Chapter 3
At first, I thought it was part of the program.
A stupid, impossible, humiliatingly childish thought, but sometimes the mind grabs hold of the most absurd version of reality rather than admit that reality has already opened its jaws.
The yacht shuddered beneath our feet like a living creature with iron suddenly driven between its ribs.
The chandeliers swayed, a tremor ran through the white tablecloths, and the glasses chimed delicately against one another.
For several seconds, no one in the ballroom knew what to do: smile, applaud, complain about the poor organization, or finally be afraid.
Wealthy people look particularly strange in the first moments of a disaster.
They do not believe death can walk in uninvited, without security clearance or approval from management, through the same door where the guest list was checked an hour earlier.
They wait for someone to step forward, apologize, and say, “Please remain calm. We are experiencing a minor technical issue.” But then a woman somewhere below screamed a second time, not merely loudly, but as if invisible glass were slicing open her throat, and the evening of hope began turning into an evening of animal terror.
The lights flickered again and went almost completely dark, leaving the ballroom in the red gloom of the emergency lighting, where the guests’ faces became alien, flat, and terrifyingly alike.
Someone leaped up, knocking over a chair.
A waiter dropped a tray, and silverware crashed across the floor.
For some reason, that sound cut deeper than the first impact: everything expensive, gleaming, and respectable had suddenly become nothing but garbage underfoot.
Adrian rose instantly. That was Adrian in his entirety: even in the face of an unknown threat, his body never surrendered its authority.
Shoulders squared, jaw rigid, gaze quick, cold, assessing.
He said my name, but he was looking at Nikki, and that brief turn of his eyes was worse than the darkness.
The explosion had not yet explained itself.
No one even knew whether we were sinking or burning.
And my husband had already chosen the direction of his fear.
Nikki clutched his arm as though she had been waiting for this. In the red emergency light, her gold dress turned rust-colored, almost bloody, and for one second she looked less like a woman than a beautiful wound Adrian was holding far too tenderly.
"Adrian, what was that? What’s happening?" Her voice broke on a high note, but even in panic she knew how to make an impression: trembling lashes, parted lips, one hand pressed to her stomach, all fragile promise and helpless need.
I stood beside them with his real child inside me, the truth in my clutch, and the ruins of my marriage lodged in my throat, and no one held my hand. Adrian snapped:
"Kyle, get security over here. Everyone stay where you are."
Of course. First he commanded the room. Commanded fear.
Commanded the air while it still did not smell of smoke.
Vivian rose from the table, white as salt but not disoriented.
No, that woman would probably greet her own death by saying, “No hysterics, please.” She looked at Adrian, then Nikki, then me, and I saw the calculations start running in her head again.
Even in a catastrophe, she was tallying the profit.
The second impact came from below, dull and heavy, with such a vibrating roar that my teeth snapped together and my hand flew to my stomach.
The yacht listed almost imperceptibly, but it was enough.
The ballroom pitched. Chairs slid across the floor.
Someone fell. A woman beside me cried out and grabbed my shoulder, leaving sharp nail marks in my skin.
Now the smell came for real: char, wet metal, something chemical and vile, as though it were not equipment melting in the vessel’s belly but the very conviction that money protected people from disaster.
The speakers crackled, and then the captain’s voice came through, broken by static.
“Ladies and gentlemen, please remain calm. The crew...” The rest drowned in a shriek of feedback and the swelling roar of human voices.
Remain calm. What a marvelous phrase for people whose floor had begun to move beneath them.
I wanted to laugh, but all that came out was a short, dry breath, because Adrian was already pulling Nikki toward the exit.
"Lana, follow me," he tossed over his shoulder without looking back. He did not take my hand. Did not ask if I could walk. Did not check whether I was hurt, whether I had struck something, whether I was afraid. He simply gave an order, the way one might tell an assistant to bring a folder. And the most revolting part was that I obeyed. My legs carried me after him because a body trained by love does not immediately understand that its master has long since fastened the leash around someone else’s throat.
We pushed through a ballroom where status and decency no longer existed.
A man in an expensive tuxedo shoved an elderly woman so he could reach the aisle first. A young woman in a diamond necklace sobbed into her phone:
"Daddy, come get me! Daddy!"
As if her father could pull up alongside us in the middle of the Hudson and cancel the water.
Someone demanded the captain. Someone else screamed about the lifeboats.
Another man cursed so viciously the society pages would have died of shame beside him.
Adrian moved quickly, almost brutally, pushing people aside with one hand while the other held Nikki by the elbow.
I followed them, feeling the little box inside my clutch strike my palm with every step.
You’re going to be a father. You’re going to be a father.
You’re going to be a father. The words pounded inside me like a tiny fist against a locked door.
The corridor was worse. Smoke already hung there, not thick yet, but acrid enough to claw at my eyes and throat.
The red emergency lights turned faces into masks.
Some people ran toward us, others in the opposite direction.
Bodies collided, fell, rose again, cursed, prayed.
Crew members tried to guide the flow toward the deck, but the flow no longer listened.
Fear always moves faster than instructions.
Adrian stopped at a turn and seized Kyle by the collar when he finally emerged from the crowd.
His voice was so low I heard him only because I was standing close.
"What happened?"
Kyle’s face was gray and slick with sweat, though a cold draft swept through the corridor.
"Explosion in the engine room. There’s a fire. The captain’s moving everyone topside. Communications keep cutting out. Security’s at the lifeboats."
Adrian tightened his grip.
"My men?"
Kyle blinked.
"What?"
"Where are my men?"
"Starboard side. But it’s chaos over there."
Nikki sobbed.
"Adrian, I’m scared."
And he turned to her at once. Not to the news of the explosion. Not to me. To her fear.
"I’ll get you out," he said, and those four words held everything I had waited all morning to hear for myself.
I’ll get you out. I’ll save you. You are my responsibility. Mine, apparently, was on a different list.
"What about me?" I asked before I could silence my own pain. My voice came out hoarse, scorched by smoke and truth. Adrian finally looked at me. Quickly. Irritably. The way one looks at a person asking a stupid question at the worst possible moment.
"You heard me. Follow me. Don’t make this harder," he said. Don’t make this harder.
I wanted to strike him across the face with those words.
The yacht appeared to be on fire around us.
His future beat beneath my heart. His mother planned to strip me of my past. His mistress hung from his arm wearing my watch.
And somehow I was still the one making things harder.
Nikki turned toward me, fear and gloating smeared together across her face in a strange mixture that made me shudder.
"Lana, this isn’t the time to discuss your relationship," she whispered. If not for the smoke, the people all around us, and her hand on her stomach, I might have done something ugly for the first time in my life.
Something very ugly. But I only smiled at her.
"You’re right. The time for a relationship is over. Now we only have to find out which one of us can swim."
She went pale. Adrian said sharply:
"Enough."
And he led us on. We climbed a narrow staircase where people were already crushing one another because smoke rose from below and the promise of air waited above.
I gripped the handrail. The metal was slick, whether with water, someone else’s blood, or the fear that seemed to have broken out over every surface around us.
My heels slipped. My dress tangled around my legs.
Someone slammed a shoulder into me. I almost fell but caught myself, because I could not afford to fall. I could never afford to fall again.
"Watch out!" I shouted at a man who stepped on a woman’s hand, but he did not even turn.
Something burst below us again, smaller but closer, and the crowd surged upward.
I was crushed against the wall so hard it knocked the air from my lungs.
I tried to breathe and could not. For one second, the world narrowed to the rough wall against my cheek, the pain in my ribs, and terror for the child inside me.
"Adrian!" I screamed.
He was only a few steps above me. He heard. He turned. Our eyes met. I could see that he saw everything: the bodies pinning me in place, my pain, my inability to get free. His hand jerked toward me. It moved, but Nikki shrieked and pulled him back.
"Adrian!"
And he turned away.