I freeze mid-step, certain I've failed—certain he's going to punish me harder because I'm late, because I'm slow, because I'mme—but the timer reads 0:02:17.
Two minutes.
I made it with two fucking minutes to spare.
The clearing opens up in front of me like something out of a fever dream. Or maybe I actuallyhavefever. Malaria. Dengue. Whatever tropical nightmare is currently incubating in my bloodstream because I walked through a goddamn jungle naked and barefoot like some sort of feral idiot.
There's a massive tree in the center. Ancient. Gnarled. The kind of tree that looks like it's been here since before humans invented fire, waiting patiently to murder someone.
Thick vines wrap around the trunk like veins. The branches spread out overhead in this twisted canopy that blocks most of the light, turning the clearing dim and greenish andwrong. Like a fairy tale forest where children get eaten.
A rope ladder hangs down from somewhere high up in the branches.
Next to it, an envelope dangles from a nail hammered into the bark.
Of course there's another fucking envelope.
I stumble forward, every nerve ending screaming. My feet are bleeding—I can feel it, even if I can't see it through the dirt caked on my skin. Something bit my shoulder. Or maybe scratched me. I don't know. Everything itches.Everything.Like ants are crawling under my skin, burrowing into my pores, laying eggs in my?—
Stop.
I rip the envelope off the tree. My hands shake so badly I almost drop it.
Inside, another card. Another stupid goddamn poem written in his perfect handwriting.
My naughty little Valentine let strangers make her moan,
So sixty feet above the ground, she'll pay for what she's sown.
Climb the rope into the tree and prove you can obey?—
Walk the plank, retrieve your cuffs, and give that ass away.
Walk back to the beam you started on, then face it like my whore,
Bend yourself across the wood and wait for what's in store.
"Fuck you."
I say it out loud. To the tree. To him. To the cameras I know are watching.
"Fuck.You."
My voice cracks on the second word.
I look up.
Sixty feet.
Sixty fucking feet.
There's a platform up there. I can barely see it through the branches, but it's there—wooden planks lashed together,extending out from the trunk like a diving board suspended in nightmare territory.
I'm afraid of heights.
Like,genuinelyafraid. The kind of afraid where I can't even stand near the railing on a second-floor balcony without my legs turning to jelly. The kind where I once had a panic attack in a glass elevator and had to take the stairs for the rest of the week.
And he wants me to climb sixty feet up a rope ladder.
