by Amelia Wilde
Nicholas lands on the deck behind me and rushes the deck. His plan is to shoot whoever’s at the helm so they can’t try to get any distance. I keep my rifle up and aimed until I hear the shot from the shitty half-assed bridge. By then, I’ve killed two more people and the Somali pirates are aware that they’re having a bad day.
Two more of my crew come down behind me. This pause is a purposeful delay in my killing spree, meant to allow the pirates to get up onto the deck. They won’t hide below, because they know we’ll sweep the ship. I’ve got more people, and more guns, and they know it—or at least they’ll know it soon enough.
The bravest ones, or the ones with the least to lose, pile out first and try to fight. They know enough to run right at us. At close range, it gets difficult to aim a rifle, and the pirates take advantage of it.
I shoot one, then swing the rifle around to meet the second one. He’s fast enough to avoid the first swing but not the second, and I bring the butt of the rifle down onto his forehead. He drops to the deck.
I wait for the bloodlust. Wait for the sense of victory. Wait for the adrenaline. But the adrenaline is already here and it’s not doing much for me. It can’t clear my head of the barbed fear twisting in a loop through my brain. There are questions that need answers, like how many of them touched her and how badly she’s hurt. Men like this don’t waste much time, and my ship had holes in it, and no matter how many times I run these calculations, I can’t get a result before I see her.
A young guy stumbles out onto the deck and surrenders. Jason’s there next to him, rifle aimed at his forehead, and I can see how much he wants to shoot him. How much he wants to have this under his belt. He could do it. I’m not close enough to stop him. But he hesitates, glancing around until he finds me.
I shake my head.
Every last person on this ship should die, but the one on the deck in front of Jason is younger than he is. His face is round, limbs lanky, and I’d bet he’s barely cleared eighteen. There’s a line.
Unless, of course, he hurt Ashley.
In that case, there are no lines, none at all.
There’s less of a crush at the door, and I aim again and shoot into it. That clears the rest of them onto the deck. Sailors know better than to get trapped below when there’s an active threat driving them there.
I’m the threat, but I don’t care about pushing them down below.
I’ve come for someone else.
I wade through the skirmish, which is intense but will be short-lived. I can feel that, too. The deck is slippery in the rain, making it hard to find purchase for anyone’s shoes, and guys are more likely to go overboard than they are to win the fight. Most of them will be dead by the time I find her. The rest will have surrendered. They’re not as coordinated as my people. They won’t be loyal to each other.
Not a single one blocks my path to the doorway.
It leads to a dingy staircase, and I take the steps down two at a time to the cargo hold. It’s a fucking mess. I would never let one of my ships sail in this condition. Crates are stacked on each other in leaning towers, nothing is secure, and they’ve got food gone bad in here somewhere.
There are two doors at the back, each one closed. I kick in the one on the left. An office in disarray. It has a desk bolted to the floor and a safe that swings open. That’s where the pearl will be. I fucking know it.
I leave without another glance.
The second door is cracked, and I lean into it with one shoulder.
One small porthole gives the room all the light it’s going to get, and it’s not much, given the clouds outside.
It’s enough to see her once my eyes adjust.
Ashley’s tied up on a filthy mattress, her arms stretched over her head and the rope knotted around a shelf screwed into the wall. My stomach turns at the sight of her. Bruises, evident in the dim light. One on her cheek. A shadow around her ankle. There will be more. They’ve had her down here for enough time.
She’s sobbing through a gag, not making any sound. Her body shakes with it as much as it can shake, which is not much.
They’ve taken her clothes.
I swing the rifle onto my back and kneel down next to her. The gag looks horrible, but her hands are my first concern. These dumbfucks don’t know anything about tying up a person, and I don’t need a fucking floodlight to know they’ve done it too tightly. I cut through the rope around the shelf with a knife and release the tension.
“Hold still.” They were also sloppy with the knot around her wrists. I have to cut through that, too. Ashley can’t relax. She’s crying too hard. When the rope comes free she pulls her arms down to the top of her head first, like it hurts too much to get them back in front of her.
It probably does.
Gag next.
Ashley squeezes her eyes shut when I move my knife over her head. This is fucking horrifying, this situation that I’ve created. It’s a bone-deep, ice-water horror that’s so far over my head I’ll never break the surface. I did this. I swore to keep the seas safe, and what’s a little hostage-taking amidst everything else I’ve done? She practically fell into my lap. I wanted her. I took her. And now she’s hurt.
I have to ease the gag out of her mouth slowly, and when it’s done, she rolls onto her side and retches, again and again, like she can’t get the taste of dirty cloth out of her mouth. I keep her hair out of her face. When her stomach stops convulsing, she reaches for me. It’s almost a blind crawl, what she’s doing, right for me, right for my lap. I sit back on my heels and let her.
But that’s all I can let her do.
I cannot, will not, feel all the emotions that are threatening to batter down the last defenses I have. If I let them in, they’ll take over, and I’ll never be free of them again.
And as sick as I feel, as horrified as I am, it would be far more dangerous to forget that Ashley did this. She swam to these motherfuckers and let them take her onboard. All her relieved weeping doesn’t change that.
It doesn’t change the fact that I put my crew in danger for her. All of these people depend on me, and I threw myself into the line of fire to try to convince her not to do this fucking thing.
She didn’t listen.
Finally, I gather up her bruised body in both arms and stand. She cries on my shoulder, hot tears soaking through the rainwater on my shirt. “Is it over?” she sobs. “Tell me it’s over.”
I say nothing. It’s not over. Above us, on the deck, things have quieted down. A thump directly above us sounds like a body hitting the deck. I’m hoping it’s one of theirs, not one of ours. A lack of running feet confirms this.
“Let’s go.” That’s all I can tell her over the drumbeat of anger and relief and shame. This is why men like me don’t let themselves get involved with people like Ashley. Other people’s lives are on the line.
I carry her up to the deck. Rain falls steadily now, mixing with the fresh blood. Little rivers run down the deck, to the stairs. Nicholas is back down where I can see him. He gives me a signal—the rest of them are dead. The guy who tried to surrender is on his back in a pool of blood. He must’ve changed his mind.
I don’t give a fuck.
Nicholas abandons whatever he’s doing to come clear a path for me. My ship is taller than this one, so Nicholas stands on the railing and grabs hold of ours. It brings the two of them into alignment enough for me to lift Ashley over.
I want this thing at the bottom of the ocean.
“Orders?” Nicholas calls up to me. He’s worried for Ashley. I can see that on his face.
He should be worried.
“Search the ship. Find the pearl.”
I turn away from the railing. “Then what?” Nicholas asks.
“Sink it.”
20
Ashley
Poseidon wraps me in warm blankets, layers and layers of them, and makes me sit on the edge of his bed while I warm up.
It takes a long time to stop shaking. It takes a long time to get
my breathing under control. What helps, strangely, is to listen to the sounds of the ship. The rock of it in the ocean. The bump it makes when it moves gently against the other ship. After a while, people start coming onboard again, and I can feel their footsteps on the deck in tiny vibrations.
Poseidon sits in the chair next to the bed and watches me.
At first, I think he’s being dispassionate because it was such a close call. Because he’s worried about me. It was bad, what happened, but I’m not going to fall to pieces yet. I don’t want to. I’m wrung out from all the crying, and all of my skin is so sensitive that the lived-in blankets feel rough.
But then the silence starts to wear on me.
I take a few last, deep breaths before I break it. “I think you should take me home. At least to the U.S., anyway. If you drop me off anywhere in the country, I know I can get a flight.”
Poseidon narrows his eyes. They’re the color of storm clouds over the ocean, a deep blue lit up by fire, and I don’t like what I see there. It’s not the same man who was here before this last escape. There’s nothing playful or sexy or greedy about him. Every part of him is held away from me. Apart from me.
“My daddy will pay. I know he will. He probably already has.”
“Your daddy.” His mouth curls. “You think I care that your daddy will wire me money when he gets around to it? I don’t fucking care about that. I have money.”
He doesn’t say princess.
All at once, like a thunderclap, I recognize his expression, the vicious set of his muscles, for what it is. My body startles involuntarily inside the cocoon of blankets. “Are you mad at me?”
“Mad?” A mean smile crosses his face like the curve of a dagger. “I’m fucking furious with you. And you’re going to pay.”
“I know I’m going to pay. My dad will give you any amount you want, and if you want more because I was reckless, then he’ll give you that too. All you have to do is—”
“Not him. You. You’re going to pay. And you’re going to do it right now.” His deadly, even tone is a thousand times more terrifying than a shout would have been. “And do you know why? Because you crossed a fucking line when you left me. You put everyone on this ship into a situation they might not have walked out from, and all so you could live out some little rich-girl fantasy. Nobody does that to my crew. Nobody does that to me. Nobody.”
“I’m sorry.” Guilt hammers itself through my heart. “I know. It was bad. I shouldn’t have done it.”
“But you did. And now you’re going to learn about the consequences for putting my people at risk.”
“I didn’t mean—”
He silences me with a hand in the air. “Nicholas.”
Nicholas pushes open the door to Poseidon’s quarters. He’s been waiting for this moment. My stomach freezes. The scratches between my thighs sting with the cold. I pull the blankets tighter around me.
And then I see what Nicholas is holding.
A length of rope.
I can’t move.
Poseidon stands up and pulls me to my feet. The first layer of blankets falls to the floor. He reaches for the others, and I pull back an inch. “This isn’t fair.” My voice is high and scared and the worst version of me, the version of me with no sense of how dangerous her actions are, with no sense of any real consequences. I’m not that person. I try not to be that person. “This isn’t fair, what you’re doing.”
“No, it’s not fucking fair, but that’s how shit goes when you’re the captain. You make the rules.”
The crew is in the hall. I see them now. They’re mostly in shadow, but I can see them. Poseidon takes advantage of me looking out at them for help to strip away the rest of the blankets.
I’m naked underneath, and I feel it for the first time. There’s no heat in his eyes, no sense of play, and fear is a pair of cement shoes. If it weren’t for the floor of the ship, they’d take me all the way down.
Poseidon puts a hand on my elbow and takes me to the door. Jason is outside, and the cook, and there are others. All people I’ve talked to. They’re careful to keep their eyes up while we move past.
“Don’t do this,” Jason calls as we’re climbing the stairs. “She didn’t know what she was doing.”
“She knew,” answers Poseidon. He doesn’t slow down.
At the top of the steps, the rest of the crew is waiting, but they give us a lot of space. Most of them look down at the deck. Their faces are drawn and scared. They must be mirrors of mine. My palms are slick with sweat, my chest aching with new terror and shame. Naked. I’m naked in front of all these men, and I have no idea what Poseidon’s going to do.
We stop in front of the mast.
It doesn’t have rigging, as Jason explained to me once when I was bothering him between swimming lessons. It’s actually a communications tower meant to make this look like a sailing ship. My mind slips into that conversation again. It’s better than standing out here in spitting rain.
“Tie her,” Poseidon says.
The cook pushes his way between me and the mast, both hands up. “A trade,” he says.
“No.”
“Hear me out on it.” I have never seen the cook look afraid. I’ve made him laugh exactly three times. I’ve made him smile six times. Now his mouth is drawn down, his eyes wide. “I’ll keep her in the brig. You won’t have to look at her. Don’t do this.”
Poseidon doesn’t pause to consider it. “Get out of the way.”
“All my savings,” the cook says. “Yours.”
Now Poseidon speaks louder so that the crew members hanging by the railing can hear. “What I say goes on my ship. She disobeyed direct orders. If you keep standing there, you’ll be disobeying direct orders too.”
“I didn’t hear an order.”
This is a risk, and I know it is, because Poseidon already told him to move. My knees are jelly. My knees might never function as knees again. I don’t know. Droplets land on my skin, each of them a new reminder of my nakedness and how cold it is to be afraid and without clothes.
Poseidon doesn’t take the bait. “I order you to get out of my fucking way.”
The cook stands there for another beat. My heart aches for him. He’s trying to get Poseidon to fight him, and I get the sense this might have worked if it weren’t for this situation. If it weren’t for me.
Poseidon doesn’t fight. He waits, and I can feel the seconds ticking by. I’ve googled enough to know there are different rules at sea. That Poseidon would be justified in anything he chooses to do with a mutineer.
The cook looks at me. He lets me see his face, his sorrow. I want to tell him it’s okay, but it’s not.
He steps out of the way.
Poseidon moves me in front of the mast and presses me against it. It’s colder than the rain, and my belly tenses with the shock of it, but he doesn’t let me step back. He stands behind me and stretches my arms around it. I clasp my hands on the other side, and then there’s the tug and pull of rope around my wrists.
“It’s done.” Nicholas is in sight for a second, his eyes lowered to the deck, and then I can’t see him anymore.
“Not another step,” Poseidon announces. I can’t see where everyone is standing, but they must have been moving, must have been going somewhere. “Everyone stays on deck until this is finished. Even you, Cook.”
I twist my head around. It’s hard, tied like this, to get a view of anyone. Cook is off to Poseidon’s side, his eyes on the deck. He doesn’t lift them up to look back at me. Everyone I can see is doing the same thing. My heart pounds. They’re not moving, but they’re not looking, either. It’s the most privacy they can give me.
Poseidon holds out his hand.
It’s Nicholas who steps forward with a set jaw and spots of color on his cheeks.
It’s Nicholas who puts the whip in Poseidon’s hand.
The whip.
In Poseidon’s hand.
“No,” I say. “Don’t do this. Please, don’t do this.
You don’t have to do this.” The rope around my wrists doesn’t hurt but it doesn’t have any slack, either. I can’t get away.
Poseidon doesn’t answer. He steps to my side, testing the whip in his hand. That’s all it takes—that one motion, and I know with horrible certainty that he has done this before, that this is not the first time, and that he knows how to make it hurt.
Alongside that certainty, another feeling burns itself into being. I hate him, and he’s beautiful in the rain. It looks at home on him. I want him, and he hates me enough to do this. To tie me naked to a part of his ship and whip me in front of other people. I’m terrified. I’m fucking terrified. I have never been so scared, except for one other time, and it was earlier, on that ship with those men.
He gets closer and drags the whip across my skin, letting me feel it, and all that heated want crashes down underneath the weight of my fear. I’m afraid to suffer for him. It’s going to happen anyway. It’s already happening.
Poseidon takes a single step back. “Look forward.”
There’s nowhere to look but the mast. It’s mean, what he’s doing. It’s cruel. He’s making it so I can’t see when he draws his arm back.
“Please don’t,” I beg the mast. “Please don't hurt me. Please don’t, Poseidon. You don’t have to do this. You can stop. I’m sorry. I won’t leave again, I won’t—”
It turns out I don’t need to see him.
The whip makes a sound when it moves through the air, almost a whistling, and then it makes first contact.
There’s nothing, and then there’s everything, a lightning line of pain across the curve of my shoulders. The scream wrestles its way out of me before I can stop it. It becomes a begging plea. “Don't do it!” I scream at him. “Don't.”
Another blow, this one lower. The rain makes it worse somehow. I don’t think any more drops are falling, but the lingering wetness on my skin forces me to feel everything. “Please.”