He's being rescued.
The pieces fall into place with sickening clarity. The insider help. The looped cameras. The access codes. Someone arranged extraction, someone with resources and reach, someone who knew exactly when and how to pull Volk off this island before I could finish what I started.
Volk's smile widens. He thinks he's won. He thinks that helicopter changes the equation, tips the scales back in his favor, gives him leverage.
Oh, hell the fuck no.
The rage doesn't hit me like a wave. It settles into my bones like ice water, cold, and clear, and absolutely still. My heartbeat slows. My breathing evens out. The world narrows to this moment, this clearing, this man.
I begin to circle.
Volk tracks me, the knife held loose in his grip, professional. He's killed before. Probably many times. But he's killed the weak, the helpless, the children he trafficked and the witnesses he silenced.
He's never faced something like me.
The helicopter grows louder, but I calculate distances automatically. The only viable landing zone is the runway near the preparation pavilion—nearly a mile through dense jungle. Even at a dead sprint, whoever's on that aircraft won't reach us for at least twelve minutes.
This will be over in three.
I keep circling, and when I speak, I speak in Russian. His mother tongue. The language of his nightmares.
"Ty dumal, chto uydyosh', Dimitri?" The words slide out smooth as silk. My Russian is perfect."I'll tear out your heart and make you watch me eat it."
His smile flickers.
I continue in Russian. "First I'll cut off your balls. Slowly. With a dull knife. Then I'll shove them down your throat and watch you choke."
I keep moving, a slow orbit that forces him to turn, to track me, to take his eyes off Scarletta for seconds at a time.
"You trafficked children for fifteen years. I know every name. Every face.When I'm done with you, they'll only find pieces."
Volk's jaw tightens. The knife shifts in his grip.
"Your sister's still alive, yes? In Moscow?"I let the words hang between us like a blade. "After I send her your head, I'll visit her. And I will make her balance your scale. Because nothing I do to you now, will ever be enough to erase the sin of touching her."
I nod my head at Scarletta, cowering in fear and covered in blood in the dirt.
Volk lunges, and the world slows to crystalline clarity.
His knife hand arcs toward my throat—standard prison-yard slash, predictable and desperate.
I pivot left, letting the blade whisper past my carotid by less than an inch, and my right hand closes around his wrist like a vise.
The joint doesn't break cleanly. I feel the tendons stretch, the ligaments tear, the small bones grinding against each other as I twist. The sound is wet, organic, deeply satisfying.
The knife drops into the mud.
Volk screams.
I'm hard.
Rock fucking hard.
My cock swinging heavy between my thighs as I drive my knee into his solar plexus. The air leaves his lungs in a whoosh and he doubles over, and I bring my elbow down on the back of his skull with enough force to split skin.
Blood.
His blood this time.
