Plink!

“Plink!”

The sound wasn’t just water. It was waking memory, dripping back into him one drop at a time.

Eli Kotch blinked once, uncomprehending with the dawn. Then blinked again.

He sat up slowly.

He was naked. Not even a watch. No way to know how long he’d been here.

He was in an iron barred cell inside a concrete walled basement. He sat on a cot beside a stainless-steel toilet he didn’t want to think about. That dripping sound repeated, methodical, patient, inevitable. Each drop counting down the passage of time.

Had he been kidnapped?

If so, he didn’t trust his wife to pay the ransom. She’d bought him like she bought everyone else, and she never bought the same thing twice.

“Plink!”

The only light came from a small, dusty window—high above his head, emitting a beam of pale daylight across the far wall. Below the window, someone had scrawled his name in red lipstick—looped, careful, and deliberate. The ‘i’ dotted with a heart. Neat. A child’s valentine to the condemned saying this is affection.

Bare, studded walls greeted him—an unfinished home basement of mildew, and dampness. A diary page was nailed to one of the wooden studs with his name circled in red. To the left, he saw a utility sink, its faucet the source of the rhythmic dripping.

And to the right—past the cell bars, not far from the sink—something else.

A professional weightlifting bench.

Everything set at maximum weight, as if their user didn’t fear limits. Scratches, like claw marks, were etched into the plates.

There was chalk dust on the concrete floor beneath, a squirt bottle and a towel for wiping off sweat. The bar wasn’t for show. The padded bench lay dented from use.

“Plink!”

Someone returned to it daily. Not casually.

Deliberately.

Someone fixated.

Someone worshipping their own body.

“Not a gym,” he muttered. “An altar.”

Then he raised his voice to be heard. “So you want to be stronger before you beat me? That’s considerate.”

But whoever used it—whoever needed to use it—had more strength than he cared to imagine.

One wall of this cathedral built to the human body was decorated in mirrors. Weight lifters do that to study their form. Only these mirrors were different. Incomplete. They were shards of broken mirrors. You couldn’t see yourself fully in them, only in distorted fragments.

The other wall was worse.

Someone had completely covered it with hundreds of photographs.

All of him.

“Plink!”

Some photos were recent—tennis club, valet stand, the back booth at Le Jardin. Others were older. College. A wedding. One from a ski trip he didn’t remember anyone else photographing. Another he thought he’d destroyed. How the—? He clenched his fist and smacked the bars with it.

More chilling: each one of them was framed, not in wood, but in chains. The photographs were not just surveillance—they revealed a long term obsession.

And before them—a scented candle stood, burned down replaced many times, lit by someone kneeling.

A shrine.

Whoever owned this place didn’t want money.

Didn’t want revenge.

Didn’t even want him dead.

They wanted him.

"Plink!"

"What?" He gripped the bars and looked up and called, “Am I some sort of trophy?”

But the only reply was silence, making his search for clues futile and ridiculous, as if the smiling faces of his own photos on the wall were laughing at him.

“Plink!”

His hands—always before steady—shook the bars. Solid. For a breath he gave up.

Then stillness.

He was not in control of the situation. A cell key was.

A damned key!

Jesus Christ, why was he in here?

His head dropped to stare at the cot, trying to place himself. On it sat a folded towel. Clean, crisp, hotel white. Even the sheets were laundered. And the blanket? Cashmere. Monogrammed. His initials. Not stitched, but embroidered in red thread—too red—so out of place here it had to be woman's hand.

This wasn’t a prison. It was a handcrafted hell. Nothing sharpens guilt quite like comfort delivered with style.

Yet it made no sense. Why offer comfort here?

Eli moved away. Drew in several breaths. Didn’t need this. Then his head turned. The lurking scent of perfume. Faint, familiar. A brand he knew?

“Plink!”

The last thing he remembered, he was at the tennis club. Sunset games with fellow billionaire Tim Craig. He’d been serving hard on court seven. Then—laughter in the locker room, heading for the lot at closing. His Jaguar XKE, parked beneath the trees. The smell of pine. He was supposed to meet Vanessa. Then—footsteps.

A gunnysack over his head. Voices he didn’t recognize. And then thrown into a trunk. The two together smelled like onions and gasoline.

That was it. The rest of his memory slipped—too easily. As if someone had taken it.

And now: here.

Eli stood up and turned to the basement window. It seemed little bigger than a mailbox, and double-paned with a slider latch. Even if he could break it, he could never fit through it.

He paced in frustration. His steps mapped a prisoner’s geometry—five steps to the wall, five back to the cot, a corner pivot, repeat. The ritual was useless, but most rituals were.

“Hey!” he shouted. “Is someone here? Hello!”

No response.

Only the sink answered.

"Plink!"

Eli tried again, voice rising. Threats, curses. Silence.

He collapsed against the wall and stared around at the ceiling. And that’s when he saw it—a wooden staircase in the shadows, leading up to an upstairs door. Eli hadn’t noticed it before. Too dark. Still couldn’t even see the knob on his side. Just dull, paint the color of old bones with a gap of light under the threshold.

Then—

A sound.

The upstairs door creaked open.

The voice didn’t drift down the stairs—it slid into the room from everywhere at once, as if the basement itself had spoken.

“Perfect,” a woman’s alluring voice whispered. “You’re awake.”

Eli froze.

The stairs creaked beneath weight. Footsteps. Measured, steady, yet with a clicking sound.

High heels?

“Click... click... click.”

No. Not high heels.

Toenails.

A dog?

No… dogs don’t walk like they’re counting the steps.

Someone stepped into the light. A woman's shape, though not right in the way he expected. The shadow didn’t match the body casting it. Too much, too little, too everything.

And then he beheld her—a body sculpted beyond anything nature intended.

One created without restraint—where beauty, shape, even the length of her nails had all been taken too far. He thought "created" because no woman born could possibly look like her. Breasts and flaring hips, ripe as overfilled chalices, dared the world to deny them. Her hair spilled down her back in a flaming red torrent of corruption that riveted him.

Worse, it was as if her body itself were proud of its own every excessive curve, carved by a god who cared nothing for modesty and everything for sexual conquest that promised both ecstasy and ruin.

She stopped.

As if smelling the air for him.

Found him.

Her eyes locked on his, eagerly seeking his acknowledgment of her very being, as if the world were unfinished until he truly saw her.

Then she resumed down the stairs.

“Click... click... click.” Her toenails, grown into predatory points, clicked on the floor.

He felt a sudden chill of cold warning, as if his cell bars could not protect him from her.

He took a step back. Unprepared. Overwhelmed.

Despite himself, he couldn't take his eyes off her. Beneath all that twisted, terrifying perfection she so wantonly exuded, her gaze hungrily searched his face for something.

Recognition.

Approval.

Proof she mattered.

“Plink!”

Her body followed his to the cell door—impressively strong, clearly built to dominate—yet eerily elegant.

He’d seen runway models. He’d seen monsters. She was both.

Eli felt small. Not from fear exactly—but the certainty that he was no longer the top of the food chain.

Yet he knew why she was here—the gatekeeper with all the answers. Maybe she'd tell him or he could slip it out of her. The first step to getting the key.

When she stepped up to his cell door it was her face that held him.

Gaudy.

Flawless yet somehow wrong. Lips overly full, lashes too long, and lush. And her eyes, gold as a wolf’s, illuminated with the frenzy of madness. It was as if she had chosen that body, had looked in a mirror and said, yes, that's me.

“Plink!”

He didn’t know her. Couldn't.

But otherwise? A memory had already slipped in.

No. Not remotely possible.

Yet for a moment, it felt like this situation had his fingerprints all over it.

With her blazing gaze, she looked like someone who had escaped her cage—and somewhere an entire army was out hunting for her now to put her back in.

The woman’s attention shifted to the cell door—still locked. She smiled in satisfaction. In her hand, she held a metal pipe.

Eli’s breath hitched. He couldn’t tell if her smile was hunger, triumph… or love. God help him, maybe all three. His legs told him to run. But nowhere to go. His eyes would have refused anyway.

“You still sleep with your left hand curled under your chin,” she said—the way someone might murmur over a sleeping lover’s flaw.

He swallowed involuntarily.

“I used to watch you. I remember everything,” her voice whispered as she held the pipe now in both hands. “Every word, kindness, and truth you ever said to me.”

Every truth? Those were words he’d never before, not with his lifestyle. Yet Eli did avoid lying. Lying is the first step to getting caught. Seems he’d been caught anyway. But how’d she know how he slept?

He backed up against the far wall from her. She scared the holy hell out of him, her daggered hands alone could end him, easily and without haste.

She didn’t even have to move to intimidate. Just looking at her made him want to piss himself.

Need a plan to get past her when she opens the door.

It didn't come.

He pressed his palms against the cold concrete wall behind him. No more retreat left.

This isn’t real. No one looks like that. No one possibly could.

“Recognize me?” the woman asked in a delicious, sultry voice, still gripping the pipe in both hands.

She obviously knew him but he couldn’t place her. She was nightmare-beautiful—the kind men remember in the split‑second before they scream awake. She’d be impossible to forget, even if he wanted to. The woman exuded scandal from which no one could recover.

Including him.

Casually, almost unthinkingly, her muscles tensed like steel and bent the pipe while still looking at him.

“Plink!”

Eli blinked. No escape plan covered this. She'd break him in half.

Get ahold of yourself. Think.

Deny her control. Be charming, not smug. Let her show her cards. Find out who she is.

“I’ve met a lot of faces,” he said, easy like. “Names slip through the cracks.”

The words left his mouth out of habit, not courage. He was stalling—buying seconds, pretending charm still mattered.

Her voice was quiet, almost tender. “You mistook love for possession.”

She tossed the bent pipe aside.

“What you see,” the woman added, stepping closer, “is your own guilt.”

She had spoken the word: guilt.

Suddenly it was everywhere—in the chain frames, in the stainless-steel, in the softness of the towel meant to mock him, in the twisted beauty of her impossible form. He’d done something to deserve this. But which guilt? Too many to list. Not enough clues.

Eli tilted his head, smiled slow while still barely keeping his underwear dry. “That narrows it down. You’ll still have to be more specific—tax evasion or broken hearts?”

She produced the cell key, holding it up. For a moment he thought she was only showing it to taunt him.

But then she stepped closer.

The metal glinted.

Inserting it into the cell lock. It turned—slow.

The cell door swung open. What came through it was judgment, veiled in velvet, terrible in its loving gaze. Whatever she intended, he was helpless to resist. Not against her.

Her statuesque legs gave her the right to stand over his six foot frame. She just got more intimidating all the time. His pulse nervously rose. Words caught in his throat.

“I made myself perfect just for you,” she said, smiling with pride. Voice smooth, elegant. Like a violin playing to an empty house. “You made me believe I had to be.”

She made herself look like that? Something felt wrong in those words. How could any woman make herself look like that—let alone want to?

And did it—for him?

“You’re not prey, Eli,” she promised, sensing his fear. “You’re an offering... to me.”

Eli failed to see the difference between the two.

He mustered a calm exterior and managed a weak remark. “Well, if this is judgment day,” he said, throat dry, “I hope you brought a decent bottle.”

She tilted her head. Her red hair looking like it could set fire to the basement as she closed the door. Her eyes looked at him as if he was the answer to a question she’d been asking her whole life.

“I’ve waited so long,” she said, almost sweetly. “I practiced this. Every word. Every step. And now it’s finally going to happen.”

Practiced this? If she’s rehearsed it, I can predict the song—maybe even finish it and turn it to my advantage.

She ignored his earlier remark, almost as if she expected it. Instead, she stood before him. Close. Too close. If breath could burn, hers would be the match and he would incinerate.

She brought her lips to his. Her kiss felt familiar, like a memory rising just out of reach. It wasn’t recognition. It was intimacy misplaced—familiar in a way that made no sense, the wrongness of something he should not remember at all.

“I am yours,” she whispered softly with a sigh of warm breath, her hand lightly caressing his cheek, “and you are finally mine.”

For a heartbeat, he almost believed she meant it. Then those wicked, deadly nails brushed his face, and belief shattered.

Eli jerked back in alarm.

What the fu—

“Plink!”