by Amelia Wilde
“Wait.”
“I haven’t gone anywhere.” The way he says this makes me think he’s been here for a long time already, but that is too complex of a situation to sort through right now.
“What’s your name?”
“Tell me yours first.”
There was some reason I was going to keep that from him. Some reason I thought it would be better kept a secret. But it would be so much easier not to have to remember what I did, or didn’t do...
“It’s Ashley.” Another yawn, and this time sleep is crowding in. I don’t have the space to be embarrassed. “Ashley Donnelly. But this is a trade. Mine for yours.”
He makes a sound I recognize as the hint of a laugh, and for a long moment, I think he might not tell me. If he doesn’t, that’s okay. I’m safe with him, strangely, and there’s a peace here I never felt with Robbie. I knew Robbie. I knew him, and he put me in harm’s way. This man will call the police or take me to safety. He doesn’t need to, really, because I’m already safe. I’m already saved.
“Poseidon,” he says finally. “No more trades. It’s time to sleep.”
4
Poseidon
Ashley is deeply asleep in a heartbeat.
What I should do is get up from this chair right now. I should go up on deck, get status reports from everyone, and review any communications that have come in. There will be offers and negotiations and bribes. My brothers think I spend all my time sinking ships and throwing bodies overboard. They’re only half right. Sinking ships all on its own doesn’t make a business.
So there is the shipping, and the dealmaking, and the occasional mercenary mission. There is the search that underpins everything else in my life. All of these things take up my time and attention. They deserve my attention over some lost, sleeping woman. I should tend to those things before I spend another second tending to her.
Instead I pull my godforsaken cell phone out of my pocket so I can text Nicholas.
Ashley Donnelly
He sends me back a tiny picture of a thumbs-up, and though I dearly want to harass him for sending tiny fucking pictures to me, I do not. Within twenty minutes he’ll send me a dossier filled with all the information I could ever want about Ashley Donnelly. Her parking tickets. Her boyfriends. The name of her favorite childhood dog. The name of her least favorite childhood dog.
Impatience runs up from my toes and into my shins and over my knees. I don’t tap my feet, don’t do anything to let it show. There’s no one here but a sleeping woman, and I don’t let it show. Pacing the deck would be an outlet. But I can’t bring myself to leave her side.
It’s a cousin to the feeling I have about the sea. I find it unsettling to be on land for a long period of time and avoid it whenever possible. Avoiding my own business isn’t possible. I don’t want to avoid it, but I don’t want to stop watching her. I don’t want to stop listening to her breathe.
Ashley’s fallen asleep with her hands fisted in the blankets, pinning them to her chest. As if she’s worried someone might pull them down. As if that worry follows her into her dreams.
She’s right to be worried.
There’s nothing I want more than to pull that sheet down to expose her skin, except for the things I’d do after. Perhaps a life on the sea made me into the kind of man who would relish her wide-eyed shock and the pink flush as she scrambled to try to pull the blanket back up.
A joke, a joke. It was my life on land that made me this way. Ashley Donnelly will never know about that life. Telling her about it seems as impossible and reckless as getting up from this chair and leaving her here alone.
Reckless? Please. My life is half reckless and half a show to give legitimacy to that recklessness. I laugh at my own bullshit. Ashley stirs, pulling the blanket up another inch, and I let my mind wander beneath it. She knows I took her clothes off. What she doesn’t know is how the image of her body in that bathtub is burned into my memory. She has pink, perfect nipples that beg to be pinched.
Patience can sometimes be a virtue. And she does need her rest. I settle for watching her chest rise and fall beneath the blanket until my phone vibrates an alert. A message from Nicholas—an attachment, no words. I don’t like this kind of direct contact, but it’s obnoxiously convenient.
I watch a few more of her breaths.
Then I open the attachment and scroll.
Ashley Donnelly is the daughter of Joseph Donnelly. The man founded Donnelly Tech. He made his fortune on some innovation in silicon, and venture capitalists did what they always do—poured money into him until he was big enough to start eating other companies alive. After that, he went on to plunder Silicon Valley.
Not old money, then. I don’t doubt that most of his connections now are below board. Between the two of them, my brothers have made fortunes with an incestuous financial relationship that won’t be fully documented in any official record books. I know the bare details of my sister’s involvement, which has been limited lately on account of her house arrest.
Anyway, I don’t give a fuck about what my brothers are doing on land at this moment or about Silicon Valley. The reason tech companies matter to me is that their products often fill the hold of my ship. Donnelly Tech doesn’t make phones. They make parts, so if they’re customers of mine, they’re indirect ones.
They’re also the next level up. They buy companies that make phones and tablets and the apps to go with them. They buy data security companies and social media startups and streaming platforms.
And they buy it for a song.
Pirates on land. These assholes come in with lawyers instead of brute force. With hostile buyouts instead of ships.
Brute force is a specialty of mine. In some circumstances, not all of them. That’s not the case for Donnelly Tech. They use it at every opportunity. There are several behind-the-scenes emails included in the dossier. There’s very little they won’t do to force a sale. The approach seems imbalanced.
Then again, I’m not on a campaign to own all of Silicon Valley and the tech giants, so what do I know?
The pages on Ashley’s father and his company end in a brief profile of his wife. A kidnapping, followed by a murder. Dark. The man never remarried. They’ve included a photo. She looked like Ashley. Something thin and serrated slices into my chest. I ignore it and keep scrolling.
Because then there’s Ashley herself.
Her profile is the bulk of the dossier, twice as long as the section about her father.
Because she is a minor celebrity.
I don’t make a habit of patrolling gossip blogs. Or any blogs. I have a phone because my brother Zeus insisted after our last meeting. I guess if I had been looking on those websites, I’d have seen what’s in this dossier: Ashley Donnelly splashed all over them. There are pages and pages of paparazzi photos with people like Paris Hilton. In another one, there’s an enormous arrow pointing to someone called a Jonas brother.
She has never had a parking ticket.
She has had her own apartment—one of her father’s properties. It features in a news article about how he bought the building out so his daughter could have a secure living area while she attended the nearby university. The dorms weren’t good enough for her. It’s matter-of-fact reporting and wraps up with a quote from her daddy’s PR firm.
Joseph Donnelly isn’t in the habit of letting things slip, beyond his public business deals. It’s much easier to collect information on his daughter. She gives it away herself. There are pages and pages on her social media profiles. A hundred well-lit shots of her in this bikini or that sundress against backdrops of private islands and, yes, pocket yachts.
The last photo she posted was on the deck of one of those yachts.
She’s centered in the frame, leaning back on one hand with her knees bent to show off slim thighs and delicate ankles. It’s another bikini shot. The bathing suit is a deep purple, almost black, and she has her other hand up, holding a hat to her head. Dark curls spill over her shoulders, sunli
ght caught in all the curves and dips of her. Ashley’s chin is tipped up, her neck arched, throat exposed. It’s meant to look like she was alone. Absorbed in her pretty vacation. But there was someone else behind the camera, wasn’t there? The now-dead boyfriend. The one who got in over his head and couldn’t get out.
I look from the glossy, sequined version of her on the screen to the one currently in my bed.
Her formerly shining hair is a tangled mess. She’s bedraggled, sunburned, half-starved. But before this, before she washed into my sights, she shone like one of Hades’ diamonds.
The rest of me turns sharp at this realization.
Ashley Donnelly is not only beautiful and desperate.
She’s worth a literal fortune.
I stand up and shove the phone into my pocket, hating it there. I asked for the information from Nicholas. Now that I have it, the restlessness has grown into an insistent, punishing thing. All of her daddy’s money couldn’t keep her from watching her boyfriend get shot or becoming the temporary property of a far more dangerous man. All of her daddy’s money will line my pockets. Maybe more than money. I’ll be the winner, in the end.
This is what I’m best at. Taking what I find and using it to my advantage. The sea has given me yet another chance to do it, almost as if I called her out of the waves myself.
I shake off the persistent urge to kick out the windows of my own cabin and throw myself into the sea. A swim would be bracing. It would clear my head. But there’s work to do, and only work can distract me from the pointed, hot anger I feel at the helpless woman sleeping peacefully on my pillows.
Work, and the search for the treasure that matters. The treasure that will not let me rest until I find it.
None of those have to do with Ashley, or the way her hair is spread on my pillowcase, or the way her soft body curls into my blankets.
I leave the room.
Pulling the door closed hurts, but not because I feel anything for her. No. I’m pissed at myself for… whatever that was before. For that siren song that I invented in my own mind. I pulled her out of the sea because you never know when a person might be valuable. Ashley has turned out to be almost too valuable. The way she looked, so helpless and sweet, disguised the truth of her from me, and I hate myself for nearly getting taken in.
But I did not get taken in. I let my feet fall heavy on the steps up to the deck. The vixen didn’t trick me. I uncovered her secrets before she had the chance to hide that fancy, charmed past away and pretend to be innocent. The pain in her eyes when she talked about her boyfriend was probably as fake as all those social media photos.
I burst out onto the deck and into clear air.
I almost felt sorry for her.
Almost.
5
Ashley
The next time I wake up, I’m alone.
The chair by the side of the bed is empty.
A faint rocking tells me I’m on a boat, and this isn’t a fever dream of a nautical vacation. Plus, everything I can see is bolted down to the floor. I climb out of bed, keeping my movements slow and controlled. There was definitely a man in here before, but I can’t remember exactly what we talked about. Only the sea-deep pitch of his voice.
Once I’ve got both feet on the floor I can see that the bed is bolted down, too. Or… no, it’s part of the floor. As if the dark, knotted wood unfolded itself into a huge bed. Far too much space for a person like me. He must be very tall.
One of the room’s walls is lined with curtained windows. I pad over and pull one of the curtains back. The windows are larger than I’d expect on a ship. Whoever built this must have done a lot of reinforcement under all this wood to support windows like this. That’s how windows are on boats.
The windows don’t matter compared to what I see outside.
Nothing but open sea.
Not even a dot on the horizon to suggest land exists.
It does exist. I know that. I was born on land and I had both feet on solid ground before I left for the trip with Robbie.
I can’t think directly about Robbie right now. No, no. That’s not a good idea. It makes my eyes burn and my chest ache. Not right now, not right now.
Being naked is not helping. If the man who was here before comes in right now, he’ll see me standing here numb and nude by the window, staring at nothing. He would laugh. I’m not in the mood for that.
I go hunting for clothes. My sundress isn’t here and I’ve never been very cute in bedsheet chic. A single big dresser stretches across the opposite wall. Inside are folded clothes. Folded—for some reason that surprises me, but it shouldn’t. There’s no clutter here. Not on top of the dresser or anywhere else. I remember drinking from a cup, but there’s nothing on the table bolted down near the bed, either. This ship probably goes through a lot of rough seas.
I take the first things that look semi-normal and shake them out over the bed. A loose white linen shirt and dark canvas pants. Sailing clothes.
My hands shake while I put them on. It’s tiring, standing up for this long, but what’s my other option? I can’t stay in bed forever if I want to find out what’s going on.
Do I want to find out what’s going on?
Not really. But once again, no other great options present themselves. I tie a knot in the shirt and roll up the pants so I can at least look like I’ve worn clothes before. There are no shoes. I wasn’t wearing any when I jumped off the yacht, and I can guarantee that whoever owns these clothes won’t have shoes that fit me, either.
The door to the room is unlocked.
I step outside of it, bracing for an alarm, but nothing happens. There’s no shout or loud siren or anything in the long hallway to announce my escape. Everything is wood, wood, wood. It doesn’t make any sense. People don’t have ships like this anymore. At least I don’t think they do. This boat feels big, almost like a yacht, but… different.
It doesn’t seem smart to wander around in the hall by myself so I take the stairs.
My quads burn from the effort of the climb. God, how long was I in that bed? Long enough for my legs to go weak and boneless? It couldn’t have been that long. With every step I take, the pit at the base of my stomach grows. I’m pretty sure the door at the top of the stairs opens onto the deck.
Once I’m up there, I won’t be able to hide from the sea.
I stop ten steps from the bottom and cling to the railing, taking deep breaths and trying to look like it’s normal for people to freeze up in the middle of the stairs. The sea used to look calm to me. What else could it be? My parents never went boating when it looked like bad weather. Robbie borrowed his parents’ yacht because no storms were on the horizon during spring break. But the weather didn’t matter in the end. The storm came anyway. It came on a perfectly calm day, in golden sunlight—
I shake my head once, twice, but it makes me dizzy, so I stop. The sea is a violent creature. Calm seas are a lie.
Every part of me wants to run back down the stairs and into that bedroom, but it wouldn’t be better. I wouldn’t get any answers. I wouldn’t learn anything about where I am or who I’m with. I wouldn’t find out when my dad will arrive.
Jesus. Am I really going to be the kind of girl who sits around waiting for some strange man to tell her what the plan is? I’ve been that girl. Shame heats my cheeks. I didn’t know that going along with things would land me on a strange ship in the middle of the ocean.
I climb the last ten steps as fast as I can, before I can change my mind, and force myself out through the door.
I was right.
This is the deck.
It’s a big, wide-open deck, and the second I’m out in the sun I regret it. The telltale heat of a deeper burn takes no time to set in on my sunburned face. I press a hand to one cheek, then the other, then put them back down by my sides. I’m not going to help myself by trying to prevent a sunburn with two hands.
The single saving grace of this moment is that no one seems to have noticed me.
And there are other people up here. Lots of them.
Strange men, every one of them absorbed in one task or another. One has a length of clear rope or string hanging off the side of the ship, and he stares down after it. One has a tablet and is tapping at the screen so quickly I can’t believe he’s reading anything on it. One is actually mopping the deck. Swabbing it? He doesn’t look up at me, either. None of them do. Not even when I take a few tentative steps forward.
The sun is killer. I put a hand up to shade my eyes. The guy with the tablet glances up at me, then back down at the screen. It’s like random, disarrayed girls usually wander around their ship.
A shadow looms over me, staying tall and dark and mysterious for several heartbeats before it resolves into a man. Shirtless. Carved muscles. The shadows of tattoos around one arm and over his chest.
Poseidon.
That’s what his name was. It comes to me in his voice, as if he’s murmured it into my ear. What a strange name.
I’m sure he didn’t look this pissed before.
“What are you doing out of bed?” He barks the question like an order, rough-edged and glacial. It’s so clear who the captain of the ship is. He holds it in his bearing. I’m wearing his clothes, but I feel like shrinking down to the deck and disappearing.
“Looking for you.” I manage it in a voice that barely trembles. This can’t be the same person who made me drink water and spoke to me in a coaxing, gentle way. It can’t be, but it is.
His eyes narrow. “You need rest.”
“I need a phone.”
“Go back below, where I left you.”
I straighten my spine and cross my arms over my chest. I have one single card to play in this conversation, and I think if it were an actual card, it would be flimsy as hell. Still. There’s that saying about playing the hand you have. “Did you call my dad?”
A frown curves the corners of his lips down, and damn it, they are perfect lips, like a god would have. But a frown is not exactly what I expected. Usually when I mention my dad, people move faster. Nobody back home wants to be on his bad side. He’d buy their companies out of spite.