AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Another sway and my body slides into the opening of the door. I inch out into the darkness of the hallway. I’m used to darkness, my hole of a room has no light, no electricity, and no windows to the outside. My eyes have adjusted to the pitch black of night, but the hallway almost always has light. The storm must have taken out our power.
I smirk, taking comfort in the fact that the men who held me captive for years won’t survive past tonight either.
They don’t deserve a quick death. Tonight I hope the storm traps them in this vessel as they slowly suffocate or starve. However, it's unlikely that they will suffer a slow death. The odds are far greater that they will be knocked out by a massive chunk of the ship or the water will drown them quickly, but I can hope.
I move one hand in front of the other as I begin to walk.
I feel my shattered bones crunch into more and more despair with each movement. My bruises burn into my body with each brush against the floor begging me to stop.
I won’t stop. Not until I take my last breath.
The yacht lurches forward sending me the length of the hallway to the stairwell.
Shit, stairs.
I have to make it up a flight of stairs.
I haven’t climbed in months. Can I really ascend stairs?
I bite my lip, more determined than ever to choose how I’ll die.
I stare down at my broken toe I earned after I shared my food with one of the other women the men kept on board. I haven’t seen or heard another woman on board in weeks. If I did, I would have to free them as well, so they too could choose their own fate and how they will die.
I grab the railing and pull myself up. I wince as I again put pressure on my broken foot that hurts like a motherfucker.
Broken bones are the worst. Nothing but time will heal them. And I have nothing to set the bones correctly. The fingers in my left hand won’t bend fully because they healed crooked. The broken ribs are worst of all, because the shattered splinters slice into my lungs making every breath painful.
Stop wallowing in self-pity and do something to end this.
One step, then another, then another.
It’s painstakingly slow, especially since I have to stop each time the yacht veers to the side, and I use all of my energy just holding the ground I made up the stairs.
The door is the last obstacle before I’m on the main deck. But one simple turn of the knob and the door bursts open in my face. It hits me hard, but I smile.
Almost there.
I’m thrown onto the main deck as the boat jerks forward again and then stops suddenly, like we’re traveling in a car that has just thrown on its brakes to narrowly avoid hitting a child playing in the street.
But we don’t have any way to control how the yacht moves, not in this storm. Mother nature decides when the boat moves forward or stops. Or even if it stays afloat at all.
The rain pelts down on me as I lay on the main deck. I tilt my head upward feeling the cold droplets cascade over my face in one heavy stream.
Kai means sea in Hawaiian. You were raised by the ocean, just like me. You know how to tame it as easily as I do. If you want to survive, you will. Enzo’s words come back to me. I knew before he told me what the name I called myself when I was three means. I was born Katherine but never felt like it fit. Kai is more fitting.
I shake my head.
Kai means sea. I was born by the sea. I will die at sea, I say in my head, already knowing my fate and how wrong Enzo’s words were. How wrong the name I chose for myself was.
Unlike three years ago when Enzo tossed me overboard and I eventually saved myself, this time I won’t be coming back up. I won’t have a buoy to hold onto through the night. I won’t have the strength to swim for shore. We are in the middle of the fucking ocean—no one can save me.
And that brings me peace.
I let the rock of the boat push me to the railing on one side of the boat. Thank you, gravity.
The railing is the hard part. I won’t let the waves push me over; I want to do this myself.
With the rain pouring down, it’s hard to feel like I’m not already letting the ocean take me. I grip the slippery railing cautiously, one wrong step and I’ll be gone.
