Total pages in book: 57
Estimated words: 54871 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 274(@200wpm)___ 219(@250wpm)___ 183(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 54871 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 274(@200wpm)___ 219(@250wpm)___ 183(@300wpm)
He's never faced something like me.
The helicopter grows louder, but I calculate distances automatically. The only viable landing zone is the runway near the preparation pavilion—nearly a mile through dense jungle. Even at a dead sprint, whoever's on that aircraft won't reach us for at least twelve minutes.
This will be over in three.
I keep circling, and when I speak, I speak in Russian. His mother tongue. The language of his nightmares.
"Ty dumal, chto uydyosh', Dimitri?" The words slide out smooth as silk. My Russian is perfect. "I'll tear out your heart and make you watch me eat it."
His smile flickers.
I continue in Russian. "First I'll cut off your balls. Slowly. With a dull knife. Then I'll shove them down your throat and watch you choke."
I keep moving, a slow orbit that forces him to turn, to track me, to take his eyes off Scarletta for seconds at a time.
"You trafficked children for fifteen years. I know every name. Every face. When I'm done with you, they'll only find pieces."
Volk's jaw tightens. The knife shifts in his grip.
"Your sister's still alive, yes? In Moscow?" I let the words hang between us like a blade. "After I send her your head, I'll visit her. And I will make her balance your scale. Because nothing I do to you now, will ever be enough to erase the sin of touching her."
I nod my head at Scarletta, cowering in fear and covered in blood in the dirt.
Volk lunges, and the world slows to crystalline clarity.
His knife hand arcs toward my throat—standard prison-yard slash, predictable and desperate.
I pivot left, letting the blade whisper past my carotid by less than an inch, and my right hand closes around his wrist like a vise.
The joint doesn't break cleanly. I feel the tendons stretch, the ligaments tear, the small bones grinding against each other as I twist. The sound is wet, organic, deeply satisfying.
The knife drops into the mud.
Volk screams.
I'm hard.
Rock fucking hard.
My cock swinging heavy between my thighs as I drive my knee into his solar plexus. The air leaves his lungs in a whoosh and he doubles over, and I bring my elbow down on the back of his skull with enough force to split skin.
Blood.
His blood this time.
It sprays across my chest, hot and copper-bright, and my erection throbs in response.
This is what I am.
This is what I've always been.
The mask of civilization, the suits, and board meetings, and calculated charm—all of it falls away when I'm doing what I was born to do.
Volk tries to rally. Credit where it's due—the man survived for thirty years in the trafficking underworld, eliminated witnesses, evaded every law enforcement agency on three continents. He knows how to fight dirty.
His thumb goes for my eye socket.
I catch his hand and break two fingers, the bones snapping like dry twigs. Then I break two more. His screams echo off the bamboo walls, beautiful and raw, and Scarletta is sobbing somewhere behind me but I can't focus on that right now.
Can't focus on anything but this.
I drag Volk to the center platform, to the eye bolts I installed for restraining Scarletta. The irony isn't lost on me.
My cock bobs against my thigh with every step, flushed and leaking, and I don't care.
Don't care that she's watching.
Don't care about the helicopter getting closer.
Don't care about anything except making this last.
"You thought the children would forget?" I hiss in his ear as I force him face-down onto the platform.
I secure his wrists to the bolts with the leather cuffs meant for my little writer. They're too tight, but it doesn't matter. He's not going to need circulating blood for much longer.
The hunting knife lies in the mud where he dropped it. I retrieve it, test the edge against my thumb. Sharp enough. Barely.
A dull knife will hurt more.
I start with his Achilles tendons. The blade saws through the first one with a wet, gristly resistance, and Volk's scream tears through the jungle, scattering birds from the canopy above. His legs spasm uselessly, feet flopping at wrong angles, and my cock twitches in response.
The second tendon takes longer. I go slower deliberately, feeling every fiber part beneath the blade, watching his body arch against the restraints in agony.
"Five hundred and fifty-three children." I tell him, still in Russian, as I move to kneel beside his prone body. "That's how many we confirmed. How many were there really, Dimitri?"
He's crying now. Sobbing in Russian, begging in Russian, promising money, connections, information. The usual currency of the desperate.
I don't want any of it.
I want his suffering.
The knife traces down his spine, not cutting, just promising. His back muscles clench and release, clench and release. I'm so hard it hurts, pre-come dripping onto the platform beside his hip, and the sight of it makes me groan.
"I'm going to cut out your heart. But not yet."