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Chapter10
Emilio
“You better not get seasick,” I say as we climb onto the boat. Lesley and Terrence are on the dock, waiting to cast us off. Lesley isn’t happy about that—she made her feelings very clear on our way down—but Terrence doesn’t care either way. He’s got more trust in me, and anyway, Lesley worries too much.
This is a great idea.
“I don’t think I do.” Kaye hesitates, frowning, and I sigh as I dig some Dramamine from my pocket. No reason to take a risk.
“Take these.”
“What’s that?”
“Anti-seasick stuff. Nausea medication.” I raise my eyebrows at her hesitation. “If I wanted to drug you, I’d fucking force it down your throat. Now swallow the pills and come on.”
She downs them as Terrence and Lesley see us off. I motor the boat through the narrow section as Kaye sits next to me nervously chewing her fingernails and flinching every time we bump the walls.
“Relax,” I say softly, trying to keep her from freaking out. It’s easy to get claustrophobic in this section of the trip and I want to make sure she doesn’t panic again like up on that trail. Panicking on a boat can be very bad. “This is the hardest part. We’ll be fine.”
She says nothing in return, only stares straight into the blackness of the caves. It’s disconcerting, boating through this tight section of rough-hewn rock. At high tide, there’s not much space to maneuver, though the water’s lower now. It takes ten minutes to reach the end, and soon we’re moving faster through the shallow water, heading on a path I found after years of trial and error, angled toward the sea. This is what I have that my competitors don’t—maps of the rocks beneath the ocean, clear trails, quick escape routes. They can figure it out too, but they might sink first.
“How did you learn all this?” she asks, breathless. The ocean really is beautiful at night, although there are clouds blacking out the moon. I wish I could see the stars reflected off her eyes. Since when did I get so fucking poetic and pathetic?
“Trial and error. Helps that I bought an expensive boat and loaded it with every piece of gear imaginable.” I point out the GPS, the radar, the lidar, the radios and scanners and weather monitor. It’s an expensive machine, purchased with the money I made back home before I came to Saint Parras. This was my investment, my big shot at moving up in the world on my own, without my family’s help. “Mostly trial and error though.”
“Weren’t you nervous?”
I smile and shrug and begin to speed up as we reach deeper waters. Those early days were exciting and terrifying. I nearly drowned more than a dozen times, and would’ve at least once if Lesley hadn’t fished me from the surf and given me mouth-to-mouth. There’s a reason I trust her so deeply. She came through, and continues to come through, again and again. I can rely on her and that’s more important than anything else in this world.
Saint Parras begins to recede behind us and I use my monitors to get onto the preprogrammed route I use to get to the coast.
“At first, I was fucking terrified. I made it halfway to the coast before turning back on my maiden voyage. But I knew that if I wanted to make the smuggling operation work, I had to figure it out, and bit by bit I did.”
“Why though?” She moves closer, getting out of the ocean spray. Her hair billows back behind her until she moves into the cockpit. “I mean, you didn’t need to become a smuggler, right? You don’t need the money.”
“My family’s rich, pet. Not me.”
“What’s the difference?”
My lips press together. How can I explain to her what it was like growing up in the Bruno household? “My father is a hard man. He was kind to me and my brothers, but that doesn’t change his intrinsic nature. My generation got it easier than they did, but nobody walked away from that house without some bruises and broken bones and scars. We weren’t given anything, and anything we wanted we were expected to work for. I had jobs around the house for as long as I can remember, from counting cash in the basement to coming up with new codes.”
She shifts closer like curiosity is overwhelming her nervousness. “Codes?”
“You can’t say stuff like go out there and break this guy’s knees please, not over the phone. We came up with codes and changed them all the time, and for a while Nathan and I were tasked with keeping everyone up to date on whatever new shit came out.”
“God, that’s terrifying. You were just kids, right?”
“I was ten when I started doing that.” I smile to myself. I actually enjoyed the code stuff—it was easy and like a fun puzzle. I never really thought about how everything I said translated to something in the real world—how there were actual knees getting broken somewhere out there.
That sort of horror was normalized for me pretty early on.
“I can’t even imagine.” She chews her lip and nods at me. “What about those scars on your back?”
“You want to ask me about my scars?” I laugh softly and turn up the throttle. The motor growls and we pick up speed, the boat bouncing up and down in rhythm. “You’re supposed to take me out to dinner first before you start in on the intimate shit.”
“Sorry, I don’t mean to be pushy. I’m just curious.”
