March 3, 2026
Manhattan, 7:47 p.m.
Preston Caldwell the Third stepped out of the shower in his Tribeca penthouse, steam rolling off his shoulders like he was too important for the air to touch him.
Forty-eight years old. Harvard Law '99. Net worth north of nine figures.
The kind of man who could make a nineteen-year-old intern disappear with one phone call and still make the Forbes list the same year.
He padded barefoot across Italian marble, humming some Drake song he only knew because his son played it too loud.
The black envelope was just sitting there on the kitchen island, right on top of today's mail he hadn't bothered opening yet.
Plain matte paper. No logo. No address. Only his name in silver ink that looked wet.
Preston frowned. His doorman knew better than to let anything up without clearance.
He flipped it over. Wax seal. Some kind of bird emblem he didn't recognize.
Inside: one card. Thick stock. Same silver lettering.
**Your Death Notice has arrived.**
**Tonight. 9:00 PM EST.**
**Scan the code when you are ready to face judgment.**
Below that, a tiny QR code.
He laughed once, short, the way men laugh when they're pretty sure it's a joke but not 100%.
Probably one of the associates trying to be clever. Or that bitch from Yale who still hadn't let the settlement go.
Preston tossed the card on the counter, poured himself three fingers of Yamazaki 18, and forgot about it.
8:11 p.m.
His phone started blowing up.
First the group chat with the boys from the firm.
Then his wife from the Hamptons.
Then CNN push alerts.
Some dark-web stream was trending everywhere. No name, no host, just a black screen and a countdown clock ticking down from forty-nine minutes.
The thumbnail was a single black envelope.
Same wax seal.
Preston felt something cold crawl up his spine for the first time since he was twelve and his father caught him stealing.
He picked the card back up. Thumb hovered over the QR code.
"Don't be a fucking idiot," he told himself out loud.
He scanned it anyway.
The link opened straight into the stream.
Black screen.
White text faded in, slow.
**Welcome, Preston Caldwell III.**
**You already know why you're here.**
The chat on the right side exploded.
**holy shit it's actually him**
**dude from the 2018 case??**
**bro is cooked**
**$50 he confesses in under five**
**$500 he tries to run**
A distorted voice came through the speakers. Deep. Calm. Like death had swallowed a glacier.
"Good evening. I am the Judge.
Tonight's sinner is Preston James Caldwell the Third.
Charges: three counts of rape, one count of manslaughter, fourteen counts of evidence tampering, and one count of destroying a seventeen-year-old girl who will never speak again because of the settlement you forced on her.
Preston, you have two choices.
Confess everything on this stream right now, every detail, every name, every dollar you paid to stay free, and I will grant you a quick and painless death.
Or play the game I designed for you.
Solve it, and you walk away tonight.
Fail, and you will die exactly the way Emily Rojas did in that hotel room eight years ago.
The clock starts now.
Forty-five minutes.
The choice is yours."
The screen cut to a live feed.
Preston's own living room.
Four different angles.
One camera staring straight at him from the 85-inch TV he was currently pissing himself in front of.
He hadn't even noticed the red lights.
The chat went nuclear.
**HE'S IN HIS OWN APARTMENT LMAOOO**
**bro looked at the camera like he saw God**
**$1000 on slow crush**
**make him feel it**
Preston's glass slipped from his fingers and shattered on the marble.
He ran.
Bare feet slapping across the penthouse, past the Warhol, past the floor-to-ceiling windows with the view nobody ever deserved.
He slammed the bedroom door, fumbled the lock, grabbed his phone with shaking hands.
911 wouldn't connect.
Signal dead.
The bedroom TV flicked on by itself.
Same black screen. Same countdown.
39:58
39:57
The distorted voice returned, almost gentle.
"Running is not part of the game, Preston.
But I expected it.
Look under the bed."
He didn't want to.
His body did it anyway.
A second black envelope.
Inside, a single Polaroid.
Emily Rojas.
Seventeen.
The night it happened.
On the back, written in the same silver ink:
**Time is bleeding.
So will you.**
Preston screamed for the first time in thirty-five years.
Outside, in the real world, the stream counter rolled past two million viewers and kept climbing.
The first notice had been delivered.
And the Judge never lied about the time.
To be continued.