Total pages in book: 63
Estimated words: 59739 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 299(@200wpm)___ 239(@250wpm)___ 199(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 59739 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 299(@200wpm)___ 239(@250wpm)___ 199(@300wpm)
Inside they go, and just like that, the door is closed in our faces.
“Please,” Ash goes on, waving an arm. “We will go to the dining room and have a meal while we wait.”
We follow him, all of us terrified, relieved, scared and completely exhausted.
The dining room is a large open space, with wooden floors and a line of tables and chairs. It is cleaner than the one we have spent the last few days on, but it is no doubt just as old. The ship creaks as it rocks lightly. Ash waves his hand again, and we find a seat. Ace takes my hand, squeezing. I close my eyes, exhaling, trying to ground myself.
“Do you have a phone?”
Rachel speaks, and I open my eyes to see her still standing, nervously looking at Ash.
“We have satellite phone. You want to make a call?”
Aggie leaps up, so do I. A phone. We can access a phone.
My stomach twists, tight and sick and weirdly empty, the way it used to when Coach announced a surprise away game, except this is not a drill. Rachel nods, her lips tight, her eyes wide. Ash leaves and comes back a few minutes later with a battered black phone. Rachel takes it, then stares over at me. “Who do we call? The police? Our parents? Our coach?”
“Whatever number you know,” Ash mutters, pulling out a cigarette and lighting it.
God he is incredible to look at.
Rachel nods, over and over, as if her head won’t stop bobbing. She looks so terrified, I can’t tell if she’s about to pass out or throw up. She dials a number. I don’t know who. I don’t even care. I hold my breath and wait. I can tell the very moment someone answers, because she crumbles, falling to her knees as she cries out for her mum.
I swallow the lump in my throat, trying to keep myself together.
“Mum,” she croaks, tears streaming down her face. “Mum, it’s me.”
We give her a minute, stepping away so she can talk. My hands are shaking, my legs jelly. Ace pulls me onto his lap, curling his arms around me, keeping me together because lord knows, I am struggling to hold the pieces still. Time drags as we watch Rachel talking, hearing the occasional gasp, wail or soft whisper.
Eventually, the call ends.
Slowly, she moves towards us, her hands trembling, her face streaked with tears. “Nobody was looking for us,” she whispers, flinching. “All that time... nobody was looking.”
“What?” I whisper, shaking my head in confusion. “What do you mean?”
“Your... your dad told everyone that the guys,” she pauses, staring at Ace, “that they were hired for security but had a darker plan and hijacked the yacht, sunk it and took us away to be sold. They think we have been fucking sold...”
Aggie’s gasp rings out through the room.
I freeze.
Ace flinches behind me.
“What the fuck?” Kellen barks, his chest rising and falling with rage.
I blink fast, because if I don’t, I will start crying and I don’t think I will stop.
“My father told the world we got sold,” I whisper, my bottom lip trembling. “So we were out there, all that time, and nobody was fucking looking.”
My voice rises on the last word, coming out as almost a high-pitched shout.
Rachel nods. “M-m-mum said that your father was ‘paying’ investigators to try and find where we had been sold, but we all know he wasn’t. He was hoping we were all dead and would never come back so he never had to face up to what he did.”
Shame washes over me.
Shame that I came from such a monster.
“There is a warrant out for their arrest,” Rachel goes on. “If we go back to shore, they’re going to prison.”
Aggie gasps, Kaylee’s eyes widen and I flinch.
This can’t be happening, it can’t.
“Can’t we just say that isn’t what happened?” Aggie whispers.
“No.” Zeke’s voice is flat, final. “Men like Grace’s father don’t just win—they erase you. We set foot on land, we’re not walking into handcuffs, we’re walking into our own graves.”
A sound punches out of me—raw, jagged, nothing like laughter. My vision blurs at the edges. Rachel makes a choked sound, like someone kicked the air right out of her lungs. Aggie’s crying now, quiet and hopeless. Ash hasn’t moved, doesn’t even blink; he just watches us like we’re wreckage he pulled aboard.
He probably feels sorry for us, lord knows I would.
No one speaks. The satellite phone sits between us, black and silent as a gun.
The world doesn’t feel like it has stopped anymore—it feels dead. Like we’re the last ones left spinning in the silence.
Can we survive another day, another drama, another lie, another betrayal, another fucking death? God, can we? Because I don’t have anything left to give. I’m scraped hollow. Every time I think we’ve hit the bottom, the floor drops out again.