Chapter 51
Rylan Cameron
Call sign: Minnow
Rylan’s fingers quaked as he buckled himself into a life jacket, unable to believe he was really going up in that storm.
But the scream . . . It sounded like Nico.
He didn’t bother to shut the watertight doors behind him as he flew through the hallway and up the companionway. He heard
someone, his mother, climbing up after him. The rain drenched his hair within seconds and plastered it to his forehead as
he tried to make sense of the chaos before him.
And why it looked so incredibly familiar.
For Rylan and Tia’s seventeenth birthday, Tia had asked to go Jet-Skiing. They’d spent an adrenaline-racing morning on the
water, riding at unnatural speeds that had left Rylan’s heart hanging by a thread and his hair standing on end. The whole
family had been breathless and wiped out by the time they returned to the boat, changed into dry clothes, and prepared for
what Rylan had asked for.
A tea party.
Tia’s hair had been shorter then, in dark waves just at her collarbones.
She hadn’t dyed it yet, and the oaky brown made the lemons on her sundress pop.
Lila’s outfit was periwinkle and lace with a cream hat and ribbon to match.
Even Francis had traded out his golf polo for a baby-blue button-up to humor his son’s request.
Rylan loved them fiercely in that moment, all three of them, and he knew this birthday would be one to remember.
He’d set the table himself, unfolding it on the deck of The Old Eileen so they could overlook the sunny sea. The teacups were Lila’s, ceramic and white with carnation-rimmed plates to hold them.
“No, I insist, my boy. Sit at the head of the table,” Francis had said with a smile.
So Rylan had, Tia at his right side. Alejandro poured the tea, the porcelain teapot out of place in his calloused hands. Rylan
could have been fooled into thinking the whole family was gathered there just for him, that it was his day alone, if everyone
hadn’t smelled like sunscreen and salt from their hour coasting over waves. Not that he would want a birthday alone. He couldn’t
imagine his life without Tia, different though they were.
You wouldn’t understand, he thought toward no one in particular as Tia lumped sugar cubes into her cup. It’s a twin thing.
Rylan and Lila drank honeysuckle tea. Tia and Francis drank oolong. Alejandro went below deck to take a call. That’s when
Francis set down his cup and spread his hands.
“You’re seventeen years old today, Rylan.”
Rylan beamed and stirred cream into his drink.
“So what now? What’s next?”
“Uhh . . .” He took a sip, warm and soothing. A rundown of Rylan’s future wasn’t an uncommon topic. “I mean, senior year of
high school. Then after that, college, studying marine bio, maybe environmentalism and—”
“Not that,” Francis interrupted. “Tell me what you want. Your wildest dreams.”
“Okay. Uh, I want to work with animals. Maybe be a scientist and learn how to protect coral reefs.”
Francis set his cup down hard enough to clang against the plate. His tea sloshed a bit over the side, but he didn’t seem to
notice. Or care. “Rylan, I want to know what keeps you up at night. What you burn to achieve or possess. What you would do
anything to get. That’s what makes a man or a woman. That’s what makes a Cameron.”
Lila fluffed up her bangs. “Rylan, darling, we mean your passions. We know you love ocean animals, but—”
“But hobbies don’t always make careers,” Francis stated. “Unless you’re willing to do whatever it takes.”
Rylan had looked between them, his perfect birthday tea party dissipating like water down the drain. “It’s not like I’m going
into acting like you, Mom. Or business like you, Dad. What I want isn’t like that. It’s more . . .” He wanted to give voice
to the word chill, a word that seemed never to have entered his parents’ vocabularies.
That hadn’t stopped Tia, though. “Chill out, guys,” she instructed them, pinching a tiny cucumber sandwich between her fingers.
She swallowed it in one bite, and Rylan wondered for the thousandth time why neither of his parents interrogated Tia. God
knew she would have an answer.
Francis pressed on, unperturbed. “When I was your age, I had nothing. I was put on a ship with boys who had everything. They
didn’t even have to fight for it. No one was going to hand me a life like that, so I made one. Now you will be weaned off
my success in order to make your own. So answer me, Rylan. What would you do anything for?”
Getting out of this conversation. “I—I don’t know, Dad.” He wanted to melt into his chair.
“It’s time to know,” Francis snapped, his voice serrated.
Rylan froze up, muscles stiff and disobedient.
“Leave him alone.” Tia slammed her fist on the table. The teacups rattled on their plates.
“Tia!” Lila rushed to dab at a blot of tea that marred the pristine table.
“This doesn’t concern you, Tia.” Francis’s eyes bored into Rylan.
He squirmed, tears pricking. An awful feeling slithered on the back of his neck.
“Bullshit.” Tia stood, banging the table. Rylan’s honeysuckle tea shuddered. He couldn’t bring himself to drink anymore. “You’re
obsessed with him. It’s grooming and it’s manipulative.”
“Sit down, young lady,” Francis ordered, and she shook her head before he could get the words fully out.
“Are you so invested in getting us to respect you for the money you made because you know we’ll never respect you for the
person you are?”
The air left Rylan’s lungs, and he groped to grab Tia’s hand and pull her down before she could keep talking.
But he couldn’t reach her.
“Well guess what, Dad?” she continued. Rylan felt faint. “We’re almost adults. And if you think we’re sticking around after all the shit you’ve
pulled, then you’re even stupider than—”
Francis flipped the table, casually with a flick of his wrists, but the damage was catastrophic. Ceramic and silver poured
into Rylan’s lap and shattered on the deck. The tea burned his skin and he leaped backward only to slip on the deck and fell
onto his knees. Shards embedded in his hands and legs.
Francis crossed to Tia and slapped her hard across the face. Rylan had never seen him go that far before. But he’d never seen
Tia fight him like that either. She stumbled, and he grabbed her shoulder and Rylan’s, pinching them hard. Rylan could still
feel the pressure.
“You have no idea what I’ve done,” he had told them, relaxed. “And you have no idea what you’re capable of because of me.”
Rylan shook violently, fighting off vomit. Tia lifted her face, hair hiding one eye.
“I think I’m starting to get a clue.” She lunged forward without warning. She hit Francis at his waist, which hinged. He stumbled
backward, enough time for Tia to stand and push him with all of her force backward over the railing. Into the sea.
Francis had narrowly avoided being crushed to death by his own ship. He hadn’t had a life jacket on, and he told Lila and
Rylan later that it had, ironically, saved his life. He’d been able to dive as deep as he could manage until the ship had
passed. When he swam back up to the surface, Alejandro had already ordered a man-overboard rescue.
Later, Rylan would wonder if his twin had meant to kill Francis just like he wondered now as he and Lila stared through the
sheets of rain at Tia Cameron and the man who’d just plummeted overboard.
Why am I the one you’re always pushing, Dad? Rylan had sobbed to Francis after his father had been pulled back onboard. Tia had been locked in her cabin, Lila had gone
to lie down, leaving Rylan on the deck with his father, shivering under a towel.
Why are you trying to force this with me, this killer instinct? Why not Tia? Because she’s a girl? Because she’s ninety seconds
younger?
He had never forgotten Francis’s reply, not when he stood by as his sister was shipped off to boarding school, not when he’d
seen her raise the metal mallet above her head, and least of all now as the storm swallowed Nico de la Vega in one gulp.
Because, Rylan, Francis had said.
She already has it.