of my hands.
I was a whirlwind of black cloth and blood, snapping bones and crushing windpipes. I was brutal, efficient, and fueled by a singular, burning thought: They are at my home. They are near my wife.They are near my brothers.
I jammed my thumb into an attacker's eye socket, ignoring his scream as I slammed his head against the stone fountain. Blood splattered across my white shirt, the heat of it soaking through the fabric.
I was a demon. I was a butcher. I was protecting my world.
To my left, Angelo was a revelation. He moved like a surgical blade. He caught an attacker's wrist, snapped it like a dry twig, and used the man's own knife to open the femoral artery of the next person. He was silent, his face a mask of absolute focus.
Yuri was a blur. He didn't fight; he erased. He moved through the chaos like a ghost, his twin short-swords singing through the air. Every time he moved, a man fell, clutching a throat that was no longer there.
Sir Alvin stood near the pavilion, his feet planted, holding a heavy-caliber handgun with the steady grip of a veteran. He wasn't just a teacher today. He was a wall. He picked off targets with terrifying precision, protecting the flank of the younger boys.
Leo and the boys of Section E fought like a pack of wolves. They lacked our polish, but they made up for it in raw, desperate ferocity. They knew what was at stake.
But there were too many. For every five we dropped, ten more seemed to emerge from the tree line.
"They're too many!" Angelo shouted, kicking a man into the bushes.
"They're trying to tire us out!" Aries shouted, his shoulder bleeding from a graze.
I kicked a man into the stone fountain, watching the water turn red. My chest heaved. I looked at the villa doors, praying they would hold.
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JAY POV
I lay flat on the roof, my eyes narrowed as I watched the carnage below. I could see the tattoos on their wrists as they reached for their weapons. My blood turned to ice.
I pulled out my encrypted comms. "Luna. Now."
"I'm here, Jay" Luna's voice crackled. "Scanning the biometric signatures and the ink. Jay... these aren't rebels. These are the Iron Talon and Shadow Hand units. They belong to us."
"On whose authority?" I growled.
"A boy named Ram," Luna replied, her voice shaking. "He's been whispering that he want revenge from Keifer.From Section e. From you. He ordered some of the gangs from our own League to hit the wedding. He told them it was a sanctioned purge."
"Ram," I whispered. That cockroach.
"Luna, listen to me. Blacklist him. Every account, every safehouse, every asset. And those gangs down there? If they don't drop their weapons in the next sixty seconds, they are officially declared Excommunicado. Erase them from our history."
"Done. But Jay... they're moving for the back entrance."
I looked down. A group of five men had bypassed the main fight. They had used the service vents to enter the house.
I scrambled across the roof, but I was too late. I heard the scream from inside.
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KEIFER POV
A blood-curdling scream echoed from the villa. It wasn't Jay. It was Mica.
The fighting in the courtyard stalled as the front doors were kicked open—not from the outside, but from the inside.
A man in a tactical mask walked out, dragging Keiren by the neck. The boy's feet were barely touching the ground. A serrated combat knife was pressed hard against his small throat.
"CEASE FIRE!" the man screamed.
The world stopped. I dropped my gun as if the metal had turned into white-hot coal. Angelo froze mid-strike. Aries lowered his rifle.
"Let him go," I said, my voice breaking. "I warn you. Let the kid go."
"On your knees! All of you!" the attacker barked. He tightened his grip, and a thin line of red appeared on Keiren's neck. "Now! Or the boy dies first!"
One by one, we fell to our knees in the gravel. We all were, brought down by a coward with a knife to a child's throat.
The other attackers dragged the girls out. Freya, Raaki, Mia, Ion and the rest were forced into a line on the grass, sobbing and trembling.
The lead attacker, a man with a scarred neck, scanned the group. "Where is she? Where is the girl in the blue dress? She was wasn't with them."
I looked at the line of girls. My heart stopped. Jay wasn't there.
"Where is Ate?" Mia cried, looking around frantically. "She was with us! She was right behind us in the room!"
"She's gone," the man laughed. "The great Queen ran away. The one we were here for She left you all to die." He looked at me, us eyes mocking.
He turned back to the villa, screaming at the top of his lungs. "COME IN FRONT OF US, BITCH! COME OUT BEFORE WE DECIDE TO KILL THIS BOY! I'LL COUNT TO THREE!"
"ONE!"
"I'll kill you," I hissed, trying to lunge, but three rifles were instantly pressed against my skull.
"TWO!"
The air suddenly grew heavy. A shadow stretched across the courtyard, longer and darker than it should have been. A soft, chilling voice drifted down from the heavens, echoing off the stone walls.
"Are you sure you want me to come out?"
The attacker blinked, looking up at the roof. "What do you think of yourself, uh? You think you're a ghost? Come here and face us!"
From the darkness of the rooftop, a figure descended. She didn't use the stairs. She dropped twenty feet, landing in a perfect three-point crouch that didn't make a single sound on the gravel.
She stood up slowly.
It wasn't the girl in the blue dress. It was the Bloody Crimson.
She wore black tactical gear that seemed to swallow the light. Her eyes were no longer the warm brown I had looked at across the dinner table; they were cold, obsidian voids.
As she stepped forward, the forty men surrounding us did something I never expected.
They didn't shoot. They didn't move.
The men who had been standing tall seconds ago suddenly began to shake. The weapons that had been leveled at me and the others clattered to the gravel. One by one, the forty men dropped to their knees—not because they were ordered to, but because their bodies refused to stand in the presence of the woman they had sworn their lives to.
Jay walked past the kneeling army as if they were nothing more than garden statues. She stopped five feet from the man holding Keiren.
The man's hand was shaking so violently the knife was rattling against Keiren's skin. "Stay back! I'll do it!"
Jay didn't stop. She took another step.
"You dared to bring blood to a house of peace. You dared to put a blade to a child's throat. You dared to use my name to justify your cowardice.You are using the training I paid for. And you are holding a knife to a child who I chose to protect."
"I... Ram said—"
"Ram is a dead man breathing," Jay interrupted. She reached out, her movement so fast it was a blur, and gripped the man's wrist. There was a sickening pop, and the knife fell to the ground. She pulled Keiren into her arms, shielding his eyes as she pushed him toward me.
I caught him, pulling him into a crushing hug, but my eyes never left Jay.
She turned to the remaining men, her gaze sweeping over them like a scythe. The man who had held Keiren was now sobbing on the ground, clutching his shattered wrist.
Jay stepped onto the base of the fountain, looking down at the army of traitors.
"To the men who followed a dead man's orders: your names have already been erased from our books. To the man who sent you: tell Ram that I am coming for him, and I don't believe in quick endings."
She kicked the discarded knife away, her eyes flashing with a predatory light.
"You came here looking for a target. You came looking for me," she said, her voice ringing with cold, absolute authority. "But you forgot one thing about the Bloody Crimson. I don't just wear the crown. I forge it from the bones of those who think they can take it. You didn't come here to kill me. You came here to commit suicide."
She looked at the lead attacker, who was trying to crawl away.
"Now... clean up this mess. If there is a single drop of blood left on these roses by sunset, I'll make sure yours is the next thing they drink.And tell Ram that I am not coming for his head—I am coming for everything he has ever loved. I will burn his world until there is nothing left but ash to mark his grave."
She pointed toward the gates, her voice dropping to a whisper that felt like a death sentence.
" RUN."
The men didn't wait. They scrambled for the SUVs, leaving their weapons, their dignity, and their pride in the dust.
As the sound of the engines faded, Jay stood there, silhouetted against the setting sun. She turned to look at me, the "Bloody Crimson" mask flickering for a second.
"Is he okay?" she asked, her voice finally cracking.
I stood up, still holding a shaking Keiren. "He's okay, Jay. We're all okay."
She looked at her hands, which were covered in the dust of the roof and the shadow of her past. Then she looked at the girls, who were staring at her in awe and terror.
A/n
So the spoiler was they were the member of Jay league which were hired by Ram.
Hope you all loved this intense chapter! Are you guys excited for the "Bloody Crimson" to finally show her true power? Did you like the twist with the gang members being her own people?
I'm so curious to know how you think Keifer and the others will react to seeing Jay like this! Please drop your theories and thoughts in the comments.
Let's aim for 30+ comments 🎯 for the next update! Love you all! 👋 😘