14. A Better Chance with Poseidon #2
Nadia went from fearing for her life to Max’s and Lila’s by not only the anger in Dante’s voice, but his frost-bitten gaze, and they were the ones who were wearing life jackets.
When the two sat there frozen, Amo picked Max up without warning, spun him around, and forced his upper half over the side, holding his head under the water. He pulled him back up for air with the vice grip he had on his hair.
“Now are you willing to talk?” Dante asked over his choking.
“Don’t tell them, honey,” Lila said with a muffled voice, still holding her nose. “They won’t kill—”
Amo sunk Max’s head back under once more, this time holding him there longer than he did last time.
Max came out of the water choking harder as the blood continued to spill from his own broken nose.
“Okay!” Max choked out, agreeing to talk in fear of being drowned.
Lila went to detest, but Max screamed at her, “Easy for you to say; you’re not the one being fucking drowned!”
“I can give you a turn?”
Lila’s mouth snapped close at Amo’s warning.
“Now …” Dante told him to get talking.
“The day you boarded, I was sent a text, along with fifty thousand dollars deposited into my bank account to kill everyone on the ship. They told me, after I did it, I would be deposited another fifty.”
“A hundred thousand?”
She watched Dante utter the number in disappointment. It was quite obvious he thought his life alone was worth more than that, and Nadia was pretty sure he would have doubled the money for him not to do it.
Amo was just as hurt, throwing Max in for another dip.
“It was a hundred,” Max came up out of the water, clarifying in deep breaths, “but I told them I would only do it if my girlfriend, Lila, could come with me and got her own hundred thousand dollars.”
“How sweet …” Nadia grumbled sarcastically.
Dante shared her sentiment but continued on, “Who sent the money?”
A nervous Max started stuttering, looking at Lila as she silently pleaded for him not tell. “I-I-If I tell you, I’m dead anyway.”
“Okay, then.” Amo started jerking off his lifejacket, and when he didn’t reveal the name in the time it took for him to do so, he threw him off the boat. “Get to swimming.”
“He didn’t hurt anyone yet!” Nadia screamed at the soldier over Max’s attempts of swimming away. She couldn’t believe she ever thought Amo wasn’t capable of hurting a fly. “Nothing’s even been done to the ship ye—”
BOOM!
Staring at the flames in the distance, she quietly sat back down, knowing the chef and skipper were still onboard. Nadia didn’t agree with it, but after that, she knew Max had a better chance with Poseidon than up here with the fucking mafia members whom he had almost just killed.
When Amo grabbed a crying Lila by her lifejacket, her mouth started moving a mile per minute.
“One-Shot! All they would tell us is they went by One-Shot! We were to cut the fuel line while everyone was sleeping, and that was it. We tried doing it the first night, but Nadia and Leo woke up and were talking. So, the next day, Max planned to get you all drunk, even told you their rum runners were virgin, but they weren’t. ”
Suddenly, Nadia felt sick, sicker than anything she had witnessed tonight. The fact that they knew they were going to kill kids—well, at least she still viewed Leo as a kid—told her what kind of cruel people they were.
“That, of course, backfired when Nadia slept upstairs that night, because we weren’t sure when you two would actually stop fucking and go to sleep.”
Nadia’s mouth hit the fucking deck, and what was worse was seeing Amo’s eyes practically popping out of his sockets, while Leo didn’t even react, meaning he had clearly already known.
“There was no spider, was there?” Amo asked, turning to Leo when something clicked together in his head.
Leo shook his head. “No.”
Oh God , she cried inside her head, wishing she were swimming with the fishes alongside Max right about now, finally understanding the spider comment. I should have stayed on the fucking boat.
Covering her face with her hands, she looked at Dante through her fingers to see he hadn’t been bothered by the revelation in the slightest.
“Okay.” Amo cleared his throat, throwing a forever embarrassed Nadia a lifeline by continuing. “Go on.”
“Tonight was our last chance, so when you all stayed in your rooms and were separated, we … well … went for it,” Lila finally finished.
“Anything else, boss?” Amo asked, looking at Dante.
“Nope.”
With that, Amo flung the woman overboard.
“No!” Nadia shot up from where she sat. “She told you everything!”
“That’s why I left her lifejacket on.” Amo shrugged coldly. “She’ll live … if someone other than us comes to rescue her ass.”
Going to protest, she suddenly heard something in the distance. “Shh!” Nadia urged.
Everyone stopped moving to carefully listen.
“That’s just Lil—”
She shook her head. The noise was over Lila’s swimming and much farther in the distance.
A quiet, “Help! Aide-moi!”
Before she could even get the words out, Amo was already getting behind the wheel.
Dante pulled her to sit down beside him, holding her close as the boat took off toward the yacht.
With the flames illuminating everything around it, they were able to see a body holding on to the top of floating debris, and then they saw another person beside him the closer they got. The chef and skipper were alive.
She hadn’t noticed how cold she was until that moment Dante wrapped an arm around her shoulders.
“Are you okay?” he asked, looking her over.
Nadia found herself shocked he was no longer ignoring her. “Yes, I’m fine.”
“Sorry I threw you over,” he said apologetically.
Nadia managed to chuckle, despite what had just happened. She figured she should still be mad, but it appeared, like him, she had clearly found a new perspective after what they had just gone through. “I’m sorry about your yacht.”
“Oh yeah.” Dante’s gaze went to the fire getting closer, which happened to be burning up millions of dollars’ worth. “It’s not mine.”
Her own eyes shot to his in surprise. “It’s not?”
“Nope,” he said, unbothered. “It belonged to Desmond Beck.”