Page 66 of Tangled Past
Chapter Twenty-One
The moment it happened—the moment he said it out loud—Maya felt the room change.
Not in the way people meant when they said the air got heavy. It was sharper than that. Like the house itself had inhaled and couldn’t exhale again.
Asa moved between her and his uncle, gun raised, shoulders squared, but Maya could see it anyway—the fracture under his control. The way his breath went too tight. The way his eyes didn’t blink often enough.
Because the man in front of them wasn’t just a killer. He was family, and that made him more dangerous than any stranger with a weapon.
“I loved you,” Jonas had said.
Loved. Like the word could soften what he’d done.
Maya couldn’t make her tongue work to scream for the help they so desperately needed. She could only stand there behind Asa with her hand on his back, trying to keep him anchored so he didn’t do what she wouldn’t blame him for doing.
“Get your hands where I can see them,” Asa commanded. “Get on your knees.”
Jonas didn’t comply. Instead, he took a slow step backward toward the hall and the back of the house.
Asa tracked him. “I said stop!”
Jonas lunged toward Asa and grabbed for the hand holding the weapon. A shot rang out.
“Asa!” Maya screamed and followed the fight.
The gun clattered to the floor. Asa slammed his shoulder into his uncle’s chest. Jonas staggered half a step.
Asa used it to his advantage and drove forward hard, shoving his uncle into the kitchen counter so fast a mug on the edge toppled and shattered. His breath came ragged. “You’re done.”
Jonas smiled. “You sound like Raymond,” he said, and headbutted him.
Asa stumbled back, blood blooming at his brow, then running down the side of his face. He blinked, then jumped to his feet again.
Maya saw the moment something in Asa changed. The moment the fight stopped being about survival and became something else.
A reckoning.
He lifted his hands—devoid of the weapon now—and came at Jonas again.
Jonas caught Asa’s next swing, twisted it, and slammed him into the pantry door.
The door burst open.
Cans clattered, rolling underfoot.
Asa shoved off the door, but his boot landed on a rolling can and slid.
Jonas took advantage of it. He grabbed Asa’s arm and wrenched it. Asa grunted, teeth bared. Pain flashed in his eyes.
Jonas leaned close, voice low and vicious. “You should’ve stayed gone.”
Asa’s response came out in a growl. “You should’ve stayed buried.” He drove his knee up hard.
Jonas took it in the gut and expelled a sharp breath. Asa didn’t pause. He swung, fist connecting with his uncle’s jaw.
The sound of it was awful. Jonas’s head snapped sideways.
For a second—just one—he looked less like a predator and more like a man surprised the world could still hurt him. Then the surprise hardened into rage. He grabbed Asa’s shirt and slammed him into the refrigerator.
