I grin, and it’s the most terrifying thing she’s ever seen. It’s the look of a man who has already won.
“Eight.”
She finally moves. She turns and bolts, her bare feet hitting the stone of the balcony before she disappears into the black, suffocating mouth of the jungle.
I stand there for a moment, listening to the sound of her frantic flight, the snap of branches, the panicked rhythm of her retreat. I look down at my hands—bloody, shaking with the kind of adrenaline that makes a man feel like a god.
“Seven,” I whisper to the empty room.
I look at Noah, his eyes half-open, staring at nothing.
“She’s never coming back for you,” I tell his dying ears. “She’s mine.”
I step over his body and walk toward the edge of the terrace, the humid air of the jungle hitting me like a physical weight. I can smell her. The jasmine, the fear, the salt.
“Six.”
The hunt is on. And I’ve never been more hungry.
Scarlett
The jungle is breathing. Or maybe that’s just the sound of my own lungs shredding themselves against my ribs.
I’m running blindly, the sharp, serrated edges of palm fronds slicing at my arms, my bare feet screaming as they slap against the damp, rotting floor of the island. Every shadow is a hand reaching for me. Every snap of a twig is a gunshot in the silence.
The white silk of my robe is a beacon, a goddamn target, catching the moonlight like a shroud as I stumble through the undergrowth. I can still feel the wetness on my chest—my own blood, the brand he carved into me—vibrating with a heat that shouldn’t be possible.
Then, I hear it.
A whistle.
High, melodic, and terrifyingly casual. It’s the tune he used to hum when we were kids, sitting on the porch of that house that was never a home. It’s the sound of a predator who isn’t even winded.
“I can fucking smell you, Scarlett!”
His voice echoes through the canopy, distorted by the trees but carrying a lethal, jagged weight. It’s not a shout. It’s a promise.
“I can smell the fear coming off your skin in waves. It smells better than that expensive perfume that bastard bought you. Smells like the truth.”
I trip, my knee slamming into a tree root, and I scramble into the dirt, sobbing for breath. I don’t look back. I can’t look back. If I see those eyes in the dark, I’m dead.
“Keep running, little sister!” The whistle starts again, closer now. I can hear the heavy, rhythmic thud of his boots. He’s not sprinting. He’s stalking. “Keep running until your heart explodes! My cock is fucking throbbing just thinking about the look on your face when I finally pin you to the dirt!”
“Go to hell, Kai!” I scream into the dark, my voice cracking, raw from the salt and the terror.
A dark, low laugh vibrates through the air, sending a shiver down my spine that turns my blood to slush.
“We’re already there, sweetheart! You dragged us both into the pit the second you stood on that stand and lied through your pretty fucking teeth!”
The sound of branches snapping is right behind me. I scramble up, ignoring the way my feet are bleeding, and plunge deeper into the black. The vines are like nooses, catching my throat, dragging me back toward him.
“You fucking lied, little sister,” his voice is a low, feral snarl now, so close I can feel the humidity of his breath on the back of my neck. “But did you really think I’d let another man hurt what’s mine? Did you think I’d let that suit-wearing prick mark the skin I already claimed? I wanted to fucking kill him. I wanted to peel the skin off his face and make you watch. But we already did the blood part, didn’t we? We already made our pact.”
I hit a clearing, the moonlight spilling over me like a spotlight. I’m exposed. I’m a rabbit in a trap.
“You’re going to look me in the eyes, Scarlett!” Kai’s voice is a roar now, shaking the leaves. “You’re going to look me in the fucking eyes and tell me what you said on that voicemail. The one you sent when you were drunk and thought the world had forgotten you. I want to see the lies in your fucking eyes when you try to tell me you don’t love the monster!”
I gasp, my lungs burning with the taste of copper. The voicemail. The three a.m. confession I thought I’d buried in the static of a thousand miles.
