Vivian surged forward, but Maddox caught her arm, shoving her back against the bulkhead.
“You move, he dies,” he said, voice ice-cold. “You know how they work.”
Rain and seawater and panic blurred everything. Blake walked toward the rail at the far end of the deck, He stopped at the edge, turned back one last time.
His smile was small and devastating. “We could’ve been good together,” he said.
Then, before the men could reach him, he pivoted, vaulted the railing, and disappeared into the black water below.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The rail hitVivian like a broken promise.
Cold steel bit into her palms, rain and salt slicking her grip. Blake’s name tore from her throat—raw, involuntary, sliced from something deeper than breath. For one suspended second, she saw only him: the white flare of lightning outlining his body, the black void swallowing it.
Then the ocean took him.
A splash. A churn of bubbles. Darkness swallowing light. Gunshots cracked below—precise bursts tearing into the waves where he’d vanished.
“Blake!” Her voice shattered in the storm.
Vivian leaned out over the water, boots sliding on slick steel, wind clawing at her coat.
A pair of arms locked around her waist like a steel snare.
“Get back,” Maddox growled.
She fought him, fingers scraping the rail. “Let me go!”
He dragged her backward, hard enough that her shoulder slammed the bulkhead. The impact stung fire through her ribs, tearing breath from her lungs.
“He died the second he hit that water,” Maddox said, voice flat, unforgiving. “Don’t let his sacrifice be wasted.”
His certainty hit harder than the shove. “No,” she rasped. “You can’t know that.”
But Blake’s smile—crooked, reckless, unbearably gentle—burned behind her eyes.
We could’ve been good together.
A sentence too small and too huge at the same time. A whole unfinished life compressed into six maddening words. She clung to them because they were the only part of him not stolen by the storm.
Her knees buckled. Maddox steadied her roughly.
“He chose you,” he said. “In that jump, he chose you. Use it.”
His words scraped like glass. But they steadied her, too. Blake hadn’t run—not from her. He’d bought her one more breath. One more chance.
A groan rolled up through the ship’s bones—structural failure grinding deep below.
A spotlight swept the deck. Boots thundered above. Voices shouted:
“Team Two, secure the survivor!”
Maddox’s mouth was next to her ear, his voice barely a breath—too soft to carry, too soft for anyone but her.
“Run. You’ll know when.”
Vivian blinked at him, a single heartbeat of understanding flaring—and then he stepped back just as the agents surged through the blasted doorway, rifles up, lights cutting the dark.
