Chapter Text
There were plenty of rumors about Jax Martin.
He was a burly man with scars on his face. He was missing several teeth. Part of his ear was notched from a nasty shootout. There wasn’t an inch of him that wasn’t covered in ink; badges of honor from either crushing an organization or crushing a skull. The men and women who served him were hand-picked from across the world so that they could lay down their lives in his stead. His pockets were deeper than the trenches beneath the sea.
He had beaten ten gang members on his own without any weapons.
He had a new piece of arm candy every week.
He could out-eat a food critic, out-gamble a casino, out-play a chess master, among other things.
And, most importantly, he had a billion dollar bounty on his head.
In the underground world, Jax Martin was spoken of like a myth made flesh. A perfect embodiment of everything a mafia boss was supposed to be: ruthless, untouchable, larger than life. But the problem with all those stories was simple. None of them were ever proven nor denied.
No one could agree on who had actually seen him. Who had spoken to him. And as those questions spread, something unsettling became clear: most people hadn’t met him at all. Those who had were said to keep their mouths shut permanently… or disappear entirely.
Soon, even his existence came into question. Maybe he was just a story the underworld created to give chaos a hierarchy. Maybe the bounty was nothing more than decoration. No one like that could possibly be real. Surely no one can be that dangerous, that influential, that expensive.
And yet, Jax Martin, in the flesh, sat comfortably in his armchair, a glass of whisky resting beside him, fully aware that rumors rarely came from nothing.
“Someone’s put another hit on you,” His secretary, Kinger, said casually dropping another file on his desk.
Jax paused, letting the words settle. That made it two attempts in a single week. People were getting restlessly impatient it seems.
“Don’t worry about it,” he replied calmly. “I’ll deal with it.”
He always did.
This wasn’t unusual. Not a single day passed without someone trying to put a price on Jax's head. With a bounty that massive, it was practically inevitable.
The river beneath the city was already littered with what remained of those who had tried. Broken jaws, shattered ribs, snapped necks. The silent proof of how each encounter ended. Even those skilled enough to slip past the JAF guards never lasted long once they faced him directly.
That much, at least, wasn't a rumor. Jax’s fists were said to feel like steel battering rams in motion and everyone who survived him confirmed it in their own way. If they survived at all.
“It’s not so simple this time,” Kinger sighed. “It’s the Circus.”
Jax paused mid-sip, then lowered his glass with a slight frown. The whiskey had a sharper bite than he remembered. “The Circus? Who’s paying them that kind of money? They don’t come cheap.”
“Maybe the other gangs finally pooled their resources,” Kinger suggested.
“So what? Everyone chips in just to split my bounty afterward?” Jax let out a short breath, almost amused. “Oh yeah, I’d love to see how that ends.”
Kinger only shrugged. “Possible. Or they’re acting on their own. Either way, your head’s worth too much for people to think logically. I’ll arrange the usual precautions. We will relocate tomorrow evening.”
“I’m boreddd. I’m getting tired of this game,” Jax groaned under his breath.
He idly spun the ring on his finger. The one his father had left him before stepping away from the JAF entirely. “Half of me wants to just step out in daylight and open the doors. Let them come all at once. If they want the seat that badly, they’ll need to crawl over each other for it.”
“Not wise, sir.”
A faint pause. Then Jax exhaled. “Relax. That was a joke. I’m not that reckless. The JAF matters more than my boredom.”
He finished the rest of the drink in one steady motion. The burn lingered longer than expected, but his expression didn’t change. Waste wasn’t in his habits neither was hesitation.
When the glass emptied, he leaned back with a slow sigh, letting his shoulders drop. The ring turned once more between his fingers, the blue stone catching the light again.
“Guess,” he said quietly, “the river’s about to get crowded again.”
Jax had never stayed in one place long enough for it to feel like home. A moving target was harder to track, and his people were far too cautious. Borderline obsessive, really to ever let him argue about it.
Tonight was no different. He had been relocated again, tucked into a random suite of a five-star hotel under yet another fabricated name.
No one at the front desk would ever guess that the quiet young man checking in was one of the most dangerous figures in the underworld. Jax didn’t look like the kind of person who inspired fear. His guards, however, did. All of them were large, disciplined, all sharp edges and dark suits, each carrying heavy canvas bags slung over their shoulders. No one needed to ask what was inside. Everyone simply chose not to.
The receptionist slid over the keycards with practiced politeness. “You’re all checked in. Enjoy your stay.”
Jax winked and the woman with a smile. She flushed almost immediately and looked away.
He and Kinger took the elevator up.
“We’ll be stationed in the rooms beside yours and the stairwells,” Kinger said as he tapped the keycard against the door. The lock clicked open.
Jax stepped inside, dropped his bags, and immediately collapsed onto the bed like the weight of the world had been reduced to pure exhaustion.
“Yeah, yeah, whatever” he replied lazily, waving his hand to shoo the older man away. “Same, same routine.”
Kinger didn’t acknowledge the dismissal. “We’ll also have people on the ground and in the surrounding buildings watching the windows.”
“Mhm,” Jax hummed, half-listening.
The room itself was too clean, too quiet. It bored him almost instantly. Part of him almost wished an assassin would show up just to break the monotony just to make things interesting for a few minutes. It had been too long since anything had actually challenged him.
Most of the time, it wasn’t even a fight. It was a statement. One punch, and it was over.
“While you’re here,” Kinger continued, “you should really start deciding on a right-hand man. You’ve delayed this for years.”
Jax rolled onto his side, staring at nothing in particular. Kinger always said the same thing. And Jax always gave the same answer.
“I keep offering you the job, and you keep refusing,” he said.
Kinger gave the younger man a small, patient smile. “I’m aware. But I’m not suitable. I may handle myself well enough in combat, but I’m not fast enough anymore to guarantee your safety if things go wrong.”
Jax had heard this speech so many times it practically echoed in his sleep. “I still don’t want anyone elseeee,” he whined like a child.
“You say that because you haven’t actually tried looking,” Kinger replied calmly. “There are plenty of capable candidates. I’ve already taken the liberty of gathering some options.”
He walked to the desk and placed a thick stack of papers down with a soft thud.
“Resumes,” he added. “People I believe would be fit for the role. Go through them tonight. Even narrowing it down by half would be progress.”
Jax turned his head slightly, pouting at Kinger like a difficult child. “And if I don’t?”
“It’s for your own good, sir.”
Kinger turned toward the door. “Enjoy the reading. I’ll have the chefs prepare your dinner.”
The moment the door clicked shut, Jax pressed his face into the bedding and let out a long, frustrated groan. This was not how he intended to spend the night.
With visible reluctance, he pushed himself up, slid into the chair, and dragged a portion of the stack closer. One by one, he began flipping through them.
A plain, forgettable face stared back from the first photo. Jax skimmed the qualifications, barely registering them before tossing the sheet aside.
Forty useless men followed.
Dinner arrived and left without producing a single worthwhile candidate.
Eventually, Jax gave up entirely.
A right-hand man couldn’t be chosen like this. Flattened onto paper, stripped of presence. It had to be someone real. Someone who could stand beside him when everything collapsed, not just in theory but in the moment itself, y'know?
Someone who would stay beside him when things turned ugly. Someone who wouldn’t flinch at the end, even if the world bled out around them. Someone who might even smile through it, eyes still burning, like the chaos was just another beginning.
That kind of person couldn’t be trained into existence. They either were it… or they weren’t.
And none of the names on the desk came close.
Jac exhaled, slow and heavy. He already knew Kinger wouldn’t like his answer tomorrow. They would start over, probably from scratch again.
He turned over in bed, letting the exhaustion settle into his bones. There was no point forcing it tonight. It would sort itself out eventually. It always did.
So he closed his eyes and sleep took him silently.
But not for long.
His body moved before his mind fully caught up. It was pure reflex. He caught a wrist dropping out of the darkness and twisted it hard to the side just as a suppressed gun fired. The sound was muted, almost polite, but the bullet wasn’t. It buried itself into the pillow where his head had been a heartbeat earlier.
A shadow sat on the edge of his bed, half-lost in the dark.
For a fraction of a second, they both froze.
Then they both pulled back.
Jax hurriedly grabbed the shotgun under his pillow and hid behind the bedframe. His ears rang loud, he has never been this close to death's door than right now. He blindly shot forward but unlike his perpetrator his gun had no silencer. The gunshot echoed all throughout the hotel walls. Undoubtedly alerting his guards.
But barely a second after, another attempt was made, another bullet returned to Jax, barely grazing his cheek, cutting shallow but immediate, heat blooming across his skin as blood followed. Jax's head snapped slightly with the impact, just enough to register how close death had been sitting beside him.
This was no amateur. This person could kill him.
“Sir!” voices shouted from the hallway. His unfortunate men had arrived. The locks turned but nothing happened. Something was preventing them, the assassin had bolted the door shut.
Another bullet flew by his head. Jax threw a pillow on the assassin's direction. A second of distraction was all he needed to tackle them to the ground with him. Jax forcefully pried the pistol away from the assassin. The assassin kicked Jax's gun out of his hand. What followed was a mad scuffle.
Jax drove forward, trying to pin them, but the assassin twisted sharply, refusing to stay down, shoving at his chest to break the angle. Jax caught their arm and tried to lock it, but they jerked free with a violent wrench and rolled, dragging him with them for a moment before slipping out. The carpet scraped under both of them as they scrambled, trading positions in quick bursts; Jax trying to stabilize, the assassin effortlessly breaking rhythm, never letting him settle into control.
A knee came up into Jax's ribs. He exhaled sharply but didn’t loosen his grip, instead shifting his weight and forcing them back down again, only for the assassin to twist and slam an elbow into his side in return. Neither of them was clean, neither of them was slowing down. And finally, someone matched his level.
Jax used the punches that knocked his opponent's down, but the assassin deflected it all. A twist of the wrist here, a subtle shift of weight there, just enough to bleed the force off Jax’s strikes and send them harmlessly past their target. And to add salt to the wound, the assassin hits hard. A jab to the solar plexus that stole air. A sharp strike near the neck that made vision stutter. A quick, merciless hit that forced Jax to tighten instinctively before he even realized where it had landed.
Every time Jax pushed forward, convinced he’d finally caught them, the assassin slipped away like water through fingers.
Who was this person? And how had such a person flown under his radar?
Under the dim spill of his hotel light leaking into the room, Jax tried to take them in piece by piece. Black clothing and a ceramic doll with a face of some kind of a jester.
Outside the door, the situation was getting louder.
His guards were forcing it open. “Boss! Boss!” voices shouted through the gap as bodies slammed into reinforced wood. The lock held on, It would take time, more time than Jax liked. He was on his own for now.
The assassin struck again.
A palm whipped into the side of Jax's head. Pain exploded behind his eyes, his vision doubled. His hearing rang, sharp and immediate, nausea rising hot in his throat.
Jax swallowed it down hard and answered with a punch of his own. It connected with the mask and crack split through the ceramic. The assassin didn’t retreat fast enough. For a moment, everything stopped. The broken pieces fell slowly, clinking softly as they hit the carpet and underneath, the face was exposed.
‘A woman.’ Jax thought dumbly. With pale skin, untouched by warmth. She had such a blush on her cheek. Hot, red and permanent. A smear of blood at the lips where ceramic had cut them. Wisps of black hair spilling slightly from beneath the hood, loose strands catching what little light the room offered.
The ringing in Jax’s had nothing to do with the adrenaline anymore but everything with the woman in front of him. What a shame really, that such a pretty face was hidden from him for so so long.
Jax hesitated, not in movement, but in thought. His grave mistake, because in a blink of an eye, a cold knife was pressed against his neck. Jax shivered but not from fear but because-
Several JAF guards burst through the door at last, the deadbolt finally giving way beneath repeated impacts. Guns were raised immediately, every barrel pointed at the assassin, but nobody dared fire. The assassin had positioned herself perfectly, one arm locked around Jax while a knife rested against his throat. The blade had already nicked skin. A thin line of blood slid down Jax’s neck and disappeared beneath the collar of his nightshirt.
“You’re going to let me leave,” the assassin said.
Her voice was calm and unwavering, as though she wasn't surrounded by armed men ready to shoot her dead.
“Take your hands off our boss,” Kinger snapped. The safety on his gun clicked off.
The assassin didn’t even look at him. “You’re going to let me leave,” she repeated. “Or I’ll push this blade a little deeper and your boss dies. My reflexes are fast enough. Even if you managed to shoot me, I could kill him before I hit the ground.”
“You,” Kinger growled. “You’re not in a position to make demands. Drop the knife or we’ll put enough bullets in you to make sure they never find all the pieces.”
“Let her go,” Jax said.
The room froze.
Kinger blinked. Several guards looked at Jax as though he had suddenly started speaking another language.
“Sir?” one of them asked.
“I’m fine,” Jax said.
The assassin’s grip tightened slightly. Then Jax glanced at her from the corner of his eye and smiled.
“You know,” he said conversationally, “you’re actually the first person who’s ever gotten this close.”
The assassin answered by pressing the knife harder against his skin. More blood trickled down Jax’s throat, staining white fabric red.
“Open the window,” the assassin ordered.
Jax raised an eyebrow at his men.
“You heard The Lady.”
The guards hesitated.
Kinger looked seconds away from outright refusing, but eventually his jaw tightened and he nodded. One of the men moved forward and unlocked the window. The glass slid open. Instantly, the sounds of St. Louis poured into the room; car horns, distant laughter, music drifting from somewhere below. A cool breeze swept through the suite, stirring the curtains.
“Remember,” the assassin warned, her eyes never leaving the guns trained on her, “if any of you shoot me, your boss dies first.”
“They won’t shoot,” Jax smirked. “I told them not to.”
“I wasn’t talking to you!” the assassin hissed. Irritation finally cracked through her composure. “The only reason you’re alive right now is luck. Don’t think there’ll be a second chance!”
“But what if I want there to be?”
The knife at his throat should have been the thing occupying his attention. The blood should have been. The near-death experience definitely should have been but Instead, all he could think about was the warmth pressed against his back.
The assassin was warm. Dangerously warm, and now that Jax had noticed it, he couldn’t stop noticing it.
“Shut up,” the assassin muttered.
Then everything happened at once. The pressure against Jax’s wrists disappeared, the knife vanished from his throat, the warmth disappeared, the scent of leather and gunpowder vanished with it.
Jax turned around just in time to see a black figure launching backward through the open window.
“Shoot her!” someone shouted.
Gunfire erupted instantly. Bullets chased the assassin through the night as she fell toward the sea of lights below. Sparks flew where rounds struck concrete and steel. For a moment, it looked impossible that anyone could survive the drop.
But then the assassin flicked her wrist and a grappling hook shot outward, the hook caught an open windowsill several floors beneath. The line snapped taut, and the assassin swung through the air in a clean arc and disappeared through the opening without so much as looking back.
The city below swallowed her whole.
“God damn it!” Kinger cursed. He rushed to the window and looked down. “That woman! Sir, we’ll send teams to every exit. Front entrance, back entrance, roof access. She won’t make it out alive! A-”
“No.”
The single word stopped everyone.
Kinger slowly turned around.
“No?” he repeated.
Jax's gaze remained fixed on the empty night outside.
“You’ll let her go," he ordered quietly. “And you’ll find out who she is for me.”
Kinger stared.
Then he stared harder.
“JAX! Have you completely lost your mind?!”
“That was a Circus assassin!” he continued. “An assassin! She was sent here to kill you. We should be hunting her down right now before she tries again.”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe?” Kinger nearly choked. “This is exactly why I wanted you to choose a right-hand man years ago. Situations like this are why you need someone trustworthy at your side. If only you had actually bothered to look at those resumes-”
Jax laughed.
The sound echoed through the room.
“But I did choose someone.”
The room fell silent.
Kinger narrowed his eyes. He looked thoroughly unimpressed.
In fact, Jax was fairly certain the only thing stopping him from launching into a lengthy lecture was the decades of self-control he had cultivated while working under the JAF.
“Jax,” Kinger said carefully, each word clipped and precise, “I would greatly appreciate it if you refrained from making jokes during a situation of this magnitude.”
“Relax. I’m not joking.”
Jax reached up and touched the cut on his neck. His fingertips came away slick with blood. Without a second thought, he smeared the crimson across his already stained nightshirt and glanced down at it with mild amusement.
He couldn't stop smiling.
The whole situation was absurd.
For years Kinger had hounded him about finding a suitable right-hand man. For years Jax had rejected candidate after candidate, unable to find anyone who measured up. Every resume blurred together. Every recommendation felt inadequate. Not a single person had possessed that indescribable quality he was looking for.
And then tonight, completely out of nowhere, the answer had climbed through his hotel window and nearly slit his throat.
If that wasn't fate, Jax didn't know what was.
“Well,” Kinger said slowly, clearly regretting asking the question already, “if you've truly chosen someone, then who is it? We'll need to bring them into the organization immediately. After, of course, we've dealt with the assassin who just attempted to murder you.”
“Oh no,” Jax said. “That won't be necessary.”
Knov narrowed his eyes. “What won't be necessary?”
“Catching her..”
The silence that followed was painful. Several guards visibly looked away. One of them pinched the bridge of his nose, another stared at the floor wishing he could've quit his job when he had the chance. .
Kinger himself looked as though he had just aged ten years.
“Sir,” he said carefully.
“Yes?”
“Please tell me you're not saying what I think you're saying.”
Jax’s grin widened.
“I think it's fairly obvious.”
The color drained from Kinger’s face.
“No.”
“Oh yes.”
“Absolutely not.”
Jax bent down and picked up one of the shattered pieces of the jester mask from the carpet. The ceramic fragment fit neatly in his palm. He brushed his thumb across the painted surface, tracing the curve of the cracked button eye.
What a fascinating lady.
Not only had she bypassed JAF security, not only had she infiltrated a five-star hotel, not only had she nearly succeeded in killing Jax herself.
But the little lady had managed to do all of that while remaining completely unknown.
No hint of her existence until the knife was already against Jax’s throat.
How could Jax possibly let someone like that go?
“What better choice could there be?” Jax asked. “The lady outsmarted the boss of the JAF, fought him evenly, escaped an entire squad of armed guards, and vanished into the city before anyone could stop her.”
Kinger stared.
Jax continued.
“If anything, those sound like qualifications.”
“Those were crimes.”
Jax laughed.
The sound echoed through the ruined hotel suite.
Then he looked down at the broken jester mask resting in his hand and felt his grin return.
“Oh, I definitely picked someone,” he said.
Kinger looked like he was moments away from retiring.
Jax rolled the mask fragment between his fingers and tilted his head.
“Tell me, Kinger.”
The older man immediately looked suspicious.
“What?”
Jax’s smile turned sharp.
“How do you feel about hunting Jesters?”