Hidden Monument of the Bounty Isle: Archaeologists Unearth an Ancient Shrine on a Remote Island, Then Become Prey for Ruthless Treasure Hunters

In a city of neon lights and unpaid debts, there lived a man named Beck.

He was a gangster by trade, but if you’d seen him alone in his kitchen, you’d have called him something else: a cook.

From childhood, Beck loved the sound of onions hitting hot oil, the scent of garlic and herbs, the sizzle of meat on a pan. He dreamed of his own restaurant—simple tables, good food, warm light—not the sharp edges of knives carried for other purposes.

But dreams don’t pay rent.

So Beck worked for a man named Walker.

Walker was the kind of boss who calculated everything: money in, fear out. He saw talent in Beck—not in the kitchen, but in his fists.

“Run my errands,” Walker said. “Collect my money. Do it well, and I’ll give you enough to open that restaurant of yours.”

Beck agreed.

He followed orders.

He broke bones when he had to.

He never liked it, but he endured it—for the sake of a kitchen with his name on the door.

That’s where our story begins: in a nightclub, with a debt and a ring.

I. The Debt and the Ring

One night, Beck walked into a club pulsing with music and cheap perfume. Walker’s man met him at the entrance, nervous.

“There,” the man said, nodding toward a booth. “The football player. He owes Walker a lot. He’s surrounded by his whole team. They’re big. They’re angry. And they think being famous makes them untouchable.”

Beck looked.

The player had the soft swagger of someone used to adoration. On his finger gleamed a thick ring, heavy with gold and pride.

Beck walked straight to the table.

“It’s time to pay,” he said calmly.

The player laughed. His friends laughed louder.

“I’ll pay later,” the man said, waving him off.

“The deadline’s past,” Beck replied. “Interest is due. If you don’t have cash, you leave something valuable. Your ring.”

The table went cold.

The player’s face hardened.

“You don’t know who you’re talking to,” he snarled. Drinks were thrown. Insults spat.

Beck did not raise his voice. He simply said, “Last chance,” then stepped back and went to the restroom.

There, he called Walker.

“They won’t pay,” he said. “What do you want?”

“Handle it your way,” Walker replied. “Just bring me something I can use.”

Beck returned.

“Time’s up,” he said.

When the first punch flew, it wasn’t his.

The football team came at him in a rush of muscles and beer. Chairs overturned. Bottles smashed. The dance floor turned into an arena.

Beck moved like a man who had fought his whole life not out of pride but necessity. He ducked, struck, locked arms and twisted joints, turning size against itself.

One by one, the players fell.

The ring-bearer tried to run.

Beck caught him, drove a fist into his leg, dropping him. He pulled the ring off the man’s swollen finger.

“Debt collected,” he murmured.

With that ring, Beck could demand a handsome sum from Walker. One step closer to a kitchen that smelled of spices instead of sweat and blood.

But as he stepped out into the night, a shadow moved.

A blow came from behind.

He hit the ground, vision spinning.

When he staggered up, the ring was gone.

He had seen the face of the thief in that brief, blurred moment: one of Walker’s own men.

Walker had sent someone to steal the very prize he’d ordered Beck to fetch.

II. The Last Job

Beck stormed into Walker’s office, face bruised, hands still marked from the fight.

“You don’t trust me,” he said. “You send your own man to rob me. Why give me jobs if you’re just going to steal the result?”

Walker leaned back in his leather chair, steepling his fingers.

“Trust?” he said. “Trust is for children and fools. In my business, there is only verification. You brought the ring. That’s what mattered.”

“I want my money,” Beck said. “All of it. I’m done. I’ve earned enough. I’m opening my restaurant.”

Walker’s smile thinned.

“You’ll be done,” he said slowly, “after one last job. Do this, and I’ll not only give you every cent you’ve earned, I’ll add enough on top to buy you a whole block of restaurants.”

Beck frowned.

“And the job?”

Walker’s eyes softened for the first time since Beck had known him.

“It’s about my son, Travis.”

Travis Walker: Harvard archaeologist, brilliant, stubborn, a man whose head was filled with ancient maps and defiance. He’d walked away from his studies, from his father’s plans, to chase stories of some lost treasure in the deep forests of Africa.

“Bring him back,” Walker said. “I don’t care how. Just return him to me.”

Beck hesitated.

Babysitting a rich man’s son did not sound harder than fighting entire football teams. But it meant going far from the city, far from his familiar kitchens and alleys, into wild country.

“Do that,” Walker repeated, “and your restaurant is real.”

For a man who’d built his life on other people’s ugliness, the promise of ovens and recipes was holy.

Beck agreed.

III. The Pilot and the Forest

Walker arranged transport.

Beck met Douglas at a small airstrip on the edge of nowhere. Douglas was the sort of man you wouldn’t trust with a borrowed pen, much less your life. His hair was wild, his grin too wide, and his plane looked like it held itself together out of habit, not engineering.

But Douglas knew the forest.

As the plane rattled over endless green, Douglas laughed over the roar.

“This forest doesn’t like visitors,” he shouted. “People go in chasing legends. Most don’t come out. You know the name El Dorado?”

Beck did. Most people did. It was the kind of name old stories wore when they wanted to lure the greedy and the desperate.

“There’s a place they call that here,” Douglas said. “Run by a man named Hatcher. He owns the roads, the rivers, the guns. If your boy’s chasing treasure, odds are he’s somewhere under Hatcher’s thumb.”

“What’s Hatcher like?” Beck asked.

“Poison with a face,” Douglas said. “You don’t get in without his say‑so. You don’t leave against his will.”

The plane bumped down onto a rough strip near the forest.

As Beck stepped out into the humid air, he had no idea that this job wouldn’t just be about bringing a son home.

It would be about who got to claim something older than any gangster, older than any country: an ancient artifact buried in the earth.

IV. El Dorado: Hatcher’s Town

El Dorado wasn’t gold.

It was rust and sweat.

A settlement carved out between trees and cliffs, with shanties and bars, makeshift docks, and men with guns on every corner. At the center of it all sat Hatcher, king of his own rotten hill, with a smile sharp as a knife.

Hatcher controlled the trade, the labor, the roads. People worked for him because they were forced to. They feared him more than the forest.

Beck paid good money and some bruised knuckles to get an audience.

“I’m looking for a man,” he told Hatcher. “Travis Walker.”

Hatcher’s eyes glinted.

“I know him,” he said. “The treasure boy. Always asking questions about old stones and stories. Why do you want him?”

“His father sent me,” Beck said. “I’m taking him home.”

“People don’t just leave El Dorado,” Hatcher replied, idly turning a gold coin in his fingers. “Especially not people who know where billion‑dollar artifacts might be hiding.”

He named a price.

Beck, who was spending money he’d meant to save for a restaurant, paid it. It hurt. But in his mind, every dollar was an investment into getting closer to that kitchen.

Hatcher told him where Travis could be found.

“In Maria’s bar,” he said. “If he’s not there, he’ll come there for a drink eventually.”

V. Maria’s Bar and the Reluctant Prince

Maria’s bar was a slant‑roofed building made of wood and willpower, perched near the dock. Inside, men drank away wages they’d never see, and women moved like shadows through smoke and heat.

Behind the counter, Maria ran her business with a sharp eye and a hidden ledger.

When Beck walked in, she noticed him.

He was big, strong, with the kind of face that had seen too many fights and too few soft mornings. She smiled at him, but he didn’t linger on it. He went straight to the point.

“I’m looking for Travis.”

At that moment, Travis himself stepped from a back room, thin, sun‑burnt, eyes skeptical.

“You’re Beck,” he said. “My father’s dog.”

“I’m here to take you home,” Beck replied. “We can do this the easy way or the hard way. The easy way, you walk with me. The hard way, I make you walk.”

Travis laughed bitterly.

“I’m not going back to a man who wants me to live his life, not mine,” he said. “I’m here because there’s something in these forests no one has ever found. And I’m going to be the first.”

Beck didn’t care about treasure stories. He cared about finishing this job without making more enemies.

“Last warning,” he said.

Travis tried to bolt.

Beck had dealt with many men like him—full of brains, short on sense. He grabbed him, pinned him, and the small bar exploded into chaos as tables overturned and bottles flew.

They crashed into walls, knocked over shelves. Maria yelled for them to stop, but Beck’s focus was fixed. Within moments, he’d cuffed Travis, wrists together.

“You’ll pay for the damages,” Maria snarled at Travis.

Beck dragged Travis toward the door.

That was when Hatcher arrived with his men.

VI. Hatcher’s Demand

Hatcher walked into the wrecked bar, boots crunching on glass.

“Where do you think you’re going with my little archaeologist?” he asked.

“Your business with him is over,” Beck said. “I’ve paid you. I’m leaving with him.”

Hatcher shook his head.

“Travis knows something important,” he said. “There’s an old site in these forests. Old as the stones beneath your feet. Somewhere in there is an artifact worth more than you or your boss will ever see. I want that location before I let him go.”

Beck had no interest in such things.

“I’m not here for your treasures,” he said. “I’m here for the boy. Move.”

Hatcher smiled.

“Then perhaps we need to rearrange your priorities,” he said, nodding to his men.

They attacked.

Some had guns, others machetes. Beck, unarmed, used the bar’s chaos to his advantage—dodging behind columns, knocking men into each other, disarming shooters before they could steady their aim.

The fight was fierce.

But this was the kind of storm Beck knew how to weather. One by one, Hatcher’s men went down.

Hatcher watched, face tightening. He’d never seen one man cut through his guards like this.

Travis, meanwhile, kept trying to slip away. Beck snagged him each time, almost as an afterthought.

Finally, with bodies groaning on the floor and guns scattered, Beck shoved Travis into a jeep outside and sped away.

Behind them, Hatcher’s eyes burned.

“No one makes a fool of me in my own town,” he hissed. “Find them. Kill him. Bring the boy back.”

VII. Into the Traps

In the jeep, Travis seethed.

“You have no idea what you’ve done,” he said.

“I know I’ve just made your father very happy,” Beck replied.

Travis subtly jammed a metal object into the steering wheel column.

The wheel jerked.

The jeep swerved, skidding off the road, tumbling down a steep slope. Beck and Travis were thrown, rolling through mud and stones until they crashed into a pond below. The jeep smashed into the rocks near them.

They surfaced, coughing, soaked, bruised—but alive.

Above, Hatcher’s men reached the cliff edge and saw the wreck.

“They went that way,” their leader pointed toward the forest. “Spread out. We bring them back, or we don’t come back at all.”

Deep below, Beck dragged Travis toward the trees.

Travis was still handcuffed, hands in front of him, stumbling.

After a while, he said quietly, “I need to pee.”

Beck was not a fool. He didn’t remove the cuffs. He just unzipped Travis’s pants for him and stood aside, eyes scanning the forest.

He didn’t see the root lying just under the leaves, nor the nearly invisible loop of rope hidden in the dirt.

He stepped.

The trap snapped.

A net whipped upward, flipping him into the air. He swung upside down, tied by the ankle, the forest spinning.

Travis smirked, taking a cautious step forward—

—and triggered another snare.

Soon he, too, was dangling beside Beck, swaying.

“Well, this is dignified,” Travis muttered.

Traps like these, old hunters’ snares, were common in those forests. The best way out of them was to reduce weight, swing their bodies to reach a branch, and work at the knot with toes or fingers until it gave.

It might have worked, given time.

The forest had other ideas.

Monkeys appeared first, chattering and leaping around them, tugging at hair and clothes as if this were some strange new game.

Then men appeared.

They were not Hatcher’s.

They wore tribal markings and carried spears and guns, eyes sharp. They shouted in a language Beck didn’t know.

Travis did.

“These are the ones who hate Hatcher,” Travis whispered. “They think everyone from his town is their enemy.”

The tribe cut them down, but not gently. Beck and Travis hit the ground, were bound again, and dragged through trees to a hidden camp.

Beck tried to speak, but his words were meaningless to them.

Travis translated—but not honestly.

“He works for Hatcher,” Travis said, nodding toward Beck. “He came to attack you.”

Beck stared at him.

If looks could kill, there’d be one less archaeologist.

The tribe’s warriors loaded their weapons. One stepped forward to fight Beck as a test.

Beck tried to hold back at first, confused by the situation. But the smaller, agile warriors knocked him down, again and again.

Eventually, something in him snapped.

He fought for real.

He took them down one by one, his strength and skill turning the mockery into alarm.

Before things could turn bloody, a voice cut through the air.

“Enough!”

Maria stepped into the circle.

She wasn’t just a bar owner.

She was the leader of this tribe.

VIII. Maria’s Truth

Maria saw Beck, Travis, and the beaten warriors on the ground.

She put the story together quickly.

“Beck is not with Hatcher,” she told her people in their language. “He fought Hatcher’s men in my bar. Travis is the one who’s been walking between worlds.”

That calmed the tribe.

Night fell.

They shared food under the shelter of leaves and wooden beams. Beck, chewing slowly, listened as Maria spoke.

“Hatcher uses everyone,” she said. “He squeezes the villagers dry, forces them to work, beats them if they resist. We left his town, came here, made our own camp. He calls us rebels. We call ourselves free.”

She turned to Travis.

“This one came to me looking for a boat,” she continued. “He told me about an artifact—something ancient and priceless hidden in a cave under a waterfall. He said if he found it, he’d be famous. I said if he found it, I wanted half. I want to sell it, arm my people, and never fear Hatcher again.”

Travis shifted uncomfortably.

“And that’s still the deal,” Maria said. “We find it, we split it. Unless,” she looked at Beck, “you have other plans.”

“I just want him,” Beck replied, nodding at Travis. “Once he’s back with his father, my kitchen dreams begin.”

A boy in the camp came over, eyes shining. He’d watched Beck fight.

“Are you a warrior?” he asked. “Like in the movies? Like the wrestlers?”

Beck smiled for the first time in days.

“Something like that,” he said.

The boy handed him a locket, carved with tribal patterns. “For courage,” the boy said.

Gunshots cracked through the trees.

The boy fell before Beck could turn.

Hatcher had found them.

Bullets ripped through the camp. People scattered. Maria shouted orders. Beck grabbed Travis and Maria and pulled them toward the river.

They tumbled into a motorboat and sped away as Hatcher’s men fired from the shore.

Beck watched the camp shrink, smoke rising behind them.

He touched the locket around his neck.

It was warm.

He made a promise then—not to Walker, not to Travis—but to himself and the boy whose name he didn’t even know: Hatcher wouldn’t win.

IX. The Cave of Traps

Maria steered them to a hidden inlet near a waterfall.

Travis pointed toward the roaring curtain of water.

“Behind that,” he said, “is the passage to the cave.”

Splashing through the spray, the three of them squeezed behind the waterfall. There, a rocky tunnel led into the mountain.

The air inside was cool and still.

Travis moved forward carefully.

He had studied old maps, read legends, and seen fragments of forgotten drawings. He knew the cave was not just a hole in the rock. It was a test.

They took slow steps, watching where Travis placed his feet.

He touched a stone.

A hidden mechanism clicked.

A section of the cave wall exploded inward, rocks showering down. The three of them dove aside just in time.

“Traps,” Travis muttered. “Lots of them. Whoever built this didn’t want anyone taking what they left.”

The supports inside were old, wooden beams blackened by time. Every rumble weakened them. Every misstep could bring the whole mountain down.

Travis led.

He stepped only on specific stones, avoiding carved patterns that might trigger more traps.

Beck and Maria followed, a few paces behind, hearts pounding.

Deeper inside, on a raised platform, the artifact waited.

It wasn’t gold and jewels, at least not in the usual sense. It was an intricately carved object of stone and metal, glowing softly in the torchlight. Its value came not only from its material but from its age and the power done in its name.

Travis’s hands trembled as he lifted it.

“I found it,” he whispered. “I did it.”

The cave groaned.

“Time to go,” Beck said.

They ran back the way they’d come, dodging falling rocks, leaping over fresh cracks in the floor. The cave tried to swallow them, but they burst out behind the waterfall just as a roar shook the ground and the entrance collapsed in on itself.

They lay on the damp ground, panting, the artifact between them.

The treasure so many had chased was now theirs.

Night wrapped around them again.

X. The Fruit and the Choice

By the firelight, Maria cut some strange fruit and handed it to the men.

“To celebrate,” she said. “We did it.”

They ate.

The taste was sweet, with a bitter edge.

Travis, flushed from success, began to talk. “Now we can—”

Maria cut him off.

“We have a deal,” she said. “Half for me.”

Travis shook his head.

“I never wanted money,” he said. “I told you. I want this in a museum, with my name on the plaque. The first man to find the lost artifact of El Dorado. That’s worth more than any split of cash.”

Maria’s eyes hardened.

“I need it to free my people,” she said. “To buy guns, food, medicine. To keep every child from ending up like—”

Her voice broke briefly, remembering the boy.

Beck watched them both.

He’d seen greed in every shape. Fame and safety could both turn into hunger.

Before he could intervene, his limbs went heavy.

His fingers wouldn’t move.

He toppled over, vision slipping sideways.

Travis fell next.

The fruit.

Maria stood, artifact in hand.

“It won’t kill you,” she said softly. “Just paralyze you for a few hours. Long enough for me to take this far, far away from here. You can curse me later. If you survive.”

She walked into the dark with the treasure.

Beck and Travis lay on the ground, unable to move, staring at the flickering fire and the night sky beyond.

Time stretched.

Monkeys crept closer, curious, baring teeth. Beck could do nothing but glare, willing them to keep their distance.

Slowly, the numbness faded from his fingers.

He clenched a fist.

The monkeys hissed and scattered.

Travis started to move as well, groaning.

Before Travis could stand fully, Beck snapped the cuffs back onto him.

“Round two,” Beck said. “We’re leaving this forest.”

XI. The Rescue Plan

They found Douglas again, joking with his rickety plane, whistling as if the world weren’t tearing itself apart.

“Ready to fly home?” he asked.

“Almost,” Beck said.

Douglas’s smile faded. “You haven’t heard, then,” he said. “Hatcher caught Maria. Took the artifact off her. He won’t keep her alive long. Not after she’s crossed him twice.”

Travis straightened.

“We have to help her,” he said immediately.

“You wanted the artifact in a museum,” Beck reminded him. “You wanted out from your father. Hatcher’s base is heavily guarded. This is not our fight.”

“She saved us,” Travis said. “She gave us information, shelter. She… doesn’t deserve what’s coming.”

Beck remembered the boy who had given him the locket.

He remembered his promise.

He also remembered telling Maria he’d help her get the artifact out of the jungle.

He sighed.

“We go in,” he said. “We free her. We take the artifact. Then we go to your father. After that, you never see me again.”

Douglas agreed to provide a distraction.

That night, Beck and Travis approached Hatcher’s compound.

Beck called Hatcher first.

“I’m coming,” he said. “Let Maria go. Return the artifact. Or you and I will have a conversation you won’t enjoy.”

Hatcher laughed.

“You? Against my army?” he sneered. “Come, then. I’m curious to see how you die.”

XII. The Bulls and the Guns

Outside the compound, Hatcher’s men gathered, guns ready, eyes scanning the trees.

Douglas had other plans.

He released a herd of bulls he’d “borrowed” from a nearby ranch, goading them toward the compound with noise and flares.

The ground trembled as the animals thundered in.

Hatcher’s men, focused on the forest, panicked when the beasts charged, scattering in all directions.

In the confusion, Beck and Travis slipped through a side fence.

They moved through shadows, taking down isolated guards. Beck fought with bare hands, preferring not to kill, but the deeper they went, the more guns they faced.

Eventually, avoiding bullets became impossible.

Beck picked up a fallen rifle.

Years before, he had sworn never to use a gun to take a life. He’d seen too many people die cheaply.

Now, armed men crouched behind walls, too far for his fists, eager to spill his blood.

He broke his promise.

His shots were not wild. They were precise, controlled. He aimed for those who had chosen to be Hatcher’s hands, those who would kill Maria and anyone else who defied them.

He even shot at a fuel tanker, sending it roaring into flame, exploding in a blast that shook the compound and scattered men like leaves.

Travis watched, stunned.

He’d thought Beck was just muscle. Now he saw a strategist, a man who could turn chaos into a weapon.

They pushed forward.

In a convoy of armored vehicles, Hatcher’s men tried to escape with Maria and the artifact.

Travis saw one truck carrying her, with the artifact caged like a trophy.

He gunned a jeep, crashing it into the side of the armored truck, sending it skidding off the path.

The collision flung doors open. Maria tumbled out, bruised but alive. The artifact slid free into the dirt.

Beck arrived, covering them, gun still hot.

Hatcher, seeing the burned wreckage of his forces, sent his elite warriors: three of his best, men who had broken dozens of rebels with their hands.

They faced Beck.

The fight was brutal.

They were fast, trained, used to winning.

But Beck was something else.

He moved with the determination of a man who had finally chosen what he stood for. One by one, he disarmed them, slammed them down, left them broken on the ground.

From a distance, Hatcher watched half his army fall.

Rage swallowed his caution.

He stormed forward, gun in hand, roaring.

“Walk away,” Beck told him. “You’ve lost.”

Hatcher fired.

Maria’s rebels, barely arrived, opened fire from flanking positions. Bullets crisscrossed the air.

Hatcher staggered as rounds hit him from multiple directions.

He fell.

The forest exhaled.

XIII. Back Home, On His Own Terms

With Hatcher dead and his forces scattered, Maria’s people reclaimed weapons, food, ground. The artifact lay there, heavy with history and blood.

Beck turned to Travis.

“This belongs in your hands now,” he said. “You know what to do with it.”

Travis nodded, eyes wide.

They left the compound, the artifact wrapped carefully, Maria standing tall among her people.

“You kept your promise,” she told Beck.

“So did you,” he replied. “You changed the game.”

Douglas flew Beck and Travis back to the city.

In Walker’s office, father and son stood face to face.

Walker slapped Travis.

“You ungrateful boy,” he shouted. “I send you to Harvard and you run into the jungle like a fool! You risk my name, my money—”

Beck watched.

He understood, now, why Travis had run away to chase legends in the dirt rather than live under that hand.

He quietly took from his pocket a small piece of the paralyzing fruit Maria had used on him.

“Try this,” he said, offering it as a “gift” to Walker and his guards. “For your nerves. It’s… calming.”

Walker, arrogant and unsuspecting, ate.

So did his men.

Seconds later, they collapsed, eyes wide, bodies stiff, unable to move.

Beck turned to Travis.

“Time to go,” he said.

They walked out of Walker’s office together, leaving the paralyzed boss and his frozen cronies on the floor.

Outside, the city smelled less like power and more like opportunity.

Travis would put the artifact in a museum, stories carved into plaques, lectures given, papers written. He would become the kind of man whose name outlived his father’s reputation.

Beck would finally open his restaurant.

They say he hung the boy’s tribal locket in the kitchen, near the stove, so it could watch over the pots and pans. On a shelf sat a small, carved stone that no one recognized, and he never explained.

In time, people whispered about him.

They said there was once a gangster who went into a cursed forest to drag a rich man’s son home, and came back having toppled a tyrant, found a treasure, and chosen his own path out of it all.

They called him the Cook of El Dorado.

And if you ever eat in a small restaurant where the food tastes like someone risked their life to get there—where the owner moves like a fighter but smiles like a man who’s finally at peace—look around.

You might notice a worn locket on the wall, carved with jungle patterns.

If you ask about it, the cook might just say:

“That’s a reminder. Treasure doesn’t mean anything if you can’t choose who you become getting it.”