It sprays across my chest, hot and copper-bright, and my erection throbs in response.
This is what I am.
This is what I've always been.
The mask of civilization, the suits, and board meetings, and calculated charm—all of it falls away when I'm doing what I was born to do.
Volk tries to rally. Credit where it's due—the man survived for thirty years in the trafficking underworld, eliminated witnesses, evaded every law enforcement agency on three continents. He knows how to fight dirty.
His thumb goes for my eye socket.
I catch his hand and break two fingers, the bones snapping like dry twigs. Then I break two more. His screams echo off the bamboo walls, beautiful and raw, and Scarletta is sobbing somewhere behind me but I can't focus on that right now.
Can't focus on anything but this.
I drag Volk to the center platform, to the eye bolts I installed for restraining Scarletta. The irony isn't lost on me.
My cock bobs against my thigh with every step, flushed and leaking, and I don't care.
Don't care that she's watching.
Don't care about the helicopter getting closer.
Don't care about anything except making this last.
"You thought the children would forget?" I hiss in his ear as I force him face-down onto the platform.
I secure his wrists to the bolts with the leather cuffs meant for my little writer. They're too tight, but it doesn't matter. He's not going to need circulating blood for much longer.
The hunting knife lies in the mud where he dropped it. I retrieve it, test the edge against my thumb. Sharp enough. Barely.
A dull knife will hurt more.
I start with his Achilles tendons. The blade saws through the first one with a wet, gristly resistance, and Volk's scream tears through the jungle, scattering birds from the canopy above. His legs spasm uselessly, feet flopping at wrong angles, and my cock twitches in response.
The second tendon takes longer. I go slower deliberately, feeling every fiber part beneath the blade, watching his body arch against the restraints in agony.
"Five hundred and fifty-three children." I tell him, still in Russian, as I move to kneel beside his prone body. "That's how many we confirmed. How many were there really, Dimitri?"
He's crying now. Sobbing in Russian, begging in Russian, promising money, connections, information. The usual currency of the desperate.
I don't want any of it.
I want his suffering.
The knife traces down his spine, not cutting, just promising. His back muscles clench and release, clench and release. I'm so hard it hurts, pre-come dripping onto the platform beside his hip, and the sight of it makes me groan.
"I'm going to cut out your heart.But not yet."
I begin with his fingers. The ones that signed trafficking orders. The ones that touched children. I take them off at the first knuckle—index, middle, ring, pinky—and his screams blend into one continuous howl of agony.
Somewhere distant, a woman is crying. Scarletta. I should check on her. I should comfort her. I should be the protector she needs.
But the knife is in my hand, and Volk's blood is warm on my skin, and my cock is so fucking hard I can barely think.
I move to his other hand.
Thumb first this time. The bone crunches under the dull blade, requires sawing, requireseffort, and Volk's voice breaks into something beyond screaming—a high, thin keen that sounds almost inhuman.
