“She wanted her friend too. What was I supposed to do, tell her no?” The man cannot stop fucking laughing. He made himself a business out of telling other people to fuck off, but for Brigit, he’ll apparently rent a room in hell.
“Is that Poseidon?” Hades asks in the background. “Is he coming?”
Hades, unlike Zeus, isn’t a giggling fool. A fool in some ways—for Persephone, obviously, and because a lifetime of chronic pain has done things to him that he won’t admit. He has enough sense to be wary of me showing up there for no reason.
The problem with this question is that Zeus is an outrageous motherfucker, and in his compromised state, he would invite me to Hades’ mountain. If he asked, if there was really a need, then I would show up. I can’t stop doing it. I stand up from the window and pace back across the room.
“No,” Zeus says. “Poseidon says he’s busy. But I think he’s lying. It’s that he doesn’t want to visit us. It’s hurtful, really, because you’re so fucking cute I can’t stand it.”
“You’re the first person ever to describe me as cute.” This, from Hades.
I could tell Zeus what’s happening.
I could tell him about the Somali pirates and the hostage I took and lost. I know all about his whore turned wife. If he would take her to Hades’ mountain, if he would do that for her, then he would understand—
Understand what?
Sick rage burns my throat. This situation is fucked. So fucked that I doubt it can ever be righted again. It’s not like a ship you can dredge out. Somali pirates have Ashley, and they have the pearl, and they will hurt her. They’ll hurt her. I don’t know how to live with that, when maybe I’ve started to fall for her. I would feel things about it. It would be another, newer wound.
Zeus is cooing to his baby.
“I’m not sending a gift,” I tell him.
Call ended. The phone drops to the floor, and I go for the upper deck.
Nicholas is waiting there, sans rifle. Smart choice. One less thing for me to use against him. He lifts his chin when he sees me coming. “We can put on speed when the guys are finished welding.”
Right. The holes in the side of the ship. “How long?”
“Fifteen minutes.”
“If we don’t catch them, it’s your head.”
“I know,” he says, and he leaves me to stand at the bow and scan the skies.
What I said wasn’t the full truth. If we don’t catch up to them, it’s my heart.
18
Ashley
I scream all the way across the deck of the ship.
It’s not a long deck, and at the end of it, the man with his blue shirt and the death grip on my arm slaps me across the face with a half-open grip. Hard enough to catch his knuckles with my cheekbone. It’s not a true punch, but it still stuns me. God, I’m so much less than I thought I was. Being a hostage hasn’t made me any stronger.
It fooled me into thinking that Poseidon was as bad as things could get.
This man—these men—have no such codes of honor.
I see them circling when my head snaps to the side. The one who has me must be in charge, must be like the captain, but he’s not going to save me from them. He’s not going to save me from anyone.
He told me to let go of that damned buoy. He told me to drop into the sea, and I should have listened. I thought I knew better than him. All those days on his ship, and I took them for granted. I wandered up on the deck of his ship in his clothes and nothing else, and not a single man dared to look at me, much less touch me, and it’s not like that now. It’s not like that at all.
The man’s fingers dig into the flesh of my arm so hard it feels like they’re meeting the bone. Like they could crush the bone. I always thought that in a situation like this I might be tough. I might be able to handle it. But my heart runs away with my fear, up and up and up until it’s beating through my ears.
“My arm,” I gasp. “You’re hurting—”
He hits me again and says something in his language. I don’t recognize the words, but it has the tone of how’s that for hurting, bitch?
This ship is smaller, shallower than Poseidon’s. That doesn’t mean there’s no room down below. And down below is where he takes me. The hot deck gives way to cooler metal. My footsteps make no sound on the stairs. His are heavy, so heavy, like he could crush me with the toe of his boot.
He probably could.
I want to fight him, but my arm is killing me. He’s going to leave bruises.
Someone will find my dead, defiled body covered in bruises.
Blood flees from my face. It feels wrong to go down. Every part of me wants to scramble back up the stairs and get free. I’m like a trapped rat. There’s no safe harbor up there either. It’s all bad. But going down is awful, and it’s going to get worse.
I even took the clean hallway for granted. Someone took care of the floors on Poseidon’s ship. Several someones. They worked in fair shifts. Even Jason, the youngest sailor, the one least prepared to work for Poseidon, called them fair.
It’s not fair here, and they’re not interested in upkeep. It’s one single cargo hold, with two makeshift rooms cut off from the rest. A sharp edge pierces the soft bottom of my foot and the pain lances up through my arch. This smaller pain brings tears to my eyes.
The sight of the mattress dries them like a cold breeze.
We’re at the doorway of one of those rooms, and the centerpiece is a bare, stained mattress on the floor. Coils of rope like dead snakes hang off it. An empty shelf is bolted to the wall, and I want out. I want away. I pull back hard on the man’s hand. Mistake—he squeezes tighter. He gives my arm an impatient twist and shoves me inside, in front of him, and onto the mattress.
I back up as far as I can go, which isn’t nearly far enough, and he bends to scoop up the ropes. This is my one chance to kick him and I take it. My foot lands on his shoulder. His hand shoots out to grab my ankle in his crushing grip. He digs a thumb between two tendons.
A sound tears out of my mouth. Not words, because saying anything to this man is pointless, but sheer hurt. My arm throbs, ankle throbs, and he picks up a length of cloth from the floor and shoves it into my mouth.
The rest of them are coming. I can hear them on the stairs, but the first man, the worst one, turns me over onto my stomach. The pain in my ankle lets up—he lets go—but then his foot is in the middle of my back, pushing me face-first into the mattress while he pulls the gag tight and knots it around the back of my head.
It’s too tight, too much, and I try to get one hand up to pull it out.
He steps on my hand. “These too,” he says, and then I’m over on my back, my arms above my head in a twisted parody of last night.
I would never, ever admit it to Poseidon, and I would never say it out loud, but I wanted what he did. I wanted the fight. I wanted to lose to him. He knew that. He said it to me, taunted me with it, but that didn’t make it any less true.
I don’t want this.
I don’t want any of this.
It hurts, it hurts, and there’s no end to this. No end that doesn’t involve my dead body on this mattress or at the bottom of the sea.