by Skylar Cross
"Kiri and I came into port with Mr. and Mrs. Decoud. They're friends of mine."
"Who is the girl?"
"My sister."
His eyes narrowed. He looked deeply into mine.
I flinched.
Damn, what's wrong with me? What happened to my iron poker face?
"She is not your sister," he said. "You are an American. She is from here."
"She is adopted by my parents," I said.
"Then I will call your parents right now."
Fuck, this is pathetic. Goddamn, how am I going to get out of this?
"You can't," I said.
"Why can't I?" he said.
"Because... well... they're dead."
I tried putting on my famous "little boy lost" face with tears. The magistrate just kept staring at me. A feeling of dread filled me from my toes to the top of my head.
"You are lying," he said. "Guard!"
Two armed guards in tan uniforms entered the room. Kiri went into a full-on crying fit, grabbing my leg.
"Take him to Block B," said the magistrate.
The guards roughly lifted me off the chair. Kiri screamed. One guard unclasped her arms, lifting her away from me.
"Don't you dare hurt her!" I said.
The guard behind me hit me on the side of the head. A stream of adrenaline poured through my body and I kicked his shin.
The other guard put Kiri down, walked over to me, and punched me in the stomach. I felt the wind go out of me.
Kiri had run into a little space between the filing cabinet and the desk. I looked over at her. Her hands were over her ears and her eyes were shut. She had retreated within again.
"Kiri!" I shouted, trying to reach her. "Everything is going to be okay! I'm not going forever! I promise! Trust me!"
She opened her eyes and looked at me with her big eyes, her hands still over her ears.
The guards dragged me out of the room.
"Kiri!" I shouted as the door slammed shut.
I wouldn't see those eyes again for nineteen years.
Chapter 11
Nuutania Prison in Tahiti isn't a place I want to talk about. I'd rather forget the two years I spent there.
Suffice it to say that most everything you've heard about French prisons is true. And from my personal experience, I believe it's worse in French Polynesia.
For those two years, my only solace was the tiny library of ancient books. When I found Death at Sea by Konrad Gregor, I discovered a reason to live. Seriously, that book kept me alive. In between beatings, torture, and riots, I would escape in my mind to the tiny town of Pinzon with its orange gardens. And the do-or-die determination of Horace Willoughby to win back the gold for Antonia.
But it would be a long time for me. I had been given a mandatory sentence of ten years. It would have been life if not for the fact that they had lost Kiri. She had vanished while under their care, shortly after my arrest.
I vowed that if I ever got out of this horrible place, I would kill anyone who had harmed Kiri.
My gut told me she was safe, though. And I was pretty sure I knew how.
I know someone who can help her. At probably the best place on Earth for her to go.
Those were Martine Decoud's words. I have a feeling the Decouds somehow got her to that place. Hopefully they were able to help Kiri.
Every day in prison, I was haunted by what had happened at my own hands. If only I had listened to my gut instinct sooner, I could have saved Maru and Mealea Huang's lives. And Narith, Dara, and Kiri wouldn't be orphans.
When I was sick from tropical fever or worn down from a fight, horrible visions of Mrs. Huang would come to me. I knew I was hallucinating, but I swear I saw her.
"Find my children!" she said with her arms outstretched. "You've got to stay alive so you can save them!"
I held tight to the image of Horace Willoughby. In many ways, I truly did become him. I was determined to be like him in a brighter future I couldn't yet see.
One day, about two years after my sentence, a guard came to the squalid room I shared with three other prisoners. He pointed to me and motioned that I follow him.
I was led in chains across the courtyard to the administrative area. There, I was locked in a room with a table in the center of it.
In about fifteen minutes, two guards came in and stood on either side of me. Behind them came the same magistrate I first talked to when they took me away from Kiri. Behind him was...
...oh my God...
...Jacques Decoud.
Jacques Decoud's eyes met mine. I tried to get a read on him, but nothing came back.
The magistrate motioned for Jacques Decoud to sit in the chair.
"No!" said Jacques Decoud. "I don't need to sit down. That's not him."
The magistrate ruffled through some papers on the clipboard in his hand.
"Are you certain?" he said.
"Yes," said Jacques Decoud. "That's not the boy my wife and I rescued. He wasn't the one who kidnapped the girl. Not even close. You have the wrong person here."
"But I don't understand–"
"Look, you wanted me to come here and see him. I saw him. Now I'm leaving. That's not the boy. You should let him go."
Jacques Decoud didn't look back as he walked away. I was escorted back to my cell.
I couldn't believe Jacques Decoud lied like that. Why? Is something happening for which he needs me?
Whatever it was, I couldn't allow hope to creep into my mind. Besides, just because a witness to a crime shows up to proclaim a prisoner innocent doesn't mean the prisoner is automatically set free. Especially under the French justice system.
But two days later, the guards returned. Without a word, they led me out through the courtyard.
I thought we were going to the offices, but they unlocked my chains and opened the gate for me.
I couldn't believe it.
I was outside.
A free man!
Without a word.
Not quite believing it, I walked toward the road that led back to Papeete. I still wore my prison clothes.
I had never been much of a believer in God, but with each step toward the road I thanked somebody... I wasn't sure who... up there for freeing me from that hell.
Then I saw the car.
Parked out of sight of the gate was a small rental car. The driver's side door opened and out stepped Jacques Decoud. He was alone.
I walked toward him, my eyes never losing contact with his.
Once I reached the car, I stopped and stared at him. He just stared back.
"Thank you," I said.
"You tricked me two years ago," he said. "I was mad. People don't trick me and get away with it."
"I don't–"
"Quiet! Don't speak to me. What I did here was for myself, not for you. I'm not your friend. I'm going to drive away without so much as giving you a ride into town, then you will never see me again. My wife doesn't even know I'm here."
He paused. I could tell he was remembering something. He looked up and to his right, bit his lower lip, then returned his gaze to me.
"I spent time in a place very much like that," he said. "And I wished that someone would show up proclaiming my innocence. I had been framed by one of my supposed friends. But it never happened. I served the full sentence. But knowing that you were here, in a hell much like the one in which I lived, I couldn't sleep at night. So now you're free and I'm done with you. I know you'll soon be up to your old tricks."
"No," I said. "I–"
"Don't speak to me!"
"Where's Kiri?"
"Don't even try. You'll never find her. And if you do, I'll personally kill you."
Jacques Decoud opened the car door and got in, started the engine, and drove off. I watched the tiny car as it wound its way through the tropical landscape toward Pape'ete.
I took a step. Then another. Then another.
They were the first steps on a very long road.
Chapter 12<
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I had some money stashed away in banks around the world. It wasn't terribly difficult to get some of it through one of the large banks in Pape'ete.
You would think that I would have left Tahiti immediately, never wanting to see it again. But it became the center of my world, the capital of my empire. I was determined that it wouldn't break me. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger.
I bought a small house on the outskirts of town. It had only four rooms, but one of them was an office. I had a small sign made up and tacked it to the door facing the road. The sign read:
KH Holdings Inc. - World Headquarters
KH stood for Kiri Huang. Because from now on, everything I did was to provide for her, Narith, and Dara.
I found Vainui, who had married a fat boy and had a baby girl. She was eight months pregnant with her second child. She gave me back the locket. She had only been sentenced to a year of probation for helping me. I gave her $20,000 of my money which was a vast fortune to her and her husband.
Seeing as I had the locket with the location to the gold mine, I could have just gone there and grabbed some gold.
But I had a bigger mission.
I didn't want to be seen as the type of person Jacques Decoud had labeled me. I wanted to be something better than that. I didn't want to just take money anymore. I wanted to create something of value, to prove to the world... but more importantly, to myself... that I could build something worthwhile and respectable with my own efforts.
I had been incarcerated under my given American name. But on my new business registration papers, I put a different name.
Caden Storm was reborn.
But not the same Caden Storm who set out to con the world eight years before.
From that tiny smelly dirty office, the new Caden Storm made a few phone calls. Using my persuasion skills, I was able to set up a meeting with three wealthy local businessmen.
We met in a hotel room overlooking the same spot where I had deceived the Decouds two years earlier. In three hours, we had signed an investment deal that would make all of us a small fortune. Included in it was the purchase of Maru Huang's resort.
Apparently Maru Huang's place had fallen on some very bad times. It had been abandoned six months before by its most recent owner Hiro Fareani, a notorious mobster who had been Maru Huang's lifelong enemy.
It was Hiro Fareani who had taken control of the property days after the Huangs went missing two years before. He had installed his own staff, whisking Narith and Dara off to Indonesia. Then he mysteriously vanished and the resort fell to ruin with nobody running it, eventually becoming abandoned.
It took a year to get Maru Huang's resort running properly with a full staff. I even had the overwater bungalows installed that Maru Huang had wanted for so long.
Once the deal was producing a substantial return on investment for both my partners and me, I took the next step on my journey.
New York City.
No MBA. No college education. Hell, I didn't even have a GED, seeing as I dropped out of school at age thirteen.
But I could do differential calculus in my head. I could read financial tables and predict stock trends better than any seasoned veteran from Goldman-Sachs.
Not sure why. Not sure how. Call it an eidetic memory. Call it savant. I just call it a gift. All I know is that I had an innate genius that didn't require a formal piece of parchment with Old English writing framed in glass to be valuable to the world.
My value was that I could make people money. A lot of money.
Within five years, I had put together and negotiated several mergers and acquisitions. Initially, my job was head negotiator for large trusts but soon I was doing deals for myself.
When people found out that I had never gone to Harvard or Wharton, they were astounded. True, I was excluded from several high-society groups due to my lack of an Ivy-covered outside stamp of approval.
Fuck 'em.
I didn't want to hang around with that crowd anyway.
When I was twenty-six, I had made my first hundred million. But I was determined to make it to a billion.
I had women. Lots of women. I dated a couple of movie actresses, which was a huge mistake. They're nutjobs.
At a party headlined by supermodel Heather Hunter, I met her husband Devlin Bane.
Devlin Bane was my alter ego, a genius with a billion dollars in real estate development. We hit it off immediately and became partners.
KH Holdings and Bane Development did deals in Singapore, London, Macau, Los Angeles, Munich, and Moscow. Five days before I turned thirty-one, I was a billionaire.
It had been ten years since the day Jacques Decoud drove down that winding road, leaving me in my prison garb to walk into town. Now, not only was I one of the most respected businessmen in Tahiti, but all over the world.
But with all my money, I couldn't find Kiri Huang.
For years, I had sent out feelers for any information about her. All came up with nothing.
Even Forrester, Devlin Bane's former CIA operative turned head-of-security, couldn't track a lead on her. She had vanished off the face of the earth. I often wondered if she was dead.
I tried contacting the Decouds but they wouldn't return my calls. Even the fact that I had built a business empire from scratch couldn't persuade them that I had reformed my ways.
As for Sebastian and Valentina, I never tried to find them. It would have been a waste of time anyway. Sebastian was a master of staying unseen.
And besides, if I saw him I was afraid I might lose control of myself. Respectable businessman Caden Storm couldn't allow himself to be a murderer.
I had two serious girlfriends, Caterina and Juliana. I loved them both, but for some reason or another it just didn't click all the way with either. I still hadn't found the love that I pined for that night sitting on the Huangs' dock.
By age thirty-six, I was fast coming to the conclusion I was to be a bachelor for life.
Then, one day I was sitting on the deck of my yacht the Porvenir, bobbing in the Adriatic Sea near the beach in Petrovac, Montenegró. It was a beautiful summer day. The seaside town buzzed with tourists and sun worshippers.
Claudia, a beautiful 22-year old blonde I had met the previous night at the Maestral casino, was sunning herself while I read the Financial Times. We were both exhausted from physical exertion.
My cell phone rang.
"Hello," I said.
"Caden Storm," said a voice burned into my memory. "You've been a very busy boy since the last time I saw you."
I leaped up, dropping the newspaper onto the deck.
"Hello, Sebastian," I said.
"I always knew you were smart, Caden," said Sebastian, "but you've really outdone yourself. I'm quite impressed."
"Sebastian, you are a murderer!" I said. "You killed two innocent and lovely people. In doing so, you lost the right to ever speak to me again."
Claudia got up and went to the head.
"Caden Caden Caden," said Sebastian. I could picture him chomping on his cigar. "I don't know what you're talking about. I didn't kill anyone. I would never do such a thing."
"I was there, Sebastian!" I said. "I saw what you did. I saw you covered in blood! I saw the bodies of the Huangs as they tumbled into the sea."
"Ah, so that's how the girl was rescued."
"What girl?"
"The little girl who I'm guessing stowed away on the yacht. Kiri I think was her name."
Shit, how does he know that?
"I don't remember her," I said.
Sebastian laughed.
"Caden," he said, "you can't con the man who taught you how to con. You've been looking for little Kiri for years. I caught wind of your search a while back. You're distraught because you've never been able to find her."
I stared at the Adriatic. Small whitecaps danced around the bay, reflecting the brilliant sun. Rows of sunbathers had set up blankets and umbrellas along the crowded beach.
"What do you w
ant, Sebastian?" I said.
"Caden, Caden, Caden..." said Sebastian, "why do you talk to me like this? I'm like a father to you. I'm hurt. After all we did together."
"You were never a father to me. We were business partners but that's long over. I'm hanging up now, Sebastian."