Tarnished Empire: A Standalone Enemies-to-Lovers Billionaire Romance

by Ava Harrison

  Both of us settle into a tense quiet. She’s too afraid to speak, and I’m too angry.

  Once they find us, I will send word to my men who weren’t with me on the boat. After that, a painless death will no longer be on the table for Michael.

  No, the time for mercy is over. He will pay. Repeatedly.

  Stars are the only light around the raft, the sound of the water crashing the only music.

  I will myself not to sleep and stay vigil during the night.

  But as each wave hits us, and as the energy that had once coursed through my body fades, I find it harder and harder to keep that promise to myself.

  Instead, darkness beckons to me.

  Vivid nightmares full of screams and death lull me to sleep.

  19

  Phoenix

  Water splashes against my face. A bright blinding light makes my eyes squint.

  I lift my hand to wipe the sleep out of my eyes.

  It feels like I’m blind when my eyes flutter open.

  Where the hell am I? What happened? With a jolt, I fling my body forward as everything that happened comes back to me at breakneck speed. Guns. Explosions. Escaping into the night on a raft.

  The bright red canopy is pulled back from the raft that I see I’m still sitting in. I look around, trying to take in where I am.

  Blue water surrounds me, but I’m not moving. It splashes over the side of the boat …

  I look behind me and see that we’re actually on sand.

  Alaric?

  Where’s Alaric?

  Frantically, I look for him. He’s a few feet away on the sand with his hand lifted toward the sky to block the bright rays of the sun.

  He must see me sitting up because he walks in my direction.

  “You’re up.”

  I blink a few times. “Where are we?” I ask, my voice cracking from how parched I am.

  “Beats the fuck out of me.”

  His answer makes my belly feel like it’s dropping.

  “What do you mean?” I ask.

  He lowers his hand for me to grab it, and as much as I want to feign that I don’t need his help, I’m not stupid. I do.

  The nausea and dizziness make me feel as though I spent the night in the middle of the ocean.

  Which I did.

  His hand encompasses mine, and then he’s pulling me up.

  Once on the sand, I look around. “Do you really not know where we are?” I ask.

  He shakes his head. “No. I can guess a general location, but we were in that raft for hours.”

  “How many islands can there really be?”

  “You’d be surprised. Remember the map I showed you?”

  I think back to that moment, to what now seems like a million years ago.

  The map. The location. The cluster of hundreds of small islands.

  Deserted islands, he’d said.

  We could be on any of them.

  As if reading my mind, he shrugs. “Yep.”

  “This isn’t good.”

  “Thanks, Captain Obvious.”

  I have seen many sides of him since I stowed away on his yacht, but never have I seen the expression he has on his face now as he looks across the vast beach and at the trees behind him.

  “We’ll be okay,” he finally says, but I’m not sure who he is trying to convince, him or me.

  The first thing I notice is nothing.

  Lots and lots of nothing.

  White sand that stretches for miles. Turquoise blue sea that spans even further.

  “Have you looked around yet?” I ask.

  “Not yet. I didn’t want to leave until you were up.”

  “And now that I am?”

  “I’ll go, and you’ll stay here.”

  My eyes flare. “You want me to stay here alone?”

  He steps closer to me, his face hard. “You will be safer here. Fuck knows what I’ll find in there.” He gestures to the woods. Tall trees block whatever is in the center of the island.

  “There could be people.”

  “Or animals. Until I know what’s there, I can’t have you slowing me down.”

  My mouth flies open to say something, but I’m at a loss for words.

  “Also, what if a boat passes by? If we are both in the middle of God knows what in there, who will signal to them?”

  I know he’s right. However, the need not to agree makes me scowl at him. It’s deep-seated, and I can’t back down. I refuse to be weak, so I plop myself on the sand and turn toward the ocean.

  “And how do you expect me to get their attention if they come?”

  He steps up behind me, his sizeable frame casting a shadow in front of me. I look up, squinting into the sun as he hands me an enormous flare gun. My eyes go wide, I can’t use that.

  It’s not a real gun.

  It feels heavy in my hand, but nothing like—I stop the train of thought that threatens to put me in a dark place.

  Instead, I openly gawk at him, as I realize he just gave me a weapon. One I could use to hurt him. What does that mean? That he thinks me weak, or is it something else? Does he trust me?

  “You fire this in the air.”

  “Can I just shoot you with it?” I mutter under my breath, low enough that he probably doesn’t hear.

  However, his chuckle as he walks away tells me he heard.

  Great. Just great.

  Stuck on an island with him.

  How can things get any worse?

  Hunger. That’s how. Because the moment Alaric leaves, my stomach growls loudly. Embarrassingly so.

  Lucky for me, I’m alone.

  Unlucky for me, there’s nothing to eat.

  So instead of thinking about it, I keep my gaze toward the ocean. The water is unlike anything I have ever seen.

  A shade of blue that only appears in dreams. It’s as if the sky and water blend seamlessly in the distance.

  I can’t tell where one stops and one begins. I lose myself in the horizon, staring and wondering how this all came to pass.

  The last week filters through my brain.

  It’s all his fault.

  Everything that happened.

  One might say I’m to blame for my circumstances. A stowaway locked in a room deserves what she will get.

  But this feud has been brewing and festering for a long time. Eventually, it would have come to a head.

  It’s my fault I stepped in and tried to play a game I was grossly unprepared for, but this man doesn’t fight fair. I had no choice.

  I’m not sure how long I sit, staring out at the endless seas.

  How long I squint to see if that’s a boat or just a mirage.

  It’s the latter.

  Each time, I’m sure.

  Placing my hand on the flare gun, I aim toward the sky, and each time my finger goes to press down, as I feel the weight and pressure forming, I realize it’s just my eyes playing tricks on me.

  No one is here to save us.

  A thought pops into my head …

  How can they save us if they can’t see us?

  I remember watching a documentary about a group of sailors. Their boat lost fuel, leaving them stranded on a remote Pacific island. A military team found them alive three days later. The sailors had written SOS in the sand. Lucky for them, a helicopter spotted the message.

  I wonder if we could do something like that. Would it work for us? Never know until you try.

  Standing from my spot on the beach, I place the flare gun down and walk toward the tree line, looking for anything I can use to build my SOS. Unfortunately, I come up empty-handed.

  There are no large rocks, nor nearly enough twigs to do anything.

  Instead, I head back over to the sand and get on my hands and knees. How big does this have to be? Large enough that someone in a helicopter can see it. On an exhale, I place my hands in the coarse sand and begin to dig. Instantly, I realize this will not be as easy as I thought.

  My nails are full of sand and I only just
started. I used to love playing on the beach as a child.

  When I was around five, a few years before my parents died, they brought me with them on a trip to the Dominican Republic. I spent hours burying myself in the sand. The coarse grains were everywhere. Even places that later I wished they weren’t. The memory makes me smile. For a second, I pretend I’m that person again. Young, innocent, untainted by life.

  But the feeling of happiness doesn’t last long.

  This isn’t paradise. This is hell.

  With a shake of my head, I go back to what I’m doing, dragging my hands through the sand.

  Time passes.

  I’ve scraped my knees, and my hands are dried out, but I’ve carved out the letters SOS. Took me way longer than it should have. Also, a shovel would have been nice, but I guess in the end it doesn’t matter because I did it. Without Alaric’s help.

  20

  Phoenix

  Hours pass, and by the time the sun is high in the sky, I’m no longer sitting on the sand. Now my back leans up against a palm tree that faces the beach.

  I hear the sound before I see who’s coming. The faint slapping of shoes hitting the ground behind me. I turn swiftly and then rise to a standing position. My hands cross in front of my chest, all while gazing around to determine if there’s a weapon I can use to defend myself. But my breath releases in a puff of oxygen when I realize it’s only Alaric.

  “You changed locations?” he says, taking long strides toward me.

  “I can still look from here,” I tell him before lifting my arm to block the sun rays. “It was getting hot over there. Not that this location is much better.”

  He nods to himself, walking closer, until he stops short, noticing the beach. “What the hell is that?”

  “An SOS. I thought it was rather obvious,” I deadpan.

  “I hate to burst your bubble, but that’s useless.” He points to the letters I spent hours digging in the sand.

  “You’re just jealous that I thought of it first.”

  “Though I appreciate the effort, you realize all your work was for nothing.”

  The look on Alaric’s face is one of faint amusement. It makes my teeth grind together as I ask my next question, “How so?”

  “See that?” He points to where the sand meets the tree line. “The water comes all the way up to there. As soon as the tide comes in, your message will disappear.”

  “You’re an asshole.”

  “We’ve established this. It’s not new. But on that note … Are you hungry?”

  “I’m fine.” I’m not sure why I’m being so difficult, but after the past week and everything that has transpired, including him crushing my dream of an easy rescue, I can’t let him be my savior.

  His lip tips up. “So, that means you don’t want food …?”

  “I’m not hungry.” I’m starving, I think to myself, but I stand and start walking in the direction that will take me far away from him. “If you’re back, I’m going to go look around.” He walks up behind me. I can feel his presence catching up with each step I take.

  “I wouldn’t do that. If you want to go looking, I’ll come with you.”

  “Fine,” I huff. “I’ll stay here.”

  I plop myself back on the ground as he walks to the life raft. He rummages through it, and I’m shocked when he pulls out some things that must have been packed away inside.

  He places them back and pulls the whole raft out of the water and up the beach until it’s sitting right in front of me.

  “While I search the other side of those trees, you can look through and see what we have. I threw in a few of the packs from the Zodiac, and there should be water.” I lean forward to look as he continues to talk. “Don’t eat or drink until I get back. Don’t know how long we will be here and what is on this island, so rationing is important for now.”

  “Whatever you say,” I mumble under my breath, trying my hardest not to look up at him. If he notices my attitude, he doesn’t say because, without another word, Alaric walks off in the opposite direction. This time I notice what he took from the boat and what he’s still holding in his hand.

  A large knife.

  This one is even bigger than the knife he used on the boat. This is like a freaking machete. I wouldn’t want to be the one he is hunting. However, from what I can see, that won’t be a problem.

  Other than the sound of the water crashing against the sand, there are no noises on the island at all. Okay, that’s not true. There are birds. Bugs. But nothing that implies any life.

  Absolutely no sign that this island has any people on it. It’s deserted. Or maybe no one has ever been here?

  Which is not good if we hope to survive.

  No one knows to look for us.

  Everyone from the boat is probably dead, and even if my father knows what happened, he wouldn’t know where to search. I never got around to telling him our location.

  The only chance we have is if some random boat passes by, but seeing as I sat and stared at the water for hours and there was nothing, I doubt that is in the cards for us.

  The future is looking bleak.

  Despite the beauty of this location that I now might call my final resting spot, it’s not looking like we will get out of here.

  Wait, maybe there is a radio in the raft?

  Leaning forward, I reach my hands into the side compartment, where I noticed that Alaric had pulled out the flare gun earlier today.

  I’m met with nothing but sand.

  There has to be more. No way is there only one storage space in this thing. I move into a standing position, and then I’m stepping into the life raft to look around. There are actually a few places for things. I remember Alaric placing stuff inside before we left last night, so I move to see what it was.

  My hand touches a soft bag, I pull it out and find that Alaric had the presence of mind to pack a first-aid kit. A bottle of water.

  That won’t get us very far. Next, I find some kind of straw, but I’ve seen it before; it filters water. Unless we find a stream or lake, it won’t help.

  He took the gun and the knife.

  I find another pack, and this one weighs a lot more. I recognize it right away. It’s the bag he grabbed from the Zodiac before we jumped into the ocean.

  Holy hell.

  We might be stuck here on this island, but at least we won’t die on day one.

  Alaric had at least packed an emergency survival bag with everything you would need to survive on a deserted island for a few days. If we’re conservative, probably for a week.

  A flashlight, batteries, pocketknife, water, food. It even has one blanket. I keep searching, pulling out more and more stuff. My mouth drops open when I see toilet paper. This bag really does have everything. Well, that’s not true. There is one thing I don’t find. It’s missing a radio, but this is better than nothing. I hear his footsteps before I’m done taking everything out.

  “I see you found the ditch bag.”

  I look over my shoulder to see him walking toward me. He’s taken his shirt off and tied it around his head. It’s hot on the beach where the breeze is strong, so I can’t imagine how it must feel in the center of the island. I let my gaze linger too long on his face, on the tiny beads of sweat dripping down his brow. I need to pull my gaze away, but when I do, I regret the decision right away.

  I have seen him every day for the last week, but I have never seen him without a shirt on.

  His tattoos are on full display.

  I knew from the first day I met him that he had tatts up and down his forearms, but this is something else. I find no ink marring his chest, just rock-hard abs and a V that makes drool pool in my mouth.

  I hear the faint sound of a chuckle, and I know I’ve been caught gawking.

  Not wanting to hear anything more from him, I swiftly turn my face and go back to pulling out all the supplies we have.

  He moves closer, and then once he approaches, he steps into the raft.

&n
bsp; The last thing I expect is for him to sit next to me while I search, but here he is, only a few inches away as I pull out more items.

  “We have enough here to last us for seventy-two hours.” His low voice cuts through the air, weighing me down with the implication of what that means.

  “And then what?”

  “Then we hope someone comes.”

  “Do you think they will?” I ask, my voice cracking.

  It’s rare that I’m afraid, but knowing we might die here has my body shaking.

  His hand reaches out and lands on top of my trembling one. The warmth is a balm to my troubled soul … until he opens his mouth.

  “Your father sent fucking pirates after my ship. There is a bounty on both of us. I’m sure they will come.”

  I stand abruptly, his hand falling from where it was perched.

  “It wasn’t my father,” I spit.

  “You can’t possibly believe that.”

  “I do. The people on the boat wanted us dead.”

  He lifts his brow. “It would solve all his problems,” he responds.

  “It wasn’t him. What part of that do you not understand? He will find me. George will find me. They are both looking for me.” Red fiery anger boils inside me. I start walking away from him.

  “That’s where you’re wrong.”

  My pace halts. “What do you mean?”

  I can hear him as he steps closer.

  “George is dead.”

  My stomach hollows at his words. My legs drop from beneath me.

  Alaric is quick to try to lift me from the ground, but I swat at his arms.

  “What did you do?” I cry.

  Tears pour down my face at the revelation he has just made.

  “I was protecting my empire.” His voice makes my body shiver in fear, but I push down that feeling, standing up tall in front of him.

  “Your empire!” I scream. “He meant more than that. He meant more than your tarnished empire.”

  “George was a casualty of war, and that war is between Michael and me. He knew what he was risking when he got involved.”

  “You’re a monster.” As the words leave my mouth, I feel the familiar feeling of moisture starting to collect in my eyes, but I push them back.