The humidity of the Amazon was a physical weight, pressing against my chest, but it was nothing compared to the heaviness in my heart. I stood on the edge of the weathered viewing platform, the dark, churning water of the Rio Negro moving sluggishly twenty feet below.
“Look, Dad,” Daniel said, pointing toward a knot of mangroves. “That’s where the caimans nest. It’s primal, isn’t it?”
I leaned forward, squinting. I was seventy-two years old, the founder of Turner Global, a man who had built a two-billion-dollar empire from a single hardware store. I had negotiated with sharks in boardrooms for forty years, but I never saw the teeth of the family standing right behind me.
I felt Emily’s hands on my back before I registered her intent. They were small hands, manicured and soft, but the force she exerted was rigid and decisive.
“Go down to the river with the crocodiles,” she whispered. Her voice wasn’t frantic; it was devoid of humanity.
I stumbled. My orthopedic shoes slipped on the mossy wood. I flailed, turning just enough to see my son. Daniel. My boy. He stood with his arms crossed, an eerie, calm smile tugging at his mouth. He didn’t reach for me. He watched me fall like I was a fluctuating stock price he was happy to dump.
I hit the water hard. The impact knocked the wind out of me, filling my nose with the smell of silt and decay. The river was warmer than I expected, enveloping me in a suffocating embrace. I surfaced, sputtering, wiping mud from my eyes.
“Daniel!” I screamed, thrashing against the current.
High above, on the platform, Emily leaned over the railing. She looked like a dark angel against the canopy. “Don’t fight it, Albert,” she called down, her voice carrying over the water. “It’s faster this way. We need the money now, not in ten years.”
Daniel placed a hand on her shoulder, guiding her away. They turned their backs. They left me to die.
Panic is a strange thing. It can paralyze you, or it can turn you into something ancient. As a log drifted by, bumping my shoulder, I saw the ridges on it move. It wasn’t a log. A pair of amber eyes broke the surface ten yards away. A Black Caiman. An apex predator.
My boardrooms didn’t prepare me for this, but my upbringing did. I grew up poor in the bayou before I made my money. I knew water. I knew mud. And more than anything, I knew spite.
I am not dying here, I thought. I am not letting them win.
The crocodile submerged, a silent torpedo aimed at my legs. Adrenaline, sharp and electric, flooded my aged veins. I didn’t swim for the platform; the current was too strong. I swam for the root systems of the mangroves on the opposite bank. I kicked with a violence I didn’t know I possessed.
Something brushed my foot. Rough, scaly skin.
I screamed, a guttural roar, and hauled myself up a tangle of submerged roots. My suit jacket tore. My expensive watch shattered against the wood. I scrambled up the muddy bank, gasping, heaving, my heart hammering like a trapped bird. Below me, the water churned violently where I had just been.
I lay in the mud for twenty minutes, staring at the canopy, listening to the screech of howler monkeys. I was alive. And I was furious.
The trek back to the main road took me three hours. I was bleeding from scratches on my face and arms, caked in black mud, limping on a twisted ankle. I looked like a swamp monster. When I finally flagged down a passing truck carrying plantains, the driver nearly sped off in terror.
“Take me to the Villa Rio,” I said in broken Portuguese, pulling a soggy wad of waterproof bills from my hidden travel pouch—a habit from traveling in high-risk zones. “One thousand dollars. Fast.”
The driver’s eyes widened. He drove like a madman.
We arrived at the private estate where we were staying. The gates were open. The staff, hired by my agency, were nowhere to be seen—Daniel must have dismissed them for the “private evening.”
I didn’t go through the front door. I went around the back, through the servants’ entrance. I moved through my own rented mansion like a ghost. I found the master study, the room with the high-backed leather chair facing the fireplace.
I didn’t shower. I didn’t change. I wanted them to smell the river on me. I wanted them to see the mud.
I poured myself a glass of scotch, my hands shaking not from fear, but from a cold, simmering rage. I sat in the chair and turned it away from the door, facing the unlit fireplace. And I waited.
It was sunset when I heard the car pull up. The heavy oak front doors opened. Laughter echoed in the hallway—carefree, bubbling laughter.
“I can’t believe it was that easy,” Emily’s voice drifted in. “Did you see him splash? It was pathetic.”
“He was old, Em,” Daniel replied. The sound of a cork popping. Champagne. “He was past his prime. We just… expedited the inheritance. To us.”
“To the two billion,” Emily toasted. Clink.
They walked into the study. I could hear their footsteps on the hardwood.
“It’s quiet,” Daniel said. “Ideally, we wait until morning to call the police. We say he went for a walk and never came back. A tragic accident.”
“Perfect,” Emily sighed. “I’m going to redecorate this place first. I hate this leather furniture.”
“Is that so?” I said.
My voice was raspy, filled with grit.
The room went deathly silent.
I slowly swivelled the chair around.
The look on their faces was worth every second of terror in that river. Emily dropped her champagne flute; it shattered, spraying vintage Dom Pérignon across the rug. Daniel turned a pale, sickly shade of grey, his mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water.
I sat there, covered in dried Amazonian mud, blood trickling down my temple, holding my scotch.
“D-Dad?” Daniel stammered. “We… we thought…”
“You thought the crocodiles were hungry,” I said, taking a slow sip. “They were. but I was hungrier.”
“Albert, please, we can explain,” Emily cried, stepping forward, her hands trembling. “It was an accident! We tried to grab you!”
“I have a waterproof audio recorder in my pocket, Emily,” I lied. I didn’t, but they didn’t know that. “I have the ‘go down with the crocodiles’ on tape. And the guide you paid off? My security team is already having a very intense conversation with him.”
Daniel fell to his knees. “Dad, please. It was her idea! She made me do it!”
“Pathetic,” I spat. “You pushed me into the water, Daniel. But you just drowned yourself.”
I pulled out the satellite phone I had retrieved from the desk. “The local police are at the gate. My legal team in New York has already frozen every asset you have access to. You aren’t getting two billion dollars. You’re getting twenty years in a Brazilian prison.”
Sirens began to wail in the distance, growing louder.
“Go down to the river,” I whispered, mocking her earlier tone. “And see if you can float.”
I watched as the police dragged them out, screaming and crying. I sat alone in the dark, muddy and bruised, listening to the silence of the house. I had my life, and I had my money. But as I looked at the empty spot where my son had stood, I realized that in a way, the river had taken everything that mattered after all.
