He told her six days.
Six days until he brands her with his name.
I won’t give the bastard six fucking minutes.
My phone is cold in my hand. I don’t check the screen. I know her number the way a wolf knows the scent of a wound—by instinct, by hunger.
This time, I don’t record.
This time, I type.
You don’t get to marry him.
That’s not a threat. It’s a fact.
I watch the villa as I hit send.
Nothing happens. Of course it doesn’t. No scream. No security rushing out with guns and bravado.
Good. Fear that explodes is for amateurs. Fear that settles into the marrow—that’s what I want for her. Because if she’s terrified of me, she’ll forget to be afraid of him.
I lean back against the trunk of a palm, roll my neck until it cracks, listening to the sounds of the resort—laughter, glasses clinking, music low and romantic. The soundtrack to a fucking lie.
He’s still down there, playing the gentleman. Shaking hands. Smiling like he didn’t just buy a woman.
I imagine my thumbs pressing into his windpipe. Not squeezing. Just resting. Letting him feel the exact moment his life becomes mine to take.
“She’s not yours,” I murmur to the dark, my voice a jagged edge. “You don’t even know what you’re touching. You don’t know that she’s already hollowed out, and I’m the only thing filling the space.”
I push off the tree and move again, circling closer, counting steps, exits, shadows. There’s a service path behind the villa—narrow, overgrown, used by staff who don’t ask questions.
That’s where he’ll make his first mistake. That’s where I’ll break his world.
My phone buzzes.
A read receipt.
I grin, and it’s not a human expression.
There it is.
You saw it, didn’t you, little sister? Your heart just skipped. Your stomach dropped. You told yourself it was a nightmare because the alternative is so much worse—the alternative is that I’m already here, breathing your air, standing in the dark you’re so afraid of.
I type again, slower. More cruel.
Pack nothing.
Say nothing.
When I come for you, you don’t run. You wait.
If he puts a ring on you, I’ll put him in the ground. While you watch.
I slide the phone away and start toward the path. Noah thinks this is his island. He thinks the ceremony is the point.
He’s wrong. The point is the moment he realises that everything he owns belongs to me.
The path curves down, stone steps half-swallowed by vines. I move through the gaps in the security lights like a ghost. Money buys cameras; it doesn’t buy eyes in the back of your head.
