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Chapter 22 – Truths in Shadows

The streets were unusually quiet that night.

Jake had run all the way home, his lungs burning, but it wasn’t from the run — it was from what he’d heard. The name.

“Vice.”

He sat on the floor of his room, phone in hand, shaking fingers hovering over Gor’s contact.

Should I tell him?

His mind was a storm.

Don, the boy who cried silently in class, the boy who wrote poems in the back of notebooks, the one who stood up for him when no one else would… was also a feared gang’s vice-captain?

How long had this been going on?

And why had Don never said anything?

---

Don, meanwhile, sat across from an old gang member named Blade in the backroom of an abandoned railway shed. The air smelled like old rust and cigarette ash. Dim yellow lights flickered above them.

“You’ve changed,” Blade said, taking a drag.

“We all did.”

“Not Reaper,” Blade replied. “He’s still alive.”

Don looked up.

“I saw him.”

The words dropped like a hammer.

“Where?”

“Not far. A few blocks down at the old market. He’s rebuilding.”

Don stood, breath short. “He’s back?”

Blade smirked. “And he wants his Vice. The gang’s calling again. The brothers… they remember you.”

But Don’s face didn’t light up. It fell deeper into shadow.

“Do they remember what it cost?”

---

That night, Jake couldn’t sleep.

The phrase echoed in his ears like a broken song.

> “Vice is back.”

He remembered that night in eighth grade when Don disappeared after a parent-teacher meeting. Everyone thought he transferred.

No.

He’d been sent to boarding school.

That’s when it must’ve started.

When Aarya died.

When Don vanished from their lives and reappeared colder, sharper.

Not broken.

Changed.

But why never tell us?

Jake couldn’t hold it in any longer. He texted Gor.

> “We need to talk. Tomorrow. Alone.”

---

At school the next day, Don showed up early.

Eyes heavy, skin pale, uniform wrinkled.

Jake was already at the banyan tree.

The same one they used to climb in childhood. The same one where they built “missions” to save the world from aliens using twigs and paper swords.

Gor joined moments later, quiet.

Jake spoke first. “We followed you, Don.”

Don didn’t react.

Jake’s voice cracked. “We heard them. Calling you Vice.”

The silence stretched like glass about to break.

“You lied to us,” Gor added softly.

Don looked down. “I never lied.”

Jake stepped forward. “Then tell us.”

Don exhaled, looking up at the sun bleeding through leaves. “You wouldn’t have understood.”

“Try us,” Jake snapped.

And so, Don told them.

---

Not everything — not the darkest parts.

But enough.

The gang. The title. Reaper. His role.

Not how he fought. Not how he bled.

Just that once… he belonged to something darker. And maybe still did.

Jake couldn’t breathe.

Gor was frozen.

“You were the one who beat those seniors,” Gor whispered. “That wasn’t luck, was it?”

Don said nothing.

“And that night we thought you were studying—" Jake trailed off.

“I was fighting,” Don finished.

---

No one spoke for a long time.

Then Jake said, “Why stay friends with us if you had that whole life?”

Don looked at both of them, eyes raw.

“Because when I was with you… I forgot I was part of it.”

His voice broke.

“You two were my escape.”

---

Gor stepped forward.

And hugged him.

Jake didn’t.

Not yet.

But he didn’t walk away either.

And that… meant something.

---

End of Chapter 22

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