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)
She looks up. Not at any specific camera. Just up. Knowing I'm everywhere and nowhere.
"Fuck," she whispers.
The microphones catch it. Clean. Clear.
Now go.
She stands frozen for thirty-seven seconds. I count them. Watch her chest rise and fall. Watch her fingers clench the card hard enough to crumple the edges.
Then she unties the silk robe and lets it fall to the ground at her feet.
For a moment, she just stands there naked in the pavilion's dappled sunlight. Beautiful, and vulnerable, and… mine.
Then she picks up the tracker watch from the small table beside her, straps it onto her wrist, and jumps a little when it beeps.
1:59:59.
1:59:58.
She clutches the card in her hand, takes 0ne last look around the empty pavilion, and then walks toward the north entrance.
Barefoot.
Naked.
And most certainly afraid.
The jungle swallows her in three strides.
I switch to the left wall. Sixteen monitors showing Chaff Island.
Volk's cage sits in a clearing two miles inland from the drop zone. Steel bars. Concrete floor. No roof—just open sky and the oppressive heat of Caribbean sun beating down on naked skin.
The drone hovers above him, a tether holding his instructions dangling from it. Cream envelope. Black wax seal. Identical to Scarletta's except for one critical detail.
Hers has roses and promises of punishment that will make her scream while I coax blissful orgasms out of her.
His has a death sentence with a sixty-minute head start.
I zoom Camera 3 closer as the drone drops the card. It flutters down in a spiral. Volk reaches up, fumbles, grasps it with desperation.
Opens it, eyes searching for salvation…
You want to survive? Then listen close, prey.
His hands shake. Slight tremor. Barely visible. But I see everything.
I'll give you one chance to get away.
He thinks I'm bluffing. That this is some elaborate blackmail scheme. That I want money, or leverage, or information.
He's wrong.
I want his screams.
Move east through the jungle, one mile straight— Station One holds your freedom. Don't be late.
It's a lie, of course. He's here now. He's never leaving. Not alive, anyway.
You have sixty minutes to reach the cache,
Where clothes and supplies and weapons stash.
Miss the deadline and I hunt you bare,
Naked and screaming through island air.
I'll start with your fingers, peel back the nails,
Then move to your cock while you beg and you wail.
I'll skin you alive and keep you awake,
Feed you your own flesh for every mistake.
Now run.
Volk hesitates, frozen in place, his chest heaving with ragged breaths. He tilts his head back, squinting against the harsh morning sun as he searches the empty sky. The drone is already gone—vanished as quickly as it appeared—but he stares upward anyway, as if divine intervention might materialize from the cloudless expanse above him.
Water. That's what his cracked lips are begging for. Sixteen hours on this godforsaken rock without a single drop. His throat must feel like sandpaper by now.
Food would be a fever dream at this point. His body's already eating itself from the inside.
But I give him nothing.
Not a goddamn thing.
Because nothing is precisely what he's earned after all these years. Less than nothing, if such a thing existed.
The beauty of it—the exquisite perfection of his unhappily-ever-after—is that I don't even need to set foot on Chaff Island for this hunt to reach its inevitable conclusion.
Every trap, every failsafe, every agonizing checkpoint I've designed will execute flawlessly without my physical presence.
The island itself has become my instrument of justice.
It's engineered to kill him methodically, systematically—one excruciating failure at a time—until his body finally gives out or his mind shatters completely.
A very slow death.
A very painful death.
An excruciating death.
Exactly what he deserves.
He earned it.
I switch back to the right wall. Scarletta's only made it a hundred feet into the jungle and she's already miserable.
Good.
Camera 4 captures her swatting frantically at the air around her head. Something buzzed too close to her ear. She flinches, slaps at her shoulder, examines her palm for evidence of the kill.
Nothing there.
"Fuck," she mutters, then louder: "Fuck, fuck, fuck."
She's hopping now, lifting one foot then the other off the path. The ground's not smooth here—volcanic rock worn down over millennia but still rough enough to hurt tender feet that have spent twenty-two years in sneakers and socks.
A mosquito lands on her breast. She notices it, watches it probe her skin, then smacks herself hard enough to leave a red mark.
I don't feel sorry for her.
Not even a little.
The bug population on Story Island is a fraction of what Volk's experiencing right now on Chaff. I've spent three years and half a million dollars making sure my clients—wealthy men paying premium rates for fantasy fulfillment—don't spend their forty-eight hours swatting mosquitoes instead of fucking their willing participants.
Wildlife management wasn't something I considered when I first bought this place. Thought the "authentic jungle experience" would add to the appeal. Took exactly one hunt to learn otherwise.
So I brought in experts. Environmental consultants who specialized in luxury eco-resorts. Pest control specialists with experience in Caribbean properties. Even a goddamn ornithologist from Cornell.