Total pages in book: 57
Estimated words: 54871 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 274(@200wpm)___ 219(@250wpm)___ 183(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 54871 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 274(@200wpm)___ 219(@250wpm)___ 183(@300wpm)
I stop talking because I've run out of things to offer her.
The silence returns.
Scarletta is looking at me with an expression I can't quite parse, her eyes searching my face for something I'm not sure I'm capable of providing.
I wait for her answer.
And wait.
And realize, with a sensation that feels disturbingly like vertigo, that I don't know what she's going to say.
This is not a familiar feeling. I research. I plan. I anticipate outcomes and prepare contingencies for every possible scenario. But Scarletta exists outside my models, unpredictable in ways that my usual methods of analysis can't account for.
I think about what happens if she chooses to leave.
The plane ride back to Idaho Falls. The empty apartment waiting for her, still decorated with the Christmas tree I had installed, still monitored by cameras she hasn't disabled. She'll write about this experience eventually. She'll turn it into another story for her readers, another chapter in the ongoing narrative of ScarletSins and her dark fantasies.
And I'll be here.
Alone.
Watching her through screens, reading her words, cataloging her patterns, but never touching her again.
The thought produces a physical reaction in my chest, a tightening sensation that I identify after a moment as something I haven't experienced in years.
I'm going to be sad if she leaves.
The realization lands like a blow.
I don't do sad.
I do focused. I do driven. I do satisfied when a hunt concludes successfully and empty when I'm between targets. But sad implies caring, implies investment, implies that this woman has somehow become more than a project, more than an obsession, more than the subject of six months of careful surveillance and planning.
I look at her face, at the way the soft lighting of the aftercare room catches the gold flecks in her hazel eyes, at the small smile that hasn't quite faded from her lips.
I want her to stay.
Not because I've invested resources in this operation.
Not because her departure would represent a failed mission.
I want her to stay because the thought of watching her walk away makes something inside me feel hollow in a way I don't have words for.
She still hasn't answered.
Chapter 12
Scarletta
He just told me he kills people.
Not hypothetically. Not metaphorically. He runs an organization called The Scales that hunts down wealthy predators who escape justice and makes them suffer.
I should be horrified.
I should be calculating the distance to the nearest exit, mapping escape routes in my head, wondering if I can outrun him through the jungle and signal for help.
That's what a normal person would do.
That's what the protagonist in any rational thriller would be doing right now—cataloging weapons, assessing threats, preparing to fight for her survival.
But I'm not thinking about any of that.
I'm thinking about how… I've never had a Valentine's Day date.
The absurdity of this hits me like a slap, and I almost laugh out loud at myself. Here I am, sitting in the lap of a confessed professional killer, naked, and exhausted, and still slightly trembling from the aftershocks of multiple forced orgasms, and my brain has decided to fixate on the romantic implications of his invitation.
Eight more stations. A jungle maze. Seafood lunch and a massage. Ocean-view dinner. Sleeping in his room—not for sex, he said. For companionship.
This is, objectively, the most elaborate Valentine's Day date anyone has ever planned for me.
This is the only Valentine's Day date anyone has ever planned for me.
I think about what this would look like on social media. The aesthetic perfection of it all—the tropical island, the candlelit aftercare room, the handsome man with his careful touches and his knowledge of exactly what I need. I could film reels that would make women around the world spiral with jealousy. Look at my Valentine's Day date! He built an entire scavenger hunt just for me! He knows all my fantasies and makes them come true!
The torture confession.
The corporate-funded executions.
The methodical way he explained Derek's death like discussing dinner plans.
All minor details.
I almost do laugh then, a small sound that escapes before I can stop it. The unmasked man looks at me with concern, probably wondering if I'm having some kind of psychological break.
Maybe I am.
Or maybe I'm just finally accepting that nothing is what it seems. That the most romantic gesture anyone has ever made for me comes wrapped in darkness, and blood, and the kind of moral complexity that would give philosophers nightmares.
That the person who sees me most clearly, who understands my writing, and my shame, and my desperate need to be known, is someone the world would call a monster.
I wonder if that makes me insane too.
I picture what tonight would look like. This tall, handsome, muscular, competent man—and he is all of those things, objectively beautiful in ways I still haven't fully processed—sitting beside me on a couch. We might watch movies. Something mindless and easy, the kind of film I've seen a hundred times because I needed the comfort of knowing how it ends.