13
Helen
Genoa. Third day of the voyage.
Sunrise in Genoa should have been a routine formality in this contract. But reality has just blown my plans to smithereens.
“No, no, no…” I mutter under my breath, clutching the phone so tightly that my knuckles turn white.
Late last night, an urgent message came in on the ship’s server. Had I not been so delightfully… distracted in my cabin, I would have read it in time. Now, my pulse is racing so fast I can feel the beats in my throat. The message from the Transmarine regional inspector is a declaration of war:
“The company’s auditors will conduct a surprise inspection to review and evaluate onboard management during the stopover in Civitavecchia. All officers and department heads on the Marine IV are asked to have their logbooks and operating protocols up to date and ready for the audit.”
I read the text over and over, as if some miracle of naval engineering were going to erase the characters from the screen. Tomorrow. They’re coming on board tomorrow, damn it!
I put my phone away and my hand goes straight to the walkie-talkie clipped to my duty belt.
I should send out a general alert on the internal frequency, but my brain refuses to unleash widespread panic just yet.
I have to find Gonzalo, and I have to do it now.
Before the rumor mill spreads the news through the crew decks, before some sailor commits a stupid infraction, and, above all, before the coordinators show up in the dining room with that relaxed “everything’s fucking great” attitude that gives me an immediate rash.
I cross the deck at a brisk pace, almost jogging, even though I hate doing it.
Running in a passenger area is dangerous, looks unprofessional to the passengers, and violates at least three safety guidelines that I myself have recited during drills.
But right now, the theory that looks so nice in the company’s manuals is drowning in practice.
I scan the main pool deck. Nothing. I turn my gaze toward the stern bar. Nothing there either. I search for Gonzalo’s tall, unmistakable figure among the waiters setting up the lounge chairs and the cruise passengers looking for their first coffee of the day. Nothing at all.
“Where the hell have you gone?” I call out into the air in frustration.
I round the corner too quickly and, by a hair’s breadth, avoid a full-blown collision with Maika.
She appears out of nowhere holding a paper cup of black coffee, her hair slightly tousled by the north wind and that expression of absolute serenity that seems designed solely to test my nerves.
The cup wobbles dangerously between her fingers, and for one terrifying second, I imagine my career and my promotion ending not because of an audit, but because I scalded the most irritating—and exasperatingly attractive—entertainment coordinator in the fleet with boiling coffee.
“What are you doing running across the deck?” she asks, stifling a laugh and raising an eyebrow with amusement. “That clearly goes against all your beloved safety protocols, Müller.”
I come to a screeching halt, forcing my lungs to steady. She looks at me as if my agitation were the perfect morning entertainment to accompany her breakfast, as if the world weren’t about to crash into a dock, as if I weren’t still carrying the fire of what happened yesterday burning in my chest.
Okay, fine. Maybe my rigid mind is overreacting.
“I’m not in the mood for jokes right now, Maika,” I reply sharply, trying to dodge her on the right.
She steps sideways fluidly and blocks me. I try to go around her on the left. She steps in again. Two, three times. It’s a maddening game of footwork that’s about to make me lose my temper right here on the deck.
“What’s wrong with you?” she insists. The mocking edge has dropped from her voice. Suddenly, she sounds genuinely concerned.
She fixes me with those eyes of hers so intently that I find it impossible to hold her gaze without my defenses crumbling. I hate her calmness, I hate her damn coffee, and I hate that mouth that tasted like heaven to me last night.
Her mouth. Damn it.
I shouldn’t be analyzing the shape of her lips at seven in the morning, nor recalling the way she whispered my name against my neck while we were breaking every company rule.
Much less with a professional crisis knocking on the ship’s door.
No, no, and no. It’s unacceptable that I’m noticing the tiny drop of coffee glistening at the corner of her mouth.
And it’s utterly intolerable that I feel an almost physical urge to wipe it away with my thumb.
I force myself to regain my composure and hold her gaze.
“Don’t you people in your department check the emails from the central system before the ship docks?” I blurt out impatiently.
“Good morning to you too, Helen,” she replies, flashing a smile.
“Maika, I’m serious, for God’s sake.”
“Okay, fine,” she says, raising her free hand in a gesture of truce without letting go of her cup. “Are you going to tell me what’s wrong with you or not? Because for some reason, you look like you’ve got a firecracker up your ass.”
Despite the tension, a laugh escapes my chest.
“The head auditors from headquarters are coming on board tomorrow in Civitavecchia, as soon as the passengers are cleared to disembark,” I blurt out.
“They’re going to evaluate the officers’ performance, coordination between departments, and the main activities of the itinerary.
And I have to make sure the entire security crew has clean maintenance records within twenty-four hours. ”
I expect a look of panic, a complaint, anything. But Maika simply takes a slow sip of her coffee, savoring it with a calmness that drives me up the wall.
“Oh, is that why you’re running around the deck?” she remarks as if I were telling her the weather report.
I glare at her.
“What do you mean, ‘is that why’?”
“Nothing, nothing.” She shrugs, taking another step into my personal space.
“It’s just that, the way you were coming, I thought you were in a hurry to say good morning to me in a slightly more…
private way.” And then she raises her eyebrows with brazen mischief.
“Taking advantage of the fact that the deck is empty and your team hasn’t gone out on patrol yet. ”
I’m stunned, my mouth hanging open. She can’t be that cold-blooded.
It takes my brain several seconds to process that Maika is having fun at my expense.
That curve of her lips seems to scream at me that she’s fascinated by it.
And the worst part isn’t that she’s trying; what’s truly troubling is that a treacherous, irrational, and absurd part of me is dying to return her smile, to drag her behind the bar counter and kiss her again until she forgets about the coffee.
But I hold back. This isn’t a drill, nor a game. At least, not for me.
I take a stiff step back, using the distance to contain the whirlwind she unleashes just by breathing near me. In a few hours we’ll be docked in Genoa, and the cruise ship’s machinery will continue its relentless course, while I feel like I’m walking on a tightrope about to snap over the water.
“Maybe you folks in entertainment couldn’t care less about how a general inspection by the company turns out,” I snap at her, forcing a cold tone to hide the tremor in my voice, though I know she reads me all too well, “but I’m risking my promotion on this contract.”
Her smile vanishes immediately, as if I’d thrown a bucket of water on her.
“Helen…” she murmurs, and her eyes darken.
“So this…” I point to the space between us with a finger, moving it back and forth. “What happened yesterday in the cabin can’t happen again. It’s over, Maika. We have to stick to the rules, be professional, and just do our jobs.”
Maika stares at me in absolute silence for a few seconds that stretch out like an eternity.
That’s her best weapon. When she challenges me or throws a snide remark my way, I have a playbook of automatic responses to protect myself.
But when she stays silent, looking at me like that, as if she can see right through the panic hiding behind my stripes, she leaves me completely defenseless.
“I always work professionally,” she replies, strangely calm before taking another sip from her cup. “And, in the meantime, we’re getting to know each other a little better. I don’t see what maritime law prohibits that.”
“What law forbids it? I’ll kill her. I’ll really kill her.”
I frown, stung by the matter-of-factness with which she says it.
She says it without a trace of mockery, as if emotions were a simple docking maneuver to her.
As if the fact of “getting to know each other better” didn’t mean I lose control of my mental compass every time we share a hallway.
As if I didn’t have to remind myself, through sheer discipline, that this is a serious job, a unique career opportunity I have no intention of throwing away, and not some cheap romance novel set against the backdrop of the Mediterranean.
Although, if I’m honest with my own logbook, the views from the deck are doing their part. And I’m not exactly referring to the Italian coast.
I sigh deeply, tightening my features as much as possible. I need to regain control of the situation, of the ship’s safety, and, above all, of my own impulses.
“I don’t have time to discuss this with you right now. I’m asking you to behave and stick to the plan, okay? For once in your life, put improvisation aside.”
The words shoot out of my mouth before I can activate the filter.
They sound harsh. Too harsh. Maika’s expression freezes, taking on a stiffness I’ve never seen in her before, and I instantly realize the tremendous stupidity I’ve just committed.
I’d love to be able to go back, pluck the sentence out of thin air, chew it up, and swallow it to pretend it never existed.
But at that very moment, I spot Gonzalo’s silhouette crossing the bridge toward the aft pool, and my professional panic returns to reclaim control of my mind.
“Brief your team,” I order Maika, unable to apologize. “Review the bus routes for tomorrow’s trip to Rome and make sure they know them by heart. I don’t want any major mistakes. I can’t afford a single slip-up, please. Just be professional.”
Maika looks down at the floor, clutching her coffee cup in her hands.
“Understood, officer,” she replies, with a coldness that chills my blood.
I turn away before guilt forces me to beg for mercy and makes me forget the email from Transmarine, the inspectors, and everything I’ve been trying to prove to the company for years.
I stride toward the stern, teetering on the edge of running again, though now the trembling isn’t confined to my legs.
My heart is pounding hard in the center of my chest.
“Gonzalo!” I shout as soon as I reach him.
He spins around, startled by my look of high alert.
“Have you checked the internal server?”
“Of course, Helen, but there’s no need to declare a state of emergency before breakfast.”
“Save that joke for the captain,” I snap, grabbing his uniform sleeve to pull him out of the way. “We’re going to organize the inspection files right now.”
“Let me remind you that we haven’t even completed the docking maneuver in Genoa, Helen. We’ve got a few hours before we arrive.”
“That’s not enough, and you know it.”
Gonzalo lets out a sigh of resignation, realizing it’s impossible to escape one of my perfectionist outbursts.
“Helen, slow down for a second,” he orders, planting his feet on the floor and forcing me to stop. He grabs me by the shoulders, forcing me to look at him. “You’re the best safety officer on this damn ship. There’s nothing in those manuals you don’t have under control. The ship is perfect.”
But he’s wrong. It isn’t. Because I’ve just destroyed the bond I had with Maika because of my own cowardice, and the guilt is burning me alive.
But I can’t fall apart now. The auditors are going to walk up that gangway tomorrow morning, and I have to prove that I deserve this position I’ve been chasing for years.