The Namib Desert doesn't just take your breath away; it demands it.
From the window of the private charter, the dunes looked like frozen waves of rust, stretching endlessly toward the Atlantic. There were no roads here. No power lines. Just The Oasis—a jagged splinter of glass and black steel anchored into the crest of a five-hundred-foot dune. It was the kind of architecture that screamed, "I have more money than God, and I don't care who knows it."
I adjusted my cufflink, the cold gold pressing against my wrist. Beside me, Amina, the most followed socialite in Mayfair, was busy adjusting her ring light. Even at ten thousand feet, she was "on."
"Do you think they have Starlink?" she asked, not looking up from her phone. Her followers were currently watching a looped video of her boarding the plane at Heathrow in a silk jumpsuit that cost more than a mid-sized sedan. "My fans are dying for a tour of the interior."
"I think the point of a 'Digital Detox' is to leave the fans behind, Amina," I said. My voice was smooth, practiced. The voice of a man who sold software to governments and secrets to the highest bidder in the City.
"Please," she scoffed, finally looking at me. Her eyes were sharp, scanning me for a weakness she could use for content. "Julian doesn't do anything for 'peace.' He does things for prestige. We're here because we're the trophies. The Tech King. The Mayfair Queen. The Harley Street Miracle Worker."
She nodded toward the back of the cabin, where Dr. Kaelo sat. He was staring out the window, his hands—hands that had performed elite surgeries for London's elite—clenched tightly in his lap. He hadn't spoken since we left Windhoek. He looked less like a guest and more like a man heading to his own execution.
"And what about the quiet one?" Amina whispered, gesturing to the woman in the very back. Yuki. She was dressed in a simple grey linen suit, reading a physical book. No phone. No jewelry. Just a silent, predatory stillness that felt entirely out of place for a girl who used to run the most exclusive underground gambling dens in Soho.
"She's the wild card," I said.
The plane began its descent. The desert rose up to meet us, a wall of heat and red dust. As the wheels touched the private strip, a shiver traced its way down my spine. It wasn't fear—not yet. It was the thrill of the hunt.
Julian was waiting for us on the tarmac, his linen shirt crisp despite the hundred-degree heat. He looked like a man who owned the sun, a far cry from the scruffy visionary I'd first met in a damp basement in Shoreditch.
"Welcome, my friends," Julian shouted over the dying whine of the engines. He spread his arms wide. "Welcome to the end of the world. I promise you, by the time you leave this desert, you will be entirely different people."
He didn't know how right he was.
As we walked toward the glass fortress, I felt the weight of the 9mm tucked into the small of my back. Julian thought he was the host. He thought he was the one in control.
But I hadn't come to the Namib for a detox. I had come to finish what started five years ago on a rainy Tuesday in London. One of the people walking beside me was a murderer.
And by midnight, I was going to make sure they paid for it.