Chapter 6 #2
She's not going to come to me.
A woman doesn't drop everything to book a glow-up trip to Vegas because she's looking to go backwards.
A woman does that when she's put the past behind her.
I pull out of the airport and begin the drive back to Jackson. I need to think this through and I don't have somewhere to properly do that in Idaho Falls.
I don't put on tunes.
Don't even register the rolling farmlands and small-town charm in Victor. Those picturesque stretches of rural Idaho where red barns dot green fields and weathered fences line the road like something out of a postcard.
Don't look at the beautiful mountain scenery through Teton Pass as I navigate the tight switchbacks—the towering peaks and dramatic ridge lines that usually pull my attention, the kind of raw wilderness that normally grounds me when everything else feels chaotic.
Don't do anything but think as I make the two-hour drive back to my log mansion in the woods.
My mind is a closed loop playing the same thirty-second clip on repeat: Ryan's easy conversation. Her laugh. The way she leaned into him like they were friends, like she'd done it a hundred times before.
What the fuck is happening here?
Later, back at home, I'm pacing the office. Phone in hand, mind twisting, thoughts spiraling…
I'm losing her.
I gave her space. Clean break. I was very careful with my voyeurism. Public places. Cornerstone's hacked security, the Greenbelt trail cams, Iron River's front door from the public camera across the street.
She took the cameras down in her old apartment. She deleted my key logger hack on her old laptop.
I respected her decision. I pulled back. I didn't even try to infiltrate her new place downtown. I didn't even try to hack her wi-fi and insert a new key logger.
I backed the fuck off.
I gave her space.
That was the mistake.
I have no idea what she does in that new apartment. I didn't keep a good eye on the gym and what she's been doing in there.
Maybe Ryan has been flirting with her for months—subtle compliments, lingering eye contact across the room, that practiced charm he probably deploys without thinking.
Maybe this whole time, while I was carefully curating my distance, he was slowly circling closer.
Or, more likely, he never noticed her at all.
And then… one day… he's in the airport—why? Why was he there? I'll find out, but doesn't really matter. He was. At the baggage claim with nothing but a backpack. And they see each other.
She's transformed.
From mousy introvert to stunning Instagram fantasy.
He's transfixed, recovers quickly enough to pull the heaviest suitcase from the conveyor, small talk.
Wow, look at you!
Yeah, I look hot, don't I? Do you wanna fuck me now?
Right now, my good little slut. Right the fuck now. Bend over this suitcase, pull your dress up, let me spread those perfect cheeks apart and see that glistening pussy waiting for me.
I'm absolutely soaking for you, Ryan. Please, I need you inside me! Fuck me right here against the baggage claim! Don't hold back—I want it rough!
I scoff.
Ridiculous. New hair doesn't change an entire personality.
Also, I should definitely not quit my day job. That pathetic little fantasy I just conjured was… frankly embarrassing.
I'm absolutely soaking for you, Ryan?
Scarletta wouldn't say that. She'd beg for his cock., though.
Please, please fuck me.
That's more her style. She'd probably call him Master.
Give me that cock, Master.
I can picture that easy enough. I'm the fucking one who trained her to say those words out loud instead of locking them up in a story, after all.
I keep spiraling.
Ryan would pin her against his truck in the airport parking garage. Scarletta would melt against him, her new nails scratching down his back, those purple-tipped fingers digging into his shoulders.
He'd hike up that black sundress, discover she's wearing nothing underneath and he'd finger her, right there in public.
She'd moan his name. Beg him to fuck her.
Please, Ryan. I need you. I need your cock inside me.
He'd turn her around, bend her over the hood of his truck, and slide into her dripping wet pussy in one brutal thrust.
She'd gasp, arch her back, push her ass against him for more.
Harder. Please. Fuck me harder.
And Ryan would oblige, wouldn't he? Big strong gym owner, all that testosterone and athletic stamina. He'd pound into her like she was his personal fuck toy, one hand fisted in her new platinum hair, the other gripping her hip hard enough to bruise.
She'd come screaming his name.
Then he'd pull out, flip her around, make her kneel, and shove his cock down her throat until she choked on it, tears streaming down her face, mascara running—
I stop pacing.
My cock is rock hard.
I'm standing in the middle of my office, imagining another man fucking the woman I'm obsessed with, and I'm aroused.
What the fuck is wrong with me?
I drag a hand through my hair, forcing myself to breathe through the arousal, to think rationally about what's happening to me.
Nothing. There's nothing wrong with me. I've done this before—stood in the control room and watched the attendants work her body with their skilled, indifferent hands, watched her writhe and beg and come apart for them while I stroked myself through my pants.
I've reviewed those recordings a dozen times since, jerked off to the memory of her spread out like an offering, three sets of hands mapping every inch of her skin while she trembled and moaned.
I've replayed the moment she shattered, the way she screamed and arched off that table, and I've come so hard I saw stars.
This is just another iteration of the same theme. Just a voyeuristic fantasy. Nothing more than that. Completely meaningless in the grand scheme of things.
Probably not… it's almost certainly a sickness. Some deep-rooted perversion I inherited from my father, coded into my DNA like a genetic curse I can't escape.
I'm aroused by sick things. Depraved scenarios that would make most men recoil in disgust. The darker the fantasy, the harder I get—that's always been my burden, my shame, the proof that my mother was right when she looked at me with those hollow eyes and said you're just like him before stepping off that balcony.
That's why Scarletta hates me now. Why she ran. Why she rebuilt herself into someone who dates yoga instructors and gym owners, men with uncomplicated desires and healthy relationships with sex.
She's not scared of me. I don't think that's it. Fear would be simpler—I could work with fear, negotiate around it, prove myself safe despite the darkness. But what I saw in her eyes during those final moments on the island wasn't terror.
It was revulsion.
I just… repulse her. The real me, the one she glimpsed when I showed her what I'm truly capable of, what I truly want—she finds me disgusting. And maybe she's right. Maybe that's the only sane response to a man like me.
She wants men like this Ryan now—gym owners with uncomplicated desires and straightforward lives.
Men who fuck in bright bedrooms with the lights on, who think "adventurous" means trying a new position or maybe some light hair-pulling.
Men whose darkness extends to watching rough porn occasionally, not to the intricate psychological labyrinths I construct in my mind.
Men who have big cocks and know how to use them competently, satisfactorily, without needing the complex power dynamics that fuel my every sexual thought.
Men whose kink tolerance peaks at fuzzy handcuffs from a novelty shop, not canes meant to scar.
Normal men. Healthy men. Men who don't carry their father's violence in their blood like a hereditary disease.
I'm not normal and I'm not going to apologize for it.
Not to Scarletta, not to the world, not even to the conscience that occasionally surfaces in the small hours before dawn.
The world needs men like me. Men who operate in the shadows where polite society refuses to look.
Men who understand that true evil—the kind that traffics children, that destroys innocence for profit, that hides behind philanthropy and political connections—that kind of evil doesn't respond to strongly worded condemnations or legal proceedings that take years while more victims accumulate.
Men who are willing to become monsters to hunt monsters are necessary.
Men who keep the truly evil, the truly horrific predators like Volk in check when the systems designed to stop them fail over, and over, and over again, essential.
I'm practically a fucking superhero, if you think about it objectively. Dexter with better taste and a higher body count of people who actually deserved it.
What the world doesn't need… is another fucking gym owner.
I could make it look like an accident.
Gyms are dangerous places. Heavy equipment, faulty cables, catastrophic mechanical failures that crush windpipes or snap spines.
A bench press bar to the throat. Quick. Efficient. Tragic gym accident, nobody's fault, terrible loss for the fitness community.
But that's not satisfying.
That doesn't account for him touching what's mine. Loading her luggage like some helpful fucking Boy Scout. Making her laugh—genuine laughter I haven't heard in months, maybe ever. Opening her door like a gentleman when he has no idea what she really needs, what she truly craves.
He doesn't deserve quick.
I could take my time instead.
I'd subdue him—chloroform, taser, doesn't matter. Wake up restrained in my barn. Confused, terrified, asking why the fuck I'm doing this.
Because you touched something that belongs to me.
Simple. Honest. He'd understand then, in those final hours.
I've never killed anyone in my barn before. Never needed to. The cabin's always been my personal space—retreat, refuge, the place I disappear to between jobs. The barn's just storage. Firewood. The industrial furnace I use for burning evidence from kills that happen elsewhere.
But it's got that walk-in freezer.
Previous owners were hunters. Elk, moose, whatever the fuck. Built the freezer custom, restaurant-grade cooling, thick insulation, heavy steel door with a manual lock from the outside.
Perfect for hanging a carcass while it ages.
Perfect for keeping a man alive while you work on him slowly.
I'm rock-hard, pulse pounding in my temples, cock straining painfully against my zipper.
I drop into my chair and shove the waistband of my pants down roughly, freeing my erection.
It springs up, already leaking. I wrap my fist around myself and start stroking—fast, rough, no finesse—while the images keep coming.
Ryan's blood spreading across frozen concrete. Steam rising from the spreading pool. His body convulsing as shock sets in, his pathetic attempts to beg through the gag becoming weaker, more desperate.
I'd take my time after that. Hours. Maybe days if I kept him conscious enough.
Peel his skin off in strips. Start with the fingers—those hands that touched her luggage, that opened her car door like he had any fucking right.
My hand moves faster now, rougher, punishing. I'm gripping myself so tight it almost hurts, but I don't ease up.
The images come quicker now, sharper.
Ryan screaming as I work the knife under his fingernails. Ryan thrashing when I remove his eyes with a melon baller. Ryan whimpering as I break every bone in his hands with a ball-peen hammer, methodical, thorough, crushing each knuckle individually.
I'd make art of his suffering.
Document every stage. Photographs. Video. Send them to Scarletta afterward so she understands what happens when other men think they can have her.
This is what I do to people who touch what's mine.
I imagine Ryan's final moments. Hypothermic, mutilated, barely conscious. I'd stand over him and jerk off, just like I did with Volk. Come all over his ruined face while he dies watching me.
The orgasm hits like a physical blow. I grunt, hips jerking up as I spill all over my hand, my shirt, my desk. Thick ropes of come painting my stomach while the fantasy plays out its brutal conclusion behind my closed eyes.
I keep stroking through the aftershocks, milking every drop while I imagine Scarletta finding out what I've done. The horror in her eyes. The knowledge that I'd kill anyone who tried to take her from me.
Finally spent, I slump back in my chair, cock still twitching, come cooling on my skin.
I don't feel shame.
I don't feel remorse.
I feel satisfied.
This is who I am. What I am. A man who gets hard imagining elaborate torture scenarios. A man who comes thinking about murder, and mutilation, and making people suffer for the crime of existing near what belongs to him.
I'm not going to apologize for it.
I'm not going to change, either.
This.
Is who.
I am.