Chapter 8
Chapter
Eight
RAFFAEL
That fucking son of a bitch.
I stalk along the main deck corridor, my jaw tight, every step echoing the thunderous beat of my pulse.
He didn’t goddamn tell her. Yet again, he bailed on his responsibilities.
I reach the spiral staircase, about to descend in search of Elena when a guy steps through the discreet crew access door to my left—the bosun, mid-thirties, white polo, tailored shorts, and sporting a tense posture of panic the moment he spots me.
“Mr. Cavall—”
I stop him with a firm hand to the chest. “Where’s Cross?”
His eyes go wide. “The, uh, the deckhands are placing him on the tender now, sir. We only just throttled back and went to holding position.”
Fuck.
I drop my hand and continue my warpath through the salon, past the doors to the pool area, and down the external stairs to the lower deck. I pass the gym, then smack my hands against the glass doors leading into the lounge space near the stern.
It’s empty, the teak floors gleaming under recessed lights, the air thick with salt and the lingering sent of gasoline. A lone crew member coils a rope beside the open tender garage. But the fucking tender is gone, its low hum already fading in the distance beneath the Requiem’s idling engines.
“Are you after the tender, Mr. Cavallo?” the guy asks. “I can radio them to return if necessary.”
I swipe a hand across my mouth to hold in a curse. “No.” Then I dig my phone from my pocket and hit Philip’s name.
He’ll have signal now that he’s off the yacht, and the jammer I installed doesn’t interfere with my devices or the crew’s. The only people barred from contact with the outside world are those prone to making impulsive decisions.
He answers on the second ring.
“You didn’t fucking tell her?” I snarl.
“I’m sorry, Raffael. I couldn’t… I can’t.”
I square my shoulders against his gutlessness and step onto the swim platform, catching sight of the tender headed back toward the marina. “She doesn’t even realize you’ve abandoned her.”
He falls silent while the deckhand finishes his coil, quietly stows the rope on a wall hook, and disappears into the garage.
Volatility bleeds into my veins. “You’re a fucking coward, Cross.”
There’s more silence. A thick, antagonizing beat before he admits, “I know.”
I grit my teeth, and squeeze the cell in my hand. “Then I guess I’m left to do as I see fit.”
“But we agreed—”
I end the call and shove the phone back into my pocket. Another call vibrates against my thigh but I ignore it.
Breathe.
I pace a step. Force air into my lungs. Swallow the surge of aggression that would have my hands wrapped around Philip’s neck if he were within reach.
I need a plan. A controlled response. Something smarter than brute force.
The wildcard is the woman sitting in my study, her spine stiff with defiance, and her retaliation streak sharp enough to rival mine.
She won’t see sense. Won’t pause long enough to understand her reality. And I don’t have the patience, or the luxury, to keep indulging her chaos.
Thanks to Philip, I’m left to handle a mess he doesn’t have the balls to face.
I breathe deep, holding the salt-laced air tight in my lungs long enough to mute the fury. Long enough to remind myself who the fuck I am.
Then I turn and head back toward the main deck, toward the woman hell-bent on detonating everything I’ve tried to contain.
I open the door to the study and find Isla seated at my desk, the laptop usually stowed in my top drawer now open in front of her.
That volatility returns.
Tenfold.
“It was a mistake not to change your password after you let me borrow your computer for the Whilcox presentation all those years ago.” Her voice is steady, but her eyes—those beautiful, furious depths—lift to meet mine in challenge.
“I currently have my finger poised over the send button of an email highlighting the details of my abduction. This is the Requiem, right? And we just left North Cove Marina, heading out to sea?”
I take another beat. Another breath. Another attempt to calm the volatility before I close the door behind me.
“Don’t take another step,” she warns. “This is addressed to my trusted staff and several press contacts from this morning’s briefing. If you move any closer, I won’t hesitate to hit send.”
“You don’t want to do that,” I growl.
She pastes on a belittling smile. “For your sake as well as mine, right? Can you at least admit you’ve got skin in this game, too?”
I could admit it. But exposing vulnerabilities comes with more complications.
“I want to know everything,” she demands.
I bet she does, and although Cross is a fucking coward, I find myself in the same league, unable to voice the hidden details of her father’s duplicity. “How about I do you one better and show you exactly how much skin you’ve got exposed?”
She hesitates. Briefly. Just long enough to betray the surprise flashing across her face. “Do it. Show me.”
“You’ll need to move away from the computer.” I edge forward.
She points a finger in warning, the gesture somehow both elegant and lethal. “Not on your life, pretty boy.”
Pretty boy? That’s new.
Although, growing up, there’d always been a mutual attraction between us. We had heat. Years of it. A wildfire that simmered under the surface, waiting for a spark. But hearing that description now, through her venom, taunts feelings I’d much prefer to keep locked tight.
“There’s a safe.” I casually raise my hands in surrender. “It has the original paperwork.”
“Where?” Hope flickers in those innocent eyes.
“Under the rug.” I approach an inch.
“Stay there.” She stands, slowly, her gaze locked on me as if I might strike. “I don’t want you getting any closer.”
“Isla, this situation is well past the idle threat of an email.”
“It isn’t idle,” she fires back, squaring her shoulders. She lifts the laptop with one hand, the other poised over the keyboard. “Talk me through how to find the safe.”
There are a million things I would’ve once killed to talk her through—how to part those pretty thighs, how to take my cock—but her downfall was never on the list.
“Fine.” I lower my hands to my sides. “It’s under the corner to your left.”
She steps around the desk, shuffling sideways before dropping to her knees. She sets the laptop on the floor beside her, then folds back the corner of the rug.
While her attention is preoccupied, I reach into my pocket and press the side button on my cell three times, enacting the signal jammer to shut down all services on the yacht.
That threatening email of hers? No longer an issue.
She doesn’t notice the Wi-Fi blink out. She’s too focused on her task to see how I’ve dismantled her plan.
To her, the floor would appear seamless, but up close, there’s a subtle break in the boards. A collective lie of timber planks masking what’s hidden beneath.
She scrutinizes it for one beat, then two, before leveraging her fingers beneath the edge and lifting the panel free, exposing a digital keypad. “What’s the code?”
My pulse thuds harder. “Life won’t be the same once you open it. If I were you, I’d take me at my word and trust that reestablishing the—”
“Trust?” she accuses. “After how you’ve treated me? For years? That ship sailed long ago. We might’ve been friends once, but you torched that bridge… Well, I guess given this new reality, it’s clear the friendship wasn’t real to begin with.”
It was real.
Deceptive, maybe. Temperamental, definitely.
But she was the only friend I had. The only one I wanted.
“This isn’t just about money, Isla. Breaking the agreement has consequences far deeper than you understand. You can’t buy your way out of this.”
Her jaw sets. “What’s the code?”
I fight the instinct to drag her out of here. To save her from herself. Fuck. “Eight. Seven. Seven. Eight. Six.”
She punches in the digits, each one screeching a beep of sound through the painfully silent room.
The lock clicks open.
She pulls the door wide.
Don’t do it, Isla.
Trust me. Just this once.
She reaches inside, retrieves the lone folder, then eases back on her heels and stares at the blank black cover.
Walk away, Isla.
Get up and fucking run.
She drags in a deep breath, then opens the file.
The first page contains the original agreement—preferential treatment, insider knowledge, all exchanged for a tidy sum of seven-hundred and fifty thousand.
Her expression shifts. Her skin pales.
I ignore the guilt. The pity. The wreckage between us.
It’s only the beginning.
She turns the page, then another, each flick more frantic than the last. She’s not absorbing the fine print, just chasing the numbers that keep accumulating—five hundred thousand, three seventy-five, one point two million.
I know the figures by heart. Could recite them in sequence or reverse, Philip’s sickness burned into my brain.
She raises a trembling hand to her mouth, her lashes fluttering.
Nine hundred thousand. Two million. Then three.
I can practically hear her adding the numbers in her head, trying to reconcile how her father bled through money like water through a sieve.
“I don’t understand,” she whispers, voice fraying. “What did he do with all this money?”
She’s not talking to me.
And I don’t have an answer she wants to hear. This all came down to addiction. Shame. Weakness.
Things I don’t claim to understand, at least not from Cross’s perspective.
She reaches the last page, and freezes.
I don’t need to glimpse the paperwork to know what she sees—the thumbprint in blood, the rewritten terms, the shift from monetary value to something infinitely worse.
Her brows pull tight. “Wh-what am I looking at?”
I keep my voice low. Controlled. “It’s a blood debt.”
Her gaze snaps to mine. “And that means?”
“That the original agreement no longer held enough weight to justify the money your father kept demanding. So he had to sweeten the pot with something priceless.”
Her hand drifts to her throat as if she can feel the noose coiling around her neck.
“Your father named you as collateral, Isla. In writing. In blood.” I give the truth time to sink in as fear creeps into her eyes and drains those tempting lips of color.
“And now that you’ve violated the agreement, it means that I own you—either as a possession, a commodity, or a future wife, if I demand. ”