Chapter 20: The Shark Tank (Part II)

—— Day Thirty

Time behaves strangely underwater. It is fluid, amorphous, stripping away the structured certainty of the world above.

There was no sunrise or sunset here in the deep. There was only the harsh, clinical glare of the artificial lights and the feeding alarm that screamed at exactly noon. That sound—the chaotic splashing of twelve Great White Sharks tearing into bloody bait—sounded like a dull, rusty saw grinding against bone. Chop. Chop. Chop. It whittled the nerves down to fine, trembling dust.

Ava had lost count of the days. She only knew that the memory of what fresh air tasted like was fading, replaced by the sterile tang of recycled oxygen and the metallic scent of fear.

Inside the acrylic cage, only three things remained constant.

First, the black silk slip dress Landon had forced her into on the first day. It was now a gossamer ruin, torn into shreds that hung from her emaciated frame like spiderwebs that had survived a fire. It concealed nothing, serving only as a reminder of her vulnerability.

Second, the titanium chain around her ankle. The metal had long since won the war against her skin. It had bitten deep into the flesh, the wound festering and then healing over into a thick, black-red scab that merged man-made alloy with human bone.

Third, the row of teeth marks below her collarbone. What had started as an angry purple bruise had darkened to a deep crimson, and finally to a scarring black. It sat on her chest like a venomous centipede, a permanent brand of ownership.

Landon came only once a day.

He was always immaculate, a jarring contrast to the filth and despair of the cell. He wore bespoke three-piece suits, the fabric sharp enough to cut. His cufflinks were black diamonds, a pair he had won at a Monaco auction for three hundred million dollars.

His ritual was precise, almost religious. First, he would drape his jacket over the back of the single chair. Then, with agonizing slowness, he would roll up his shirt sleeves, revealing the map of scars on his forearms—some old, some fresh red welts where Ava’s nails had found purchase the day before.

The second part of the ritual was the "Gift." He would place a metal tray on the floor before her.

On the first day, it had been a high-voltage shock baton. On the second day, silver nipple clamps, the chains weighted with small, sharpened shark teeth. On the third day, a live octopus, its tentacles severed but still writhing with residual nerve impulses.

And today, the thirtieth day.

He placed a transparent crystal box on the tray. Inside, resting on a bed of black velvet, lay a severed human finger. It was a woman’s pinky finger, slender and pale, the nail painted a deep, blood-wine burgundy—a shade Ava famously detested.

Ava sat on the edge of the bed, her back straight. She looked like a black rose that had been snapped at the stem but refused to wilt. She stared at the severed digit for a long time, her expression unreadable. The silence stretched until the air in the room grew heavy, and Landon began to think she had finally broken.

Then, she looked up.

She smiled. The expression didn’t reach her eyes—they remained dead pools of obsidian—but the curve of her lips sent a jolt of electricity down Landon’s spine.

"It’s a fake," she rasped. Her voice sounded like gravel grinding together, barely human, yet filled with absolute certainty. "Summer’s nail bed is half a centimeter shorter than this. And she has diamond dust embedded under the nail of her right hand from the manicure I treated her to last year. You found the wrong body double, Landon."

Landon raised an eyebrow. He clapped his hands slowly, the sound echoing in the small space.

"Brilliant," he murmured, his voice low and intimate, like a lover’s whisper. "Truly the woman I chose."

He crossed the distance between them, crouching down to bring his face level with hers. His thumb brushed the corner of her cracked lips, pressing hard enough to split the dry skin. A bead of bright red blood welled up immediately.

"A pity," he whispered, leaning in to lick the drop of blood from her lip, humming with satisfaction at the taste. "Even if you see through the trick, what does it matter? Your brother has already lost his mind."

He raised his hand and snapped his fingers.

The one-way glass wall that separated them from the sharks suddenly flickered. The view of the deep pool vanished, replaced by a high-definition live feed.

The screen showed the cliffs on the north side of the island.

Sebastian was kneeling in the snow.

He looked like a fallen god. His silver-grey eyes were blown wide, mapped with red veins. His left hand was a ruin—mangled, bloody, the flesh torn open and covered in frost. Spread out in the snow before him was a row of glossy photographs.

They were high-resolution images of Ava in the tank. Ava convulsing under electric shocks. Ava bleeding from the clamps. Ava gasping for air as tentacles wrapped around her throat.

Beneath each photo, written in blood, was a single sentence: [Take one more step, and she loses another finger.]

In the video, Sebastian’s right hand gripped a combat knife. The tip of the blade was pressed directly against the brachial artery of his own left arm. The camera zoomed in, capturing the tremors in his hand, the white-knuckled grip, the bulging veins in his neck. He looked like a man standing on the precipice of absolute annihilation, ready to carve his own heart out if it meant saving her.

Ava’s breath hitched. Her composure shattered.

She threw herself at the glass screen, her fingernails clawing uselessly at the digital image of her brother. Her scream tore through her throat, raw and agonizing.

"Sebastian! No! Don’t believe him! It’s fake! It’s all fake!"

Strong arms wrapped around her from behind. Landon pulled her back against his chest, his chin resting on her shoulder. His voice was gentle, terrifyingly so.

"Call me Master," he whispered into her ear, "and I’ll make him stop."

Ava trembled violently. Tears mixed with the blood on her face, dripping onto Landon’s expensive shirt. She clamped her jaw shut, grinding her teeth until they creaked, refusing to speak the word.

Landon chuckled darkly. He bit down on her earlobe, hard enough to puncture the skin.

"Then keep watching."

On the screen, the tip of Sebastian’s knife broke the skin. A stream of dark blood began to flow down his arm, staining the pristine snow.

That was the breaking point.

Ava collapsed. She turned in Landon’s arms, burying her face in his chest, her voice fracturing into a thousand pieces.

"Master..." she sobbed, the word tasting like bile. "Please... make him stop..."

Landon’s pupils contracted instantly. He looked like a wolf that had finally watched the lamb walk willingly into its jaws. He grabbed the back of her neck, forcing her to look up at him. His voice trembled with a dark, twisted euphoria.

"Say it again."

Ava was weeping uncontrollably now, her tears washing streaks of blood down the scars on her chest. She rose on her tiptoes, pressing her trembling lips against his. Her voice was as light as a sigh, but it carried the crushing weight of total surrender.

"Master... Ava was wrong... Please, Master, make him stop..."

Landon’s control snapped.

He gripped her waist, crushing her body against his, and kissed her with a violence that bordered on cannibalism. He kissed her as if he wanted to devour her soul, to dismantle her bone by bone.

On the screen, Sebastian froze. The knife stopped moving. He looked up, staring directly into the camera lens. In those silver eyes, Ava saw a mixture of madness and a heartbreak so profound it looked like physical death.

In that moment, Ava knew she had lost. She hadn't lost to Landon. She had lost to herself. She had taken the sharpest weapon she had—her brother's love—and broken it with her own hands.

Landon carried her to the narrow bed. He sounded satisfied, like a beast that had finally eaten its fill. "Good girl."

He ripped away the last few shreds of the silk dress. When he entered her, Ava didn't fight. She didn't scratch, she didn't bite. She simply closed her eyes. Tears slid from the corners of her eyes, tracking through her hair to soak the pillow—two silent rivers of blood and grief.

The pain was overwhelming, a tidal wave that sought to drown her. But in the darkness behind her eyelids, Ava forced herself to stay awake. She forced her mind to remain razor-sharp.

Through every thrust, through every degradation, she analyzed him. When she involuntarily tightened her muscles, she felt his Adam's apple bob against her cheek. When she let out a low, pained whimper, his grip on her hip loosened for exactly half a second.

She cataloged these reactions. She memorized the rhythm of his pleasure and the triggers of his mercy. She was banking every ounce of pain, converting it into currency she would one day use to buy his destruction.

When the climax hit, Landon roared, pulling out at the last second. The hot fluid splashed across her abdomen—another barbaric mark of territory. He collapsed on top of her, his breathing ragged and heavy.

As he lay there, vulnerable in the afterglow, Ava moved.

She didn't push him away. Instead, she wrapped her arms around him. It wasn't an embrace of affection. It was the embrace of a python measuring its prey.

She pressed her lips to his ear, her voice soft, breathless, sounding for all the world like a lover's confession.

"Landon," she whispered. "Do you know why I called you Master?"

The man froze. He lifted his head, looking down at her with narrowed eyes.

Ava smiled. The madness in her eyes was no longer suppressed; it was dancing, wild and free.

"Because one day," she purred, "I will make you kneel. And I will make you feed those two words back into your own mouth, with your own hands."

Landon stared at her for three long seconds. The air crackled between them. Then, he threw his head back and laughed. It was a jagged, broken sound, sounding almost like weeping.

"Little Rose," he rasped, stroking her hair. "You’ve finally become just like me."

He kissed her again, bruising her lips. "Then let’s see who goes insane first."

---

Outside the Cell. The North Cliff.

Sebastian watched the screen. He watched the woman he loved break. He heard her call another man "Master."

The combat knife in his right hand snapped. Crack.

The blade shattered under the sheer force of his grip. Shards of steel bit into his palm, and blood poured down, dripping onto the snow like blooming red poppies.

He looked up at the sky. The silver-grey of his eyes had vanished, consumed by a darkness that promised apocalypse.

"Thirty days," he whispered. The wind carried his voice away, but the three hundred soldiers behind him heard it. They dropped to one knee in unison.

"From this moment on," Sebastian said, his voice devoid of all humanity, "I want this island to drown in blood."

---

Meanwhile. Deep in the Shark Tank.

The massive Great White, Margaret, glided past the glass wall of the cell. Suddenly, she stopped.

Her flat, grey-blue eyes fixed on Ava’s silhouette inside the room. She seemed to sense something—a shift in the water, a vibration in the air.

Inside the cell, Ava walked to the glass. She pressed her fingertips against the cold acrylic and tapped three times.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

The shark’s pupil contracted. With a sudden burst of primal power, the beast whipped its tail and slammed its massive body against the glass.

BOOM!

The entire acrylic wall shuddered under the impact.

Ava stood there, unmoving. The corner of her mouth quirked up into a barely perceptible smile. Her eyes burned with a cold, terrifying fire.

She knew. Sebastian was here. And she was ready to hunt.