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“I know.” Eddie sipped his champagne. “That was a stroke of genius on Nerida’s part. And the reason we finally got planning permission to try. Even the anchor points are sprayed with micro-cells that will eventually encourage kelp to sprout, and the way we’ve fashioned the architraves around the windows are perfect homes for eels, seahorses, and crabs.”
Only half listening, I padded barefoot to the side of our new boat, Denizati.
Not only had I invested heavily into Lunamare, but I’d also bought Neri this craft so she didn’t have to rely on The Fluke to pay visits to the new work site. I’d also given Jack and Anna twenty years’ worth of grants so they could study and research whatever the hell they wanted without having to wait for aquarium donations or bid for jobs. They’d hired another assistant called Tina and only worked four days a week instead of seven like they used to.
I’d enlisted contractors to paint their house and replace their deck and had gotten rather addicted donating to charities that helped misplaced people, animals, and those needing somewhere safe to call home: animal shelters, refugee organisations, medical programmes for the underprivileged, and schooling for children falling through the cracks of poverty.
All those mansions of Cem’s, dotted around the world—estates that I’d visited in a fugue of reconditioned despair—were now half-way houses for broken families. Homeless men, abused women, orphaned children...they were all welcomed into houses full of luxury—luxury created from the suffering of others.
I couldn’t save those Cem had hurt but I could save others. I could repent for his crimes by protecting those who had nothing and no-one, just like Jack and Anna had done for me.
Last time we’d been in Turkey, I’d visited Cem’s grave. In his last will and testament—the same one giving me everything he owned—he’d requested to be buried next to my mother. A woman I’d never met. Neri had taken Ayla for a stroll around the tombstones while I told my psychopath of a dead father that all his wealth was now used for good instead of evil.
I imagined him yelling at me for spreading around the same wealth he’d wanted so desperately to protect and keep in the family. But I also wondered if he’d be proud in his own twisted way. Proud that I was the king of his empire, walking in his footsteps, even if we wore different shoes.
Everything we donated went under our second non-profit company, Cor Amare, and we encouraged emails, suggestions, and nominations, happily helping those needing a hand and opening those doors that had remained firmly shut until money greased them open.
Between Lunamare and Cor Amare, we employed close to thirty people, and were only getting started. We’d travelled to Istanbul four times in the past year, and so far, the secret international operation I worked for had shut down three trafficking rings dotted around Saudi Arabia and the Mediterranean.
No one suspected the Kara empire as the one who fed such contacts and whereabouts. My generals settled into their loyalty for me and continued running the many side businesses without issue. More and more, the wealth I made came from legitimate investments into startup companies and taking risks on those ready to prove themselves rather than things that could destroy lives.
After hiding most of my life, I was now making a difference in others, and it was the best thing I’d ever done.
Apart from finding Neri, of course.
My eyes tracked my wife as she swam beneath the surface with Ayla. Both of my girls were surrounded by darting dolphins and flashing flippers.
They duck-dived with the pod, kicking and spinning, making their way to the platform bobbing in the distance. The platform with the first official letterbox of No 01 Coral Sea. That platform would eventually be the dry porch for those arriving and the location for the lift down below. It would grow, transform, and become fundamental to this new community, delivering its residents to an underwater world perfectly pressurised so no one felt the effects of long-term exposure of living fifteen metres below the surface.
If the prototype held up in a tropical storm and the anchoring system with its ability to spool out and in so the spheres could sway like seaweed instead of fight against unfightable currents worked, then the next stage would be all the technology to recycle air, waste, and power.
I sighed with a mixture of lust and love as Neri suddenly vaulted from the ocean and leaped onto the platform. She sprayed the logo for Lunamare—a crescent moon and a crashing wave—with seawater from her hair, sending a hundred tiny rainbows into the sky.
Ayla sprang up beside her, spinning around with her hands in the air, yelling, “This is gonna be my new bedroom, and I can wave to Sapphire and Bubbles every morning!”
