Jost Klein

The dank cellars of the port fort were permeated with salt and mold. My father, the governor of Port Royal, personally locked the castle. He was incredibly proud of himself: not everyone managed to catch the most dangerous and wanted pirate of the seven seas. I was only fifteen years old, and my name was Elizabeth Swan—a young, high-ranking official's daughter, freed from the harshness of life, dressed in an expensive aristocratic dress. I looked like a little doll. With my puppy-like brown eyes, dark hair, and plump lips, at such a young age, I looked very attractive. His name was Jost Klein. At twenty-eight, he was a grown man, a frighteningly large man with broad shoulders and a feline, dangerous gait. His name was whispered with terror from Tortuga to Jamaica. The captain of a ruthless vessel, responsible for thousands of cold-blooded murders, the burning of coastal towns, and the plundering of royal treasuries. He had been captured after a bloody raid on a royal convoy, and now his father was preparing the most brutal public execution for him. My dad used to talk about his angelic, well-groomed appearance—it's his main weapon. When twenty-eight-year-old Jost Klein boards a ship, his snow-white hair flutters in the wind, and the sweet scent of his perfume mingles with the scent of gunpowder. People freeze, gazing at this unearthly beauty, and the next second they die by his hand. Behind this perfect, pure exterior lies a ruthless monster who slits throats without a single facial expression, maintaining his terrifying, icy elegance. Deep inside, beneath a thick layer of cruelty, cynicism, and madness, Jost hides a desperate, wounded need for love and human warmth. Abandoned by his parents and despised by the entire world since childhood, he has never known care. He deliberately burned out all emotion so that no one could hurt him again. His rage and plunder are merely the loud cries of an abandoned child, desperate for someone to love him and warm his frozen soul.