And then, after a few stretched-out, torturous heartbeats, I see him.
A spark ignites in my chest, molten fire bubbling beneath my ribs. Heat races through my veins, my fingers clutching the fabric of my sundress as a coil of impatience twists tighter and tighter inside me.
He steps through the front door exactly the way he always does—unguarded, settled into the rhythm of his own mundane routine. One hand rakes through his disheveled black hair as he drifts toward the kitchen. He swings open the fridge, grabs his bottle of scotch, and for a moment, the world looks painfully normal on the screen.
I don’t blink. My gaze stays glued to the feed as I unlock my phone and type the first message.
A heartbeat later, a notification chimes from downstairs, sharp and deliberate. Anticipation shoots through me, a molten current igniting every nerve. I shift in the black leather chair, crossing my legs as the tension coils tighter, waiting for the impact to strike him. My foot swings, brushing the edge of the desk, tapping out a soft, insistent rhythm—like the steady ticking of a clock counting down the seconds he has left, unaware of the fire creeping closer.
His expression fractures in real time—confusion flaring first, followed by the early, trembling sparks of fear. I don’t bother waiting for him to catch up. I send another message, and the way his lips twitch at the corners is almost funny. Anger unfurls across his features exactly on cue, blooming dark and ugly beneath the kitchen lights.
The scotch bottle hits the counter with a dull thud, forgotten. Whatever thirst he had evaporates. Now it’s just him and the phone, his entire world narrowing to the words on the screen. He stares for a long, tight second before finally, his thumbs begin to move.
PIECE OF SHIT:
Who are you?
That’s when I send a hand-picked screenshot from one of his videos. The still is perfect: that predatory gleam in his eyes, the warped grin carved across his mouth, the kind of expression no camera should have ever preserved. A truth frozen in pixels.
He clamps a hand over his mouth, as if he could silence the evidence, stifle the reflection of himself staring back. Shame claws its way out of the grave he thought he’d buried it in. Beneath my skin, impatience ignites, a scorching pulse I can’t ignore. I waste no time—fingers pressing the call button before I even think.
From my vantage point upstairs, I catch the full impact—the way his whole body jolts when the phone buzzes in his hand. He hesitates, staring at the screen a moment too long, like he’s bargaining with the universe for a glitch, an error, a reprieve. Then, with trembling fingers, he answers. His hand twitches near his face, each blink sharp and frantic, as if he’s trying to snap himself awake from the nightmare he’s stumbled into—blind to the cruel irony that he constructed it all with his own hands.
“What do you want?” he asks, voice unsteady, stretched tight over panic.
“You don’t sound nearly as confident as you do in your videos.”
A heavy silence drapes the room, thick and suffocating. That voice—he hadn’t expected it. Of course not. Men like him never consider that a woman could be a threat.
I hear the sharp gulp, the quick intake of breath. “Look, I didn’t do anything—” His words falter, fading into a franticsearch for an excuse. “I just…looked,” he stammers, each syllable trembling. “I wasn’t trying to hurt anyone.”
Disgust twists beneath the mask, curling my lips into a silent snarl. The plastic scratches, claws at my skin, as if trying to burrow in. Heat floods my veins, simmering, threatening to boil over. I lean into the silence, letting it press down exactly where it hurts the most.
“You look at your daughter the same way?” I question.
The pause that follows stretches taut between us. I can feel the storm brewing inside him—panic sparring with shame, each giving way to a fury that churns just beneath the surface, ready to erupt.
“Don’t you dare talk about my daughter!” he snaps, his voice trembling with uncontrollable anger and despair. “What do you want? Is it money?”
“No,” I cut him off. It’s always the same fucking offer. I’ve lost track of how many times people thought money could save them. I could buy him ten times over and sell him to the worst corners of the web he likes to lurk in. Maybe it would finally teach him something.
“So what is this?” he barks. “You trying to blackmail me? Make me do something that’ll hurt me or my family?”
He paces the room, back and forth, each step frantic, every movement soaked in hopeless tension. His breaths come ragged and uneven, his chest rising and falling like a balloon stretched too thin, ready to snap at any moment. “You can’t prove shit. The pictures mean nothing! Could be fake. Deepfakes. I’m not doing?—”
“The pictures. The videos. Every single session you had on that site,” I interrupt, my voice smooth and even, like morning mist crawling over a field of graves.
I had hoped he would hold my attention longer, but boredom already seethes inside me, a yawn rising deep in my chest.
“I need you to listen to me. Maybe then, I’ll make it quick,” I say.
He grunts, raw and primal, sweat slicking beneath his arms and darkening the expensive fabric of his shirt. I watch him unravel, each layer of composure peeling away—panic twisting into denial, denial curdling into frantic bluster—until the first cracks finally show. His curses cut through the room, jagged, ragged, and pitiful in their intensity. He has no idea how completely he’s already lost control.
“Stop whining,” I demand, my voice a hard, clean edge slicing through his panic. “I need you to go to your daughter’s room.”
He protests immediately, but I’ve already muted the call. Let him stew in the silence. Let him scramble through the maze of possibilities: run, call the police, grab a weapon, try to outsmart me. They all cycle through the same fantasies of control.
But the end never changes. I always finish the job exactly the way I intend.
