[Attack and Escape – Part 1]

It did not come.

Keyron, with his back against the door, watched as his master's eyes widened, and grabbed his son instinctively, pulling a stumbling and shocked Kyren behind him. Instincts cultivated as a butler flared immediately as Keyron reached to grab the knife left on the chopping board on the island beside him.

A force appeared out of nowhere and shoved him forwards, and hot, excruciating pain once again started on his shoulder where his brother had stitched him up minutes ago. He could not hold back the cry of pain that escaped his lips as he crashed to the floor, but instead of letting the situation take him down, Keyron used the confusion to grab at his pocketknife kept in his pants pocket.

Reacting quickly, Keyron did not waste time to find his feet beneath him to brandish his weapon against the hostile force, and he knew he had his attacker surprised when there was a cry of shock before he kneed his attacker in the stomach. The sound of scuffles came loud near him, but Keyron's instincts was mainly to secure the safety of his master and young master –both of whom had smartly shuffled back closer to the room and doing their best not to attract too much attention while trusting Keyron to deal with the mess.

Forcing pain away from his consciousness, Keyron proceeded to engage in a fight very much like what he had faced in the street hours ago –except for the fact that they were now in a very cramped place, and he had Kyrano as backup. His brother himself was doing very well holding back the flood of men that had come crashing into the apartment, and Kyrano had some point had gotten hold of the kitchen knife on the island and was making a bloody mess of the place and the intruders.

"Keyron, do your job!" He heard his master's frustrated yell and temporarily turned his attention to find his master swinging a lamp at an advancing attacker, all the while backing both himself and his son further closer to the room where the young mistress slept.

"Get him! The Butler in White!" Keyron heard someone declare, and he found himself barreled by multiple bodies. Someone's fingers mercilessly jabbed into his now-open bullet wound, and the jolt made him drop his pocketknife as he found himself forced to the floor.

"Keyron!" Brandon's frustration could be heard clear as day.

"A little busy here if you can't see!" Keyron yelled back, fending his attackers off and doing his best to free himself from the stack of men who had come to join in trying to pin him down with their body weights. "Kyrano!"

A flash of a dark figure weaving through the crowd answered the call. Keyron's expectations for his master to be gallantly saved faltered when the blur came to a stop a few centimeters away from the attacker standing in front of his master, Kyrano's weapon raised and poised for attack, but not swinging down.

"One wrong move and your young master's brain goes splat." A cold and confident declaration cleared Keyron's momentary confusion, and Keyron shook off enough weight to raise himself just in time to see the gun barrel rested on Kyren's head as the boy was dragged out from behind his father.

"Very good. It is very satisfying to see a butler of Keyron's caliber obeying to my orders once more." The man who had managed to move through the chaos to reach Brandon's side removed his ski mask with his free hand, and revealed a familiar face that Keyron had not assumed he would be seeing again.

It was the ex-young master of the disgraced Hague family. Years back, when the Hague family had fallen from grace and crumbled into nothingness, fourteen-year-old James Hague had gone missing. The business world had assumed that the ex-young master had escaped and made another identity to live under and had not bothered trying to chase the fourteen year old to impose responsibility of what his parents did. Keyron himself had tried to collect information about James Hague, but when the boy who had changed his name into Jason Kramer flew overseas for studies, Keyron had assumed that all was well, and that James was not looking for revenge like how the butlers and servants of his old household were attempting to do.

"I admit I have never seen you around before." James Hague threw his ski mask on the low table beside him, casually withdrawing another pistol he had on him and conveniently pointing the other gun barrel on Brandon's temple. "I never thought the Greaves-Crawford Household would be so afraid of losing their star butler that they would go to the extent of finding someone to act as Keyron's double."

Double?

Knowing that fighting was futile now that his master was at gunpoint, Keyron let himself be unhanded and dragged to his feet. His hands were tied roughly before he could make any further retaliatory moves despite the fact that the only proper motivation for his obedience was the threat of the gun on his master and young master. Keyron was careful when making eye contact with his twin though, as Kyrano took a small step back and dropped his knife to the floor with a clatter to announce that he was voluntarily backing down as well.

"Whoever you are, the mistress of your Household must have put a lot of effort on you. Now that you're standing so close to each other, you two look like peas in a pod." James Hague commented casually as if there was nothing wrong with their current situation –as if he was not pointing a pair of guns on two of the most important people in the country.

"I-I just wanted to earn some money! Please spare me!" Keyron could not believe the tone of fear and trembling that his brother faked, but he was the only few who thought that way.

"You should go back and tell your darling wife that this guy is really not up to standard, Brandon. He looks like Keyron from the outside, but the inside is the furthest thing away from a butler you can find." James Hague laughed at the pathetic show of cowardice that Kyrano showed as Keyron watched his brother fall to his knees struggling against their captors to scramble towards James. Keyron had no doubts that his brother would have kissed and licked James's shoes if he could just to lend further authenticity to the act.

"I swear, I only agreed to this because I needed some money! I don't want to be caught up in your rich people conflicts! If you spare me, good sir, I promise I'll hide somewhere and you will never see me ever again." Kyrano's begging was so pathetic and cowardly that Keyron as his brother was almost suspicious of the apparent 'betrayal'.

"We bought you over, Kyrano." Keyron said sternly to lend into the act. "Behave yourself like the butler we taught you to be."

"Not when there are guys with crazy guns and knives coming at me! I didn't sign up for this kind of dangerous stunts!" Kyrano whimpered so pathetically that even Keyron felt the pure instincts of kicking the man to instill some sort of backbone in him.

"It's really amusing to see someone with the face and voice of the Butler in White being such a complete embarrassment." James was clearly happy at the shameful act being played out in front of him as he motioned to one of his henchmen. "Somebody take a video of this loser begging for his life and put it up online to let the world see the famous Butler in White from the Greaves-Crawford make a complete embarrassment of himself."

"Kyrano, behave yourself!" Keyron exclaimed in warning as his brother was dragged closer to James to make sure that the video would not catch him.

"If you want to live, you will declare yourself Keyron Reyes as you have been taught by your master and beg for your life. I will let you go if you do it on video." James declared happily, motioning for a phone to be aimed at Kyrano. "Begin your act."

There was a moment of silence as the filming began and eyes watched as Kyrano's head bowed shamefully, hiding part of his features with his hair.

"Look into the camera and say your name." James prompted.

"My name," Head lifted up to face the camera directly, and Keyron braced himself for something out of his expectations, "is Kyrano Reyes, and I am Miss Louise's butler and only her butler."

The man who had been holding onto Kyrano's restraints suddenly cried out in shock, crumpling to the floor holding on to his abdomen. Startled, there was a single moment in which everyone struggled to understand the situation, but Kyrano was already on the move.

Bare-handed, Kyrano had grabbed and twisted the gun out of James's hand pointing at Kyren. There was no practical way that he could stop James from squeezing the trigger on the other gun, and there was only one other way that the Butler in Black could react in the circumstance. While Keyron took the chance of everybody's shock to take his captors off their feet as well, Kyrano had already thrown himself in front of Keyron's master as the gunshots rang out loud.

A girlish scream came from within the closed bedroom door –the gunshots had startled the young mistress of the Greaves-Crawford Household despite what Keyron's sons must have been doing to remain hidden and waiting for their perfect time to strike after having heard sounds of fights and struggles outside the bedroom.

"Kaylen!" The loving father exclaimed in desperation even as Brandon's elbow landed on James's face, kicking the man away as Kyrano fell once more to the floor.

A bitter taste of fear that his brother might actually be dead this time from the bullets he had taken in his master's stead fueled Keyron's anger, and he was temporarily blinded to the pain of his badly bleeding shoulder from the reopened wound. Less caring of keeping things civil now that his trusty ally was downed, Keyron dived to grab the knife that his brother had left on the floor, and opened a new fountain of blood on the attacker that had been trying to stop his movements.

"KYLAR, KYVAN! SECURE KYREN AND KAYLEN!" Keyron yelled at the top of his voice as their attackers tore the doors open, and the sounds of fights began with things crashing and a poor nine year old girl being terrorized by the entire situation.

Busy with keeping the attackers off his master now that Brandon had taken an active role in holding back captors since Kyrano had been downed, Keyron could only put his utmost trust in his sons' capabilities despite the amount of captors flooding into the bedroom.

James Hague's strategy had been rough but unfortunately effective. By sending many men to flood the small apartment, there was only so many things that Keyron and Brandon could do to hold off the attackers in their immediate surrounding while the others slipped past them to get to the children. Keyron normally would not have such worries about the children's safety as long as his sons were there, but the pure number of attackers with a multiple array of weapons could not help but instill some sense of worry.

"Keyron! Go save the children!" His master yelled at him when it was becoming much clearer that the priority of the attackers were to keep them busy while sending more people to capture the young ones.

"I can't leave you alone!" Keyron hissed back, angrily putting his foot square in the chest and pushing his latest attacker back.

"We talked about this! If we were ever in real danger, you would secure the children and leave me!" Keyron could hardly believe that his master was trying to start an argument while they were busy fending off attackers themselves. From the quick side glance he gave to his master, he could already see his master roughed up and cut in some places –though there was relief when he observed that those cuts seemed minor in comparison to his bullet wound.

"They have Kylar and Kyvan. Those two were trained to put themselves on the line for your children." Keyron answered –because that was the standard answer to give as the Head Butler of the Greaves-Crawford Household. He could not afford to step into the shoes of a father to the two young butlers, not right now. Keyron's focus currently was to clear as many people as possible, ensure that his master was relatively safer before jumping into the fray to save the children. He had no space to be a father.

At least, that was until he heard another gunshot, and loud screams from the young mistress of the Greaves-Crawford Household.

"The bed! There's a trapdoor beneath the bed!" Keyron wasn't sure what to feel when he heard the shouts. "Damned this guy, he's blocking them off!"

By pure instincts, Keyron looked down on the floor where he remembered last seeing a motionless body dressed in casual clothes, and only a puddle of blood was there.

"Uncle, come with us!" There was only one person that his son could call 'uncle', and Keyron's confidence renewed that things were back in their favor now that the evidence that his brother had somehow –yet again –defied death and was back on their side and protecting the children.

"Uncle!" The exclamation seemed to have cut off by the sound of something heavy falling close. Keyron's assumption that the said trapdoor that his brother had somehow prepared in his own apartment had closed came true when the men who had been flooding into the bedroom suddenly reversed and rushed back out of the open front door.

It did not take long for a dagger-wielding Kyrano to stumble out of the bedroom, blood dripping with every step that he took.

"I leave Mr. Brandon and the rest to you." Kyrano's voice was not strong, but at least the man could still walk. A brief remembrance of how Kyrano had once looked after the disaster of the Crawford Mansion –when Kyrano had murdered almost everyone in his own master's Household in order to save his mistress –flit past Keyron's head. His brother had survived worse wounds.

It was strange, but Keyron believed with strong confidence that Kyrano could be able to survive this.

"Keep the young ones safe; we will come for you!" Brandon –despite all his anger at seeing his ex-rival in love alive in all his glory just an hour ago –knew who to put his absolute trust in, and there was a serious nod that came from the undisputed most stellar ex-butler in the world before the man charged out of the open doors.