PART 06

Anti Hero

The Grave Legion Dug

Sixth installment of the “Anti Hero” series.

A dangerously smooth continuation of chaos — crafted in collaboration with the ever-unpredictable, Meta Marvelia, the only mind reckless enough to keep feeding this universe exactly what it wants and what it shouldn’t have at the same time.

And trust me… we’re only getting louder from here.

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Summary of the previous parts…

Keane was Legion’s perfect weapon — cold, lethal, untouchable — until Jasmine ruined him. She disappeared without warning, leaving him tortured by Legion for her escape. Months later, he found her again in a city drowning in neon, blood, and secrets… alive, powerful, and hiding an entire war behind those beautiful eyes.

Their reunion became a dangerous spiral of obsession, manipulation, and desire. Jasmine kissed him like a lover and lied to him like an enemy, pulling him deeper into a game he no longer understood. Even after drugging him to stop him, Keane dragged himself through pain and blood to follow her to the docks.

Then the truth destroyed everything. In the middle of a brutal gunfight, Keane shot down Arkan — only to learn seconds later that Arkan was his brother. And Jasmine knew.

Now standing in the wreckage of betrayal and death, Keane drags Jasmine away at gunpoint with only one question left between them: “How long were you planning to lie to me?”

Epilogue — Before the Warehouse.

Jasmine POV

I drugged Keane.

The realization sat in my chest like shattered glass.

Rain hammered against the windshield as my car tore through the sleeping city, engine screaming beneath me while red lights bled across the wet streets in violent streaks. My hands tightened around the steering wheel hard enough to ache.

I drugged the man I love using the exact things I learned from loving him.

The way his body had staggered. The confusion in his eyes. The split second where he looked at me — not like a soldier, not like Legion’s executioner — but like someone trying to understand why the only person he trusted had betrayed him — again.

I forced the accelerator down harder. The engine roared.

No turning back now…

The penthouse was supposed to hold him long enough for me to reach Legion first. Long enough to finish this before he woke up — before he came after me.

But Keane was never someone walls could contain for long. I knew it.

Streetlights flashed across the windshield in rapid pulses, illuminating the blood drying across the steering wheel.

Every second felt stolen.

Because the moment he realized what I’d done —

A sharp breath left me.

He is going to hate me for this.

But I’d already decided which kind of death I preferred.

I tightened my grip around the steering wheel until my knuckles burned white. Headlights smeared across the rain-soaked streets like bleeding stars.

A horn blared.

I barely heard it.

Because all I could still see was him. Looking at me like betrayal physically hurt. Like he still couldn’t understand how I could kiss him with one hand and ruin him with the other.

I swallowed — hard.

“Don’t come after me…” I whispered to the ghost of him already chasing me.

A traffic light flashed red.

I drove through it.

The tires screeched hard enough to shake the car as rainwater sprayed violently behind me.

Two passports rested on the back seat carefully wrapped in the brown envelope.

My phone, kept beside me in the charging port, suddenly vibrated. A text notification appeared on the screen.

Unknown ID.

20 minutes to Warehouse. Chief moving west.

I changed gears. The engine growled beneath me. The car trembled from the speed as the needle climbed — 80. 100. 120.

Leave if Revenant enters.

He’s not Revenant, he’s Keane.

Jasmine, don’t behave like a fucking R&B chick if he comes. Save yourself first.

You don’t know about us, Selena.

This was supposed to be easy. Get close. Gain his trust. Make him dependent. Retrieve information. Destroy Legion from the inside.

Falling for him was never part of the plan.

Loving him was the first operational failure I never tried to correct.

And this time — I’m not leaving him alone.

“Explain before I kill you.” My voice was cold. Controlled. I was returned to the way I was before I met her. Before Jasmine.

I would always be the Legion.

Part 06 | Jasmine POV

The atmosphere in the car grew dark, cold, almost ominous. I could feel the blood in his eyes. He looked the same as when I first met him — predatory.

I was searching for words that might make him spare me. Little did I know, getting through to him this time would be worse than the first.

“Keane,” words left my mouth without thinking, “I — I can explain but… will you be able to take it?” Words kept catching in my throat.

He slammed the magazine in and pulled the slide back with a violent metallic snap. For a second, he just stared at me — jaw tight, eyes hollowed out by betrayal — before shoving the barrel against my head hard enough to make me stumble back.

“Do you have any idea,” he whispered, “how many chances I gave you before this?”

He stared at me. “Last chance.”

I swallowed. I could see he was blinded. Blinded by the Legion.

Keane. Fight it. Please.

But I couldn’t voice my thoughts out. He’d kill me this very instant. I have to endure this. I have to find a way. To bring him back.

My last hope.

My head was crushed against his gun hard enough to make my vision blur. Pain exploded along my cheekbone as the city lights outside smeared into blurred streaks of gold and red. His grip never shook.

He was the best Legion had ever produced.

“Are you sure Legion really calls you the best?”

The kind of man trained to break people without wasting movement. Even pinned half-sideways against the door, I could feel it in the terrifying calm of him.

Still.

Merciless.

He pushed the barrel harder.

Pain bloomed across my temple.

“You speak too much for someone who’s at gunpoint.”

The car smelled of leather, gunpowder, and rain dragged in from outside. Somewhere in the distance, sirens bled into the night, but inside the vehicle there was only the sound of my uneven breathing and the quiet click of the pistol in his other hand.

He leaned closer, voice low enough to belong to the dark itself.

“Got it. Au revo…”

Made by Author using AI.

I opened my mouth to speak but my voice almost failed me. I wasn’t afraid of the gun, the terrifying part was not knowing if he still loved me enough to hesitate.

“A-Arkan.” I spoke before he could complete his sentence.

He released the pressure on my head. But the gun still hovered inches from my forehead, like a single wrong word would make it go off.

“You goddamn woman.” Rage cracked through his composure so violently even I felt it. “You can’t fuck around playing with people forever.”

Better you hate me alive than obey them dead.

“You think any of this could’ve pierced that thick skull of yours?”

“JASMINE!”

“Keane — YOU!”

I lunged before fear could stop me and slammed my hand against the gun, forcing the barrel off-center just enough to steal a second of space between death and breath.

I took it anyway.

“Strip away those Legion badges from your shoulders…” My voice shook, but I forced every word through, my eyes never leaving his. “WHO ARE YOU?”

There’s no stopping now…

“Huh…” A bitter laugh escaped me. “Do people out there even KNOW YOUR name?”

His stare sharpened.

“Forget that. Do you even know what food you like?”

The silence tightened.

“What kind of music you hate?”

A muscle in his jaw twitched.

“What your real birthday is?”

The air inside the car turned suffocating.

“Legion took everything from you…” I whispered, staring straight into him now. “And you still kneel.”

The gun jerked.

A deafening shot exploded through the car.

Pain tore through my hand as the bullet ripped across my palm, hot and violent, spraying blood against the window beside me. The sound rang through the cramped space like a grenade blast, leaving only the sharp whine in my ears and the ragged sound of my breathing.

Fuck.

He went too far. A strange, sick feeling spread through my abdomen. Something hot slid down my cheek. I wasn’t sure whether it was blood or tears.

I didn’t look at my hand. Didn’t even flinch.

I kept staring straight at Keane.

Straight through him.

Like the wound meant nothing compared to what I was trying to drag out of the grave they buried inside him.

The ringing in the car swallowed everything for a second except his breathing.

For one frozen second, neither of us moved.

My eyes dropped briefly to the blood running across my palm. Then back to him.

“That’s it?” I smirked. “Revenant’s getting soft.”

Blood slipped between my fingers.

Funny.

Even now, if he had to destroy something tonight, I’d still rather it be me.

“YOU BLOODY BITCH — ”

The words broke out of him raw.

“SHUT UP!”

The entire car shook.

He grabbed me by the throat so violently my body slammed sideways across the seat.

“You think — ” His grip tightened. “You think you know me?”

Breath uneven.

“After lying to me?” His jaw flexed hard.

“They were all I had.”

Something ugly crossed his face. Something frightened.

“Hahh… t-they were all…” I forced myself to look at him. “…you were allowed to have.” Black spots crowded my vision.

The edges of the car blurred. Oxygen starved thoughts into strange places. My throat burned. Breath came in broken pieces.

And somehow — mint.

God.

Why the hell was I thinking about mint?

And suddenly —

“Keane…,” I stared at him across the sink, genuinely horrified. “You don’t brush your teeth before sleeping?”

He stood in the dim kitchen light, sleeves rolled halfway up, expression unreadable.

“No need.”

“You’re impossible,” I muttered.

He tilted his head slightly, watching me with that quiet stillness that should’ve felt dangerous. Somehow, around me, it never did.

“Legion never required it,” he said after a pause.

God.

I disappeared into the bathroom and came back holding a toothbrush.

“Here.” I pushed it lightly against his chest. “Every night. And morning too.” He looked down at it like I had handed him a weapon he didn’t know how to use.

“You’re serious?”

I crossed my arms.

“I’m not kissing a man who doesn’t brush his teeth.”

He blinked once.

“I’ll brush them three times a day.”

I laughed so hard I nearly dropped the glass in my hand.

Idiot.

Click.

The grip loosened a bit. And his finger shifted against the trigger — deliberately.

Was I hallucinating from intense pain? Bitch, breathe.

If I stop now…

“And then you think I’d tell you all that, and then what? You’d suddenly care? You’re conditioned to obey your bullshit Legion.”

He slammed me against the car window glass and my head banged on the glass.

“Shoot me. NOW.” I hissed through shaking breaths “Do it.” I spoke with all that’s left in my body, “…but remember…”

I raised my voice as much as I could and pointed a finger at him. “You are a FUCKING LOSER. You don’t even know who the fuck YOU are.”

His hand closed around my throat so fast my head slammed back against the window again. Pain shot through my spine as his fingers tightened, cutting the air from my lungs in relentless, crushing pressure.

Fucking hell.

I clawed at his wrist, choking on a breath that wouldn’t come, vision blurring at the edges. But even then, even with tears burning my eyes and panic tearing through my chest, I forced the words out.

“D-Do you remember…” I gasped, voice splintering beneath his grip. “…how you came to the Legion?”

His grip faltered.

Just enough for air to tear back into my lungs in a violent rush.

I doubled over instantly, coughing hard, the sound raw and broken as I dragged breath after breath into my burning chest. My throat felt shredded. Every inhale stabbed.

The pistol never left my head. But his grip had slipped.

A heavy, suffocating silence ran across us.

The windshield reflected us back in broken pieces.

Then I looked up at him.

Keane had gone still.

It wasn’t the cold stillness of a Legion soldier awaiting orders, it was the kind of stillness people fall into when an old wound is suddenly cut back open.

Keane.

“Don’t you want to know?” I wiped the blood from my mouth and met his eyes. Keane stood frozen, pistol slowly lowering as doubt quietly began tearing through him.

Silence.

“46.5475°N, 7.9850°E,” I said in a hoarse voice.

Blood slid down my throat and vanished into soaked velvet. Damp hair clung to my face.

Great.

Mascara ruined.

Near death.

Very sexy.

His eyes narrowed and stared at me directly.

“Was he…” His jaw tightened violently like the words themselves disgusted him. “Was Arkan my real brother? Was he trying to save me?”

For the first time that night, the gun lowered completely.

“...if you want the truth, drive.”

Keane didn’t move, didn’t even blink.

“That’s where they buried your life.”

I know this truth would freeze something inside you. But don’t shut me out now. Trust me.

Rain tapped quietly against the windshield. The gun rested loosely in his hand now.

For the first time ever since I met him — he looked lost.

His stare turned unfocused. Like he’d just heard a voice he wasn’t supposed to remember.

Slowly — he reached for the ignition. The engine came alive.

Good. You’re still in there. Pain is the only language you’d ever been taught.

Sweat clung to his skin beneath the black shirt, darkened further by rainwater and blood that didn’t belong entirely to him. His sleeves were still rolled unevenly from the warehouse.

One knuckle was split open. Blood streaked across his hand where he gripped the gun tightly again.

His jaw tightened.

“If this is another lie…” Something violent lived behind his eyes — barely leashed.

Maybe it was.

Maybe dragging him toward ghosts and graves and blood-soaked truths was just another way of ruining him with my own hands.

Adrenaline still lived inside him like a second heartbeat.

Jesus.

Beautiful in the way storms were beautiful — the kind that ruined cities and still made people stand at the window to watch.

I bit my lower lip.

Help me.

My hand throbbed violently. Blood kept slipping between my fingers, dripping onto the seat in slow crimson lines. My cheek burned where he slammed me into the glass. My throat still ached from his grip.

But I kept staring anyway. Straight into the wreckage of him.

If this breaks you beyond repair —

Then fine.

“I’ll pull the trigger myself.”

Previously…

“Woah, look at you… looking like a beautifully loaded weapon,” Selena said through her glasses, brown curls falling over the laptop she’d practically been fused to for days.

“Hmm… really? Maybe I should do smokey eyes… would look sexier.” I curled my lips at the mirror, makeup scattered across the table.

“Enough,” she muttered, eyes still locked on the screen. “Go. I sent Revenant’s location to your phone.”

“How long to decrypt the files?”

“A week, or maybe less. Stick to the plan.”

I slipped a compact pistol into the back pocket of my jeans and tucked a silver switchblade into my bra. Then headed straight for the door before stopping briefly.

“Fyi,” I said over my shoulder, “his name is Keane.”

Selena looked up this time.

“See you soon.”

The car pulled into the night. The city disappeared behind us. Rain swallowed the road. Some things only survive after breaking.

Keane drove with one hand.

Toward the grave Legion buried. Toward Arkan.

Toward the beginning of everything Keane was never supposed to remember.

Selena, I hope you’ve finished reconstructing the files from Legion’s wiped servers in the time I bought you. Don’t let Arkan’s sacrifice go to waste.

Get ready to welcome us to file 47-A.

I’m on a mission.

And even if I have to burn the world for him, then I’ll choose where the fire spreads.

Maybe, I was supposed to be a good person.

♪ Play: Candy. ♪ And let it sit. — Author

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