Page 211 of Primal

“You ever think about leaving?”

Every goddamn day. I keep my voice even. “Why?”

“Just wondering. You’ll take me with you, right?”

“Sure, buddy.”

Fuck knows why I stick around.

Maybe because no kid should grow up alone in a house that reeks of broken promises.

Maybe because I was Max’s age when Dad’s heart gave out mid-sentence at the dinner table, and Mom replaced him with a vodka bottle and a revolving door of Roberts.

Or maybe because of Payton Reed.

The redhead who moved in across the street last year and rewired my brain like bad code—replaced my all-night penetration testing with tracing her shadow through curtain-lit windows.

I used to breach firewalls for fun.

Now I just monitor hers.

After we finish, I press a twenty into Max’s palm. “Pizza. Extra pepperoni. Hide the leftovers. I’ll be in The Dungeon if you need me.”

Max pockets the money and salutes, his fingers still dusty from the strobe lights. “Aye aye, Captain.”

The basement. Home sweet fucking home. Lying around are some cracked vinyl weights, a speed bag, and a pull-up bar with notches for every day I didn’t end up like the woman upstairs. Dad’s tackle box sags in the corner. Don’t know why I keep it. The bass on the last one’s half-peeled, stiff as a dead bug.

The monitors glow like three moons. Left screen: Brett Tanner’s work email. Middle: his Instagram DMs (deleted, but not purged). Right: the security feed outside his apartment.

Pathetic.

The man used his dog’s name as his banking password. Amateur hour.

A few keystrokes, and I’m scrolling through messages:

Brett to Lydia (3:42 am, two days after ghosting Payton):

You gonna be a good girl for me tonight?

My jaw tightens.

Twelve minutes. That’s all it takes to splice Brett’s podcast audio into a crystal-clear recording of him calling his biggest client ‘a talentless hack who wouldn’t know branding if it tongue-kissed him.’

Another three to embed it in an email thread—timed to slide into the CEO’s inbox at 8:59 am Monday, right before his make-or-break pitch.

But the masterpiece?

A script that’ll make his PowerPoint twitch like a dying animal, each slide glitching at the worst possible moment. By slide five, the room will shift. By slide ten, Brett’s career will be carved open on the table.

And the pièce de résistance?

A deepfake of Brett’s smirking face pasted onto footage from a Berlin fetish club (sourced from a forum even I don’t like to browse). HR won’t question it. They’ll just see what they want to see.

I tweak the metadata on every planted file—just enough to sting, not enough to trace. First, reduce Brett Tanner to a cautionary LinkedIn post. Second, make sure Payton never connects the dots back to me.

Revenge should be invisible.

Like a predator who knows your secrets, the sounds you make when you beg.