Milton’s villa overlooks a narrow bay in Anguilla, away from the hotels and popular beaches. From the terrace, the sea looks calm, almost empty, but Milton knows that calm is only an appearance. He can identify boats by their silhouettes, recognizes the sound of their engines before they even come into view, and immediately notices when a vessel lingers offshore for too long.
The house is large, white, and perfectly maintained. There is little furniture, no photographs, and almost no personal belongings. The rooms look more like different sections of a command post than a place where anyone lives. In the garage, a vehicle always stands ready with a full tank. An air-conditioned storage room holds fuel cans, diving equipment, several phones, and bags packed in advance. Milton does not call this caution. To him, it is simply organization.
Milton’s face seems to have been shaped by the elements rather than by time. A massive nose occupies its center, like the bow of a ship ready to cleave through anything that resists it. His thick skin bears the traces of old tensions, nights that lasted too long, and decisions from which there was no turning back. His eyes, deep-set beneath heavy brows, never truly look: they assess, gauge, and anticipate.
Nothing in his expression seeks to charm. Everything suggests a cold, almost mathematical inner mechanism. It is not a face remembered for its beauty, but for the impression it leaves: that of a man who has already crossed certain lines and has never felt the need to look behind him.
Every morning, Milton follows the same ritual. He checks access to the property, reviews the cameras, examines the messages received during the night, and scans the bay through binoculars. Only then does he make coffee. Ordinary habits never come first. Security always precedes comfort.
Milton is an agent of ChronoEmpire. Officially, he does not exist on any organizational chart. His name appears on no permanent contract, and his assignments are never stated clearly. He receives an identity, a place, a time, and sometimes a photograph. The rest is up to him.
He carries out orders with professional precision. Hesitation seems useless to him, and so does morality. ChronoEmpire has trained him to watch, intimidate, abduct, and eliminate. The organization has taught him to regard violence not as a loss of control but as one tool among many. Milton does not particularly enjoy killing. Nor does he hate it. He does what must be done, then moves on to the next step.
ChronoEmpire rewards him for his efficiency, but above all for his obedience. Milton knows this. He also knows that the organization keeps files on its own agents, records their mistakes, measures their loyalty, and always prepares several replacements. He never mentions it. Yet for some time now, he has been destroying his messages more carefully and keeping certain information outside the official network.
Christine shares his life, at least in appearance. She keeps a few clothes in the villa, leaves bottles in the bathroom, and sometimes moves things, which Milton notices immediately. She likes to open the windows. Milton prefers the air-conditioning and the windows shut. She plays music. He turns it off when it gets too loud. Their intimacy resembles a silent negotiation whose rules Milton constantly changes.
He does not truly understand human relationships. He understands domination, control, execution, and dependency. The rest seems imprecise to him, and therefore secondary. When he gives Christine a piece of jewelry, it is not to please her but to mark a reconciliation. When he asks where she is, it is not out of concern, but to make sure she remains within the perimeter he has mentally assigned her.
For a long time, Christine mistook his coldness for strength. She believed Milton never panicked, that he would always know what to do, that no danger could truly reach her while she was with him. Only later did she understand that Milton did not protect people. He protected only what he considered his property.
He kills without visible emotion. He rams Jacques at sea. He carries out the assignments ChronoEmpire gives him without considering their consequences. Every situation becomes an operation, every human being a variable to manage. His Block19 is not merely a weapon: it is the natural extension of his will, the instrument through which the world resumes the shape he has decided to give it.
Yet behind this discipline, something is beginning to crack. Milton sleeps less. Sometimes he wakes convinced that he has heard an engine approaching the villa. He checks the doors, goes down to the garage, inspects the terrace. He does not believe in ghosts, but he does believe in survivors. And over the years, he has left too many behind him.
Milton Fleet was not a free man. He was an instrument of ChronoEmpire, an operative who specialized in dirty operations, staged accidents, and disappearances clean enough to become mere rumors. But as the assignments piled up, so did Milton’s enemies.
Every operation left traces. A witness spotted too late. A forgotten camera. A victim who was not as alone as the file claimed. A family member, an associate, a lover, an activist, or another agent who understood that he would soon be the next name on the list.
In this system, agents always end up becoming replaceable, then inconvenient, then disposable. Milton himself had eliminated several men who had become too dangerous for ChronoEmpire. He therefore knew the procedure perfectly. When an organization stops sending you assignments and starts asking you for detailed reports, it generally is not a promotion.
A few days before his death, Milton receives an anonymous message containing only three words: “We know everything.” He deletes the message, changes phones, and increases surveillance around the villa. He does not alert ChronoEmpire. Acknowledging the threat would mean acknowledging his vulnerability.
Yet he continues to visit the Simpson Bay Yacht Club. This loyalty to his habits will be his final mistake. Milton has spent his life exploiting other people’s routines. In the end, his own gets him killed.
Milton Fleet is shot at the Simpson Bay Yacht Club at the height of the busy season. At first, the initial reports are mistaken for firecrackers or an exploding engine. Then glasses shatter, tables overturn, and panic sweeps across the terrace. By the time the witnesses finally dare to raise their heads, the shooter has already fled.
Milton is found near the bar, lying on his side, one hand clenched against his jacket. His weapon is still in its holster. He did not have time to fire. His glass shattered on the table, and some of its contents have mingled with the blood on the tile floor.
The accounts contradict one another. Some mention a woman dressed in light colors. Others claim they saw a man near the exit. One boater insists that the shooter wore dark glasses. A waitress remembers only a bag left under a chair. The club’s cameras recorded several angles, but an unexplained failure interrupted one of the videos a few minutes before the shooting.
The possible motives overlap: personal revenge, strategic elimination, an activist operation, or an internal settling of accounts. Jules refuses to choose too quickly. A chaotic scene helps the guilty, but it also helps those who wish to appear guilty in order to protect someone else.
Betty Lenox has the most direct motive. Milton caused the wreck of Jacques’s sailboat. Since the accident, she has been trying to reconstruct his final moments and identify the pilot of the GoFast. Several witnesses confirm her presence in Simpson Bay on the day of the murder. She says she came to obtain a confession. Jules wonders whether she had truly planned to leave without one.
Isaac Abram is threatened by ChronoEmpire. He knows Milton has begun investigating his activities and fears that he will be eliminated next. He owns a fast motorcycle, knows the island’s back roads, and is skilled with weapons. His phone stops transmitting a few minutes before the shots, then reappears near the French border.
Félicie Algo is conducting an activist campaign against ChronoEmpire. She has followed Milton several times and seems to know some of his movements. Her methods are organized, almost theatrical. Jules also discovers that she has researched the Block19 and the habits of the Yacht Club staff.
Three suspects. Three credible motives. Three possible versions of the same death.
But one detail bothers Jules: the witnesses did not all hear the same number of gunshots.
I often come to the Simpson Bay Yacht Club. People arrive wearing dark glasses and oversized watches, their engines still roaring long after they have been switched off. I love crossing the water in my GoFast and carving a path between St. Barts, St. Martin, and Anguilla.
The club attracts two tribes that barely tolerate each other: speed lovers and sailors, the ones who travel slowly, drink slowly, judge slowly. Since the accident, they look at me the way they would look at a shark that had learned to walk upright. I know the rumors. They hover around me like flies over a carcass. Some claim I deliberately rammed Jacques’s sailboat. Others talk about trafficking, corruption, disappearances.
The truth hardly matters. In the Caribbean, a reputation always ends up becoming more solid than a passport. I feel their hostility the moment I arrive. Conversations drop in volume. Eyes slide toward me, then turn away. No one comes to challenge me; my face does the work for me.
I moored the GoFast at the main dock, beneath the wind-battered flags. The engines were still crackling as they cooled. The smell of gasoline and salt hung in the warm air.
I sat down near the terrace, where I can see the Simpson Bay Bridge and the yachts lying motionless in the bay like sleeping predators. The waiter brings me a drink without asking for my order. Around me, the place hums. Tourists laugh too loudly. Tanned crews empty bottles. A woman sings off-key near the bar.
Then I spot her. A woman alone. Sitting slightly apart, a discreet figure, almost erased. And yet something about her resists the setting. She does not drink, she does not look at anyone. She seems simply to be waiting for the world to move into exactly the right position.
Our eyes meet for a fraction of a second. No anger, no fear, only calm determination. I understand too late. She takes the gun from her bag with absurd slowness, as in a dream where no one reacts quickly enough. For one second, everything goes silent in my head. Sunlight gleams on the black barrel. I hear the rigging slap against the masts; even the wind seems suspended.
Then the shot explodes. The first bullet hits me before the pain arrives. My glass bursts on the table. Someone screams. Customers throw themselves to the ground amid the crash of overturned chairs. The world suddenly fills with noise. I rise by reflex, unsure whether I want to flee or reach her.
She fires again. Badly, but with the terrible persistence of people who have already accepted the consequences. What I remember most is her face. Not the face of a killer, but the face of someone finally doing something she has rehearsed in her mind for a long time.
Of the three suspects, Betty Lenox has the most personal motive. Jacques was not merely an acquaintance or an occasional companion. He occupied a central place in her life, despite his absences, their arguments, and his repeated departures.
Since the wreck of the sailboat, Betty has been trying to understand what happened. Milton’s name comes up repeatedly in the witness accounts. His GoFast was reported in the area, and several people know of the hostility Betty now feels toward the man she holds responsible for Jacques’s death.
Her presence in Simpson Bay is confirmed. Several Yacht Club regulars remember a woman sitting slightly apart before the shots. She waits for a long time without taking part in the conversations. A waitress recalls that she orders a drink she barely touches. This behavior hardly matches that of a customer who has come to relax.
Betty recently bought a Block19. The purchase is legal, but its date draws attention: it comes after Jacques’s disappearance and after Betty begins looking for Milton. She claims she bought it for protection. Jules observes that people who buy a gun for protection do not generally spend several hours waiting for the man they consider dangerous.
The shell casings found at the Yacht Club match the caliber of the Block19. Betty’s weapon, meanwhile, remains missing. She claims she lost it.
The witness accounts provide another clue. The shooter did not behave like a professional. The shots were fired in rapid succession, inaccurately, and with mounting panic. Milton is hit several times, but the scene resembles neither a methodical execution nor an operation prepared by ChronoEmpire.
This weakens the case against Isaac. It also weakens the case against Félicie, whose tendency to organize her actions carefully when she believes she is carrying out a mission is familiar to Jules. On the other hand, this clumsiness fits someone who has owned a weapon only a short time and has rehearsed the act mentally far more often than she has actually practiced it.
Jules reviews the available footage. An exterior camera shows a figure hurriedly leaving the Yacht Club after the shooting. The image is poor, but the height, gait, and clothing match Betty. Another witness says he saw a woman running toward the Simpson Bay Bridge.
Betty claims not to remember anything in particular. Jules is beginning to assemble a succession of coincidences that, taken together, look less and less accidental.
My GoFast slices through the water like a blade. Three engines, an almost indecent amount of power. The night lies open, the sea as black as a dead screen. Behind me, the lights along the coast slowly dissolve. At this speed, almost nothing truly exists anymore.
I remain tense, precise, perfectly aligned with the machine. One hand on the wheel, the other resting on Christine’s waist, just to feel that everything remains within reach and nothing escapes me. She sits beside me in silence, witnessing a precarious balance between control and excess.
Speed is enough. It cleanses everything: doubts, hesitations, even memories. I push harder and the boat responds at once. Every vibration travels up my arms. I know this language by heart.
Then a shape appears in the darkness. At first, it is only a shadow denser than the night. An unlit sail, a hull gliding slowly along a course incompatible with mine. I could alter my course slightly. Throttle back. Pass behind him. I have time—not much, but enough.
The beam from an instrument briefly illuminates the name painted on the hull: Picsou. I recognize Jacques Valère’s sailboat. ChronoEmpire does not like Jacques. He talks too much, transports people he should not know, and frequents networks where information circulates that does not belong to him. He believes he is free because he lives on a boat. Men like him often confuse having no address with being beyond surveillance.
I have received no orders for tonight. No message, no photograph, no precise time. Only a name stored in my memory and this professional certainty: sooner or later, Jacques will become a problem. The decision does not take the form of a thought. It passes directly from my eyes to my hands. I hold the throttle steady.
The sailboat grows larger before us. A figure rises in the cockpit. Perhaps Jacques has recognized me. He waves an arm, tries to change course. His boat responds with the ridiculous slowness of sailboats. Mine devours the distance.
Christine suddenly turns her head toward me.
Christine: Milton…
I do not answer.
The impact reverberates through the entire hull. A dull thud, sudden resistance, then the prolonged crack of material giving way. The GoFast lifts slightly before dropping back onto the water. For a second, the pitch of the engines changes. I correct the wheel and the machine regains its course.
Behind us, fragments float in the churned water. A light spins around before disappearing. Perhaps I hear a scream, but the roar of the engines drowns out almost everything. I could slow down. Turn back. Check whether Jacques is still alive. I hold my course.
Christine says nothing. She merely removes my hand from her waist and moves as far away as the seat allows. I can feel her eyes fixed on me, but I continue watching the horizon. I did not kill Jacques, not exactly. I merely held a course he should have avoided. That is how reports are written when no one wants to ask too many questions. Behind us, the sea is already closing the parenthesis. At this speed, everything eventually disappears, even what has just happened.