Kai
The jungle is loud at night.
Not the pretty kind of loud tourists talk about. Not cicadas and soft waves and romance. This is rot-noise. Wet leaves tearing under insects. Something big moving where it shouldn’t. The kind of sound that tells you the land doesn’t care if you live or die.
Good. Neither do I.
I’m sitting on a broken concrete step behind one of the staff buildings, boots sunk into the fucking filth, back against a wall still vibrating with the day’s heat.
The villa lights glow up the hill like a crown of teeth.
Noah’s crown. All white stone and glass and blood-money pretending it’s clean.
I roll my shoulders, slow, controlled, like I’m keeping a goddamn demon in a cage.
I’m not.
I can still see her. I can still taste the air she breathed.
Barefoot on the balcony earlier. Blue dress. Hands shaking even when she tried to hide it. Chin lifted like she was daring the world to come and break her again.
She always did that.
Brave mouth. Trembling hands. A spine made of glass and stolen steel.
I drag a hand down my face, nails scraping over stubble, wishing I was scraping them over the throat of every man who’s ever looked at her.
“Fuck,” I mutter. The word is thick, tasting like copper and salt.
Six days.
That’s what the prick said.
Six days until he thinks he owns the only thing in this world that makes my heart beat. Six days until he puts a ring on a woman who still flinches at silence and sleeps like prey. Six days until he learns what happens when you try to cage a goddamn miracle that already belongs to a monster.
I reach into my pocket and pull out my phone.
No signal bars worth a damn out here. Doesn’t matter. I don’t need him to answer. I don’t need her to pick up. I just need to bleed into the air.
I open the voice memo app.
My thumb hovers. My pulse is a hammer hitting an anvil.
I press record.
“Hey,” I say. My voice is a wreck, rough as broken glass and twice as sharp. “It’s me.”
I breathe out through my nose, slow, grounding. If I let the rage out first, I’ll shatter the phone in my hand.
“I saw the dress. Blue still suits you. You always liked wearing colours that made people think you were safe. Made them think you were soft.”
I tilt my head back, staring at the sky through the canopy. No stars. Too much light pollution. Too much civilisation pretending it isn’t a slaughterhouse.
“You shouldn’t be scared of him,” I continue, my voice dropping to a whisper that feels like a threat. “He’s a ghost. He’s fucking nothing. You should be scared of what I’m going to do to him if he touches you again.”
My jaw tightens until I hear the bone creak.
“I don’t care about the island. I don’t care about the wedding. I don’t care how many hired guns he lines up to die for him.”
A beat. My eyes burn.
“I care about the fact that he put his filthy hands on you like you were a fucking asset. Like you were a piece of paper to be signed.”
My fingers curl around the phone, the plastic groaning under the pressure.
“I care about the way he looks at you when he thinks you’re not paying attention. Like he’s already tasted you. He hasn’t. He never will. I’ll rip his tongue out before he says your name again.”
My voice drops an octave, dark and obsessive.
“I care about the fact that you still sleep with your shoulders tight, waiting for permission to breathe. You’re mine, Scarlett. Every breath you take is a gift from me. Not him.”
I exhale, a jagged, broken sound.
“You don’t need to choose,” I murmur. “The choice was made the second I saw you. I’m coming to take what’s mine.”
I end the recording.
I don’t send it. Not yet. I want her to feel the pressure of my presence first. I want her to smell the storm before the sky breaks.
I stand, slow and deliberate, brushing dirt from my hands. My muscles hum with a violent restraint, the kind that only comes from knowing exactly how much blood it takes to drown a man.
The jungle parts as I move. It knows its own.
I circle the perimeter of the resort, counting cameras, guards, routines. I already know most of it. Noah likes predictability. He thinks systems make him untouchable.
They don’t. They just make him a target.
I pause near the service road and glance back up at the villa.
Her balcony door is closed now.
Good. Hide.
I smile, and it feels like a wound opening.
“You can pretend,” I mutter. “You can marry him. You can let him say the words while I watch from the shadows.”
My hand curls into a fist so tight my knuckles turn white.
“But you’ll never belong to him. Not even for a second. I’ll burn this whole fucking island to the waterline before I let him see you naked.”
The decision has already been made. It’s not an impulse. It’s a fucking execution.
Noah thinks this week is about contracts and optics and control.
He’s wrong.
It’s about how much of him I’m going to leave behind for the crows.
I slip back into the trees, swallowed whole by the dark, already planning the order of things—what breaks first, what bleeds last, and exactly how much scream I can pull out of Noah before I let him die.
Not yet.
Soon.
Very fucking soon.
The night doesn’t scare me.
It should—thick jungle, salt air, the kind of darkness that hides teeth—but fear is for men who still think consequences matter.
I move through the trees like they’re an extension of my own shadow, boots silent, breath steady, pulse locked in that cold, dead calm that only comes when the hunt is final.
Noah thinks this island is private.
He thinks money makes borders.
It doesn’t. Blood does. And I have plenty to spill.
I stop where the foliage thins, crouching low, eyes fixed on the villa glowing above the cliff like a fucking altar.
Light spills from the windows, warm and deceptive.
Somewhere inside that glass-and-stone cage, she’s pacing.
I can feel her heart hammering against her ribs from here.
I can feel her touching that stupid locket like it’s a lifeline instead of a noose Noah tied around her neck.
I bare my teeth, the taste of salt and rage on my tongue.
He told her six days.
Six days until he brands her with his name.
I won’t give the bastard six fucking minutes.
My phone is cold in my hand. I don’t check the screen. I know her number the way a wolf knows the scent of a wound—by instinct, by hunger.
This time, I don’t record.
This time, I type.
You don’t get to marry him.
That’s not a threat. It’s a fact.
I watch the villa as I hit send.
Nothing happens. Of course it doesn’t. No scream. No security rushing out with guns and bravado.
Good. Fear that explodes is for amateurs. Fear that settles into the marrow—that’s what I want for her. Because if she’s terrified of me, she’ll forget to be afraid of him.
I lean back against the trunk of a palm, roll my neck until it cracks, listening to the sounds of the resort—laughter, glasses clinking, music low and romantic. The soundtrack to a fucking lie.
He’s still down there, playing the gentleman. Shaking hands. Smiling like he didn’t just buy a woman.
I imagine my thumbs pressing into his windpipe. Not squeezing. Just resting. Letting him feel the exact moment his life becomes mine to take.
“She’s not yours,” I murmur to the dark, my voice a jagged edge. “You don’t even know what you’re touching. You don’t know that she’s already hollowed out, and I’m the only thing filling the space.”
I push off the tree and move again, circling closer, counting steps, exits, shadows. There’s a service path behind the villa—narrow, overgrown, used by staff who don’t ask questions.
That’s where he’ll make his first mistake. That’s where I’ll break his world.
My phone buzzes.
A read receipt.
I grin, and it’s not a human expression.
There it is.
You saw it, didn’t you, little sister? Your heart just skipped. Your stomach dropped. You told yourself it was a nightmare because the alternative is so much worse—the alternative is that I’m already here, breathing your air, standing in the dark you’re so afraid of.
I type again, slower. More cruel.
Pack nothing.
Say nothing.
When I come for you, you don’t run. You wait.
If he puts a ring on you, I’ll put him in the ground. While you watch.
I slide the phone away and start toward the path. Noah thinks this is his island. He thinks the ceremony is the point.
He’s wrong. The point is the moment he realises that everything he owns belongs to me.
The path curves down, stone steps half-swallowed by vines. I move through the gaps in the security lights like a ghost. Money buys cameras; it doesn’t buy eyes in the back of your head.
I reach the service door. Locked. Adorable.
I don’t rush. I trace the seam of the door, feeling the vibration of the alarm system. It’s a joke. I work the lock with the patience of a man who has nothing but time and a very long list of sins. When it gives, it’s with a soft, wet click.
Inside, the villa smells like her. And it smells like him. The mix makes me want to start a fire.
I move through the house, shoes silent on the marble, eyes cataloguing the expensive, useless shit Noah bought to impress her. Her room is easy to find. It’s the one that feels like a tomb.
I stop outside the door. My pulse is a riot. My ribs feel too small for the violence inside me. I close my eyes and imagine her face when she realises I’m not a memory anymore.
I open the door.
She’s not there.
Good. I want to leave a scent. I want her to feel the haunting.
I step inside. The room is staged perfection. A dress is laid out on the bed—white, lace, pure. A fucking joke. I walk over to it. I run a hand over the fabric, then I grip it and rip. Just a small tear at the hem. A reminder.
“You feel me, don’t you,” I whisper to the empty room. “That itch under your skin. That’s me, Scarlett. I’m the blood in your veins.”
I leave the balcony door hanging open. Let the humidity in. Let the jungle reclaim the room.
Down the hall, I hear voices. His voice.
He’s talking about Sunday. The wedding. The merger.
I imagine stopping his heart mid-sentence. I imagine the look in his eyes when he realises he’s dying for a woman who doesn’t even remember his name when I’m in the room.
I slip back out, back into the trees, until I have the villa in full view.
The balcony doors slide open.
There she is.
Blue dress. Bare feet. Hands gripping the railing so hard her knuckles are white stones. She looks out into the dark—directly at me. She can’t see me, but she knows.
Then, Noah steps up behind her.
He puts his hand on the small of her back.
My vision goes red. A literal, pulsing red at the edges.
“Take your hand off her,” I rasp, the sound low and feral. “That’s not where you get to stand, your a dead man walking.”
She stiffens. She doesn’t pull away from him, but she leans toward the dark. Toward me.
I grin.
Look at the jungle, Scarlett. Look at the monster who loves you.
I pull my phone out one last time.
I can see his hand on you.
I’m going to break every finger he used to touch you.
Count to ten. Then look for me.
I send it.
I see the sharp hitch in her chest. She doesn’t move, but she breaks. I see it in the way her head drops.
“Good girl,” I murmur.
Noah says something to her, trying to pull her back into his perfect, boring world. She lets him, because she’s a survivor. But she’s looking at the trees. She’s looking for me.
I straighten up, my mouth curved in a smile that would make a devil scream.
Noah thinks he has six days.
He doesn’t have until sunrise.