Scarlett
The jungle is breathing. Or maybe that’s just the sound of my own lungs shredding themselves against my ribs.
I’m running blindly, the sharp, serrated edges of palm fronds slicing at my arms, my bare feet screaming as they slap against the damp, rotting floor of the island. Every shadow is a hand reaching for me. Every snap of a twig is a gunshot in the silence.
The white silk of my robe is a beacon, a goddamn target, catching the moonlight like a shroud as I stumble through the undergrowth. I can still feel the wetness on my chest—my own blood, the brand he carved into me—vibrating with a heat that shouldn’t be possible.
Then, I hear it.
A whistle.
High, melodic, and terrifyingly casual. It’s the tune he used to hum when we were kids, sitting on the porch of that house that was never a home. It’s the sound of a predator who isn’t even winded.
“I can fucking smell you, Scarlett!”
His voice echoes through the canopy, distorted by the trees but carrying a lethal, jagged weight. It’s not a shout. It’s a promise.
“I can smell the fear coming off your skin in waves. It smells better than that expensive perfume that bastard bought you. Smells like the truth.”
I trip, my knee slamming into a tree root, and I scramble into the dirt, sobbing for breath. I don’t look back. I can’t look back. If I see those eyes in the dark, I’m dead.
“Keep running, little sister!” The whistle starts again, closer now.
I can hear the heavy, rhythmic thud of his boots.
He’s not sprinting. He’s stalking. “Keep running until your heart explodes! My cock is fucking throbbing just thinking about the look on your face when I finally pin you to the dirt!”
“Go to hell, Kai!” I scream into the dark, my voice cracking, raw from the salt and the terror.
A dark, low laugh vibrates through the air, sending a shiver down my spine that turns my blood to slush.
“We’re already there, sweetheart! You dragged us both into the pit the second you stood on that stand and lied through your pretty fucking teeth!”
The sound of branches snapping is right behind me. I scramble up, ignoring the way my feet are bleeding, and plunge deeper into the black. The vines are like nooses, catching my throat, dragging me back toward him.
“You fucking lied, little sister,” his voice is a low, feral snarl now, so close I can feel the humidity of his breath on the back of my neck.
“But did you really think I’d let another man hurt what’s mine?
Did you think I’d let that suit-wearing prick mark the skin I already claimed?
I wanted to fucking kill him. I wanted to peel the skin off his face and make you watch.
But we already did the blood part, didn’t we? We already made our pact.”
I hit a clearing, the moonlight spilling over me like a spotlight. I’m exposed. I’m a rabbit in a trap.
“You’re going to look me in the eyes, Scarlett!
” Kai’s voice is a roar now, shaking the leaves.
“You’re going to look me in the fucking eyes and tell me what you said on that voicemail.
The one you sent when you were drunk and thought the world had forgotten you.
I want to see the lies in your fucking eyes when you try to tell me you don’t love the monster! ”
I gasp, my lungs burning with the taste of copper. The voicemail. The three a.m. confession I thought I’d buried in the static of a thousand miles.
“I hate you!” I sob, spinning around as I hit a wall of dense, impenetrable thorns. “I hate you for coming back! I hate you for not staying dead!”
I see him then.
He steps into the moonlight, a silhouette of pure, unadulterated violence. His shirt is torn, his chest heaving, his eyes glowing with a dark, obsessive light that makes my knees turn to water. He’s covered in Noah’s blood and the island’s dirt, a god of ruin.
He doesn’t lunge. He doesn’t catch me. Not yet. He likes the hunt too much. He stays ten feet away, the knife glinting in his hand like a silver tooth.
“You hate that I’m the only one who knows who you really are,” he rasps, stepping closer, his boots crunching on the dry leaves. “You hate that even when you’re standing at the altar with a billionaire, you’re still thinking about the way I taste.”
He tilts his head, a feral grin stretching across his face.
“Run, little sister. The sun is still a long way off. And I’m just getting started.”
I scramble, my hands clawing at the sharp, volcanic rock until my fingernails bleed.
The path narrows, a treacherous slip of stone that drops off into the churning, black throat of the ocean.
My feet find a jagged opening—a slit in the earth that smells of salt, rot, and ancient damp.
I slide inside, my body slick with sweat and the blood from my chest, and collapse into the shadows of a hollowed-out sea cave.
The waves crash against the mouth of the cave with a violent, rhythmic boom, but it isn’t enough to drown him out.
His boots thud on the ceiling of my hiding spot, heavy and deliberate. Crunch. Crunch. Crunch. He’s right above me. I can feel the vibration of his weight in my teeth.
“You really think a hole in the ground is going to save you?” Kai’s voice drops through the cracks in the rock, mocking and sharp as a razor. “That’s your plan, Scarlett? Crawl into the dark and wait for the sun to come up? The sun belongs to me now, too.”
I press my back against the wet, slimy wall, pulling my knees to my chest. I’m shaking so hard I’m afraid the rocks will rattle. Above me, I hear the metallic shink of his knife scraping against the stone.
“That bastard Noah will come looking for you,” Kai roars, his voice escalating into a feral, jagged laugh that echoes off the cliffs.
“He’ll send his guards and his dogs and his pathetic fucking money.
But he won’t find you. By the time he figures out you’re not in the villa, I’ll have already scrubbed his name off your soul. ”
He stops walking. The silence is worse than the shouting. I hold my breath until my lungs feel like they’re going to burst.
“You should be on your fucking knees right now,” he drops his voice, a low, guttural rasp that feels like he’s whispering directly into my ear. “You should have my cock in your mouth, thanking me for saving you from that fucking prick. Thanking me for making sure he never touches you again.”
I squeeze my eyes shut, a sob catching in my throat. The image of Noah’s broken face flashes behind my lids, followed by the heat of Kai’s fingers.
“What were you thinking, little sister?” He slams his heel into the rock above my head, a punctuating strike of rage.
“Building a life on my fucking grave? Decorating a house with my ghost? You thought because I was behind bars, I was dead? You thought you could just move on to the next man who could buy you pretty things?”
I hear him pace again, a restless, caged animal.
“You don’t get to fucking leave me,” he snarls, the words dripping with a possession so thick it’s suffocating.
“Not in this life, and not in whatever hell comes after. You’re the only thing I have left, Scarlett.
The only thing that kept me from hanging myself from the rafters of that cell was the thought of how your skin would feel under my hands again. ”
I hear him lean down, his voice coming through a narrow fissure in the rock just inches from my face.
“I can hear your heart, Scarlett. It’s thudding against the stone. It’s calling for me even while you’re trying to hide. Give it up. Come out and take what’s yours, or I’ll come down there and make this cave your tomb.”
He starts to whistle again—that low, haunting melody—as the sound of his boots begins to descend the jagged path toward the cave entrance.
I don’t wait for him to find the entrance.
The second I hear the scrape of his boots descending the path, I lunge toward the back of the cave, where the black water of the tide pool meets the open sea. I don’t think about the sharks, or the rocks, or the current that wants to drag me to the bottom of the Atlantic. I just plunge.
The water hits me like a sheet of ice, stealing the breath from my lungs, but I scramble through the surf, my hands catching on barnacles that rip my palms to shreds.
I claw my way out of the secondary opening, a narrow blowhole that spits me out further down the coast, away from the path, away from the man who wants to devour me.
I’m back on the sand, shivering, my silk robe clinging to me like a second, freezing skin. I don’t stop. I run until my calves seize, until the salt in my wounds feels like liquid fire.
Behind me, his laugh erupts—a raw, jagged sound that carries over the roar of the ocean. He saw me. He saw the white flash of my robe disappearing into the trees again.
“That’s it, baby sister!” he roars, and I can hear the grin in his voice, the pure, unadulterated adrenaline of the chase. “Make me fucking work for it! Make me earn every inch of you!”
I dash into a thicket of ferns, the ground turning to mud beneath me. I can hear him crashing through the brush behind me, not even trying to be quiet anymore. He’s a hurricane in human skin.
“Fuck!” he grunts, the sound of a heavy branch snapping under his weight echoing like a gunshot.
“Do you even know what you fucking do to me, Scarlett? Watching you run, watching you struggle… I’m fucking throbbing, fuck!
I’m going to be so deep inside you when I catch you that you won’t know where you end and I begin! ”
I scramble up a steep embankment, my lungs screaming, my vision blurring with tears and exhaustion.
“You’re a monster, Kai!” I sob, the words lost to the wind.
“I’m your monster!” he bellows back, his voice closer now, right on my heels.
“You’re the one who fed me! You’re the one who kept me alive in that cell with your fucking memories!
Don’t you dare try to act like you’re innocent now!
You love the way I hunt you. You love the way it feels to be the only thing in the world I want to destroy! ”
I hit a plateau, the ground levelling out into a grove of ancient, twisted banyan trees. The roots are like a labyrinth, a maze of wooden ribs. I dive into the centre of them, crawling into the hollow of a massive trunk, pulling the hanging vines over the entrance.
I press my face into the dirt, trying to muffle the sound of my sobbing breaths.
Outside, the forest goes silent.
The whistling stops. The crashing stops.
And then, I hear the slow, rhythmic click of his folding knife. Snap. Click. Snap.
“I can hear you shaking, Scarlett,” he whispers, and the sound is right outside the roots. He’s leaning against the very tree I’m hiding in. “I can hear your blood rushing. It sounds like a goddamn invitation.”
He groans, a low, pained sound of pure, obsessive need.
“I’m going to give you one more chance to come out on your own,” he rasps, his hand slapping against the bark of the tree.
“One more chance to save us both a lot of pain. Because if I have to reach in there and drag you out… I’m not going to be gentle.
I’m going to break every lie you ever told me right out of your fucking throat. ”