I exhale, a jagged, broken sound.
“You don’t need to choose,” I murmur. “The choice was made the second I saw you. I’m coming to take what’s mine.”
I end the recording.
I don’t send it. Not yet. I want her to feel the pressure of my presence first. I want her to smell the storm before the sky breaks.
I stand, slow and deliberate, brushing dirt from my hands. My muscles hum with a violent restraint, the kind that only comes from knowing exactly how much blood it takes to drown a man.
The jungle parts as I move. It knows its own.
I circle the perimeter of the resort, counting cameras, guards, routines. I already know most of it. Noah likes predictability. He thinks systems make him untouchable.
They don’t. They just make him a target.
I pause near the service road and glance back up at the villa.
Her balcony door is closed now.
Good. Hide.
I smile, and it feels like a wound opening.
“You can pretend,” I mutter. “You can marry him. You can let him say the words while I watch from the shadows.”
My hand curls into a fist so tight my knuckles turn white.
“But you’ll never belong to him. Not even for a second. I’ll burn this whole fucking island to the waterline before I let him see you naked.”
The decision has already been made. It’s not an impulse. It’s a fucking execution.
Noah thinks this week is about contracts and optics and control.
He’s wrong.
It’s about how much of him I’m going to leave behind for the crows.
I slip back into the trees, swallowed whole by the dark, already planning the order of things—what breaks first, what bleeds last, and exactly how much scream I can pull out of Noah before I let him die.
Not yet.
Soon.
Very fucking soon.
The night doesn’t scare me.
It should—thick jungle, salt air, the kind of darkness that hides teeth—but fear is for men who still think consequences matter. I move through the trees like they’re an extension of my own shadow, boots silent, breath steady, pulse locked in that cold, dead calm that only comes when the hunt is final.
Noah thinks this island is private.
He thinks money makes borders.
It doesn’t. Blood does. And I have plenty to spill.
I stop where the foliage thins, crouching low, eyes fixed on the villa glowing above the cliff like a fucking altar. Light spills from the windows, warm and deceptive. Somewhere inside that glass-and-stone cage, she’s pacing. I can feel her heart hammering against her ribs from here. I can feel her touching that stupid locket like it’s a lifeline instead of a noose Noah tied around her neck.
I bare my teeth, the taste of salt and rage on my tongue.
