The yacht is exactly what I expected. Too many people in too small a space. Someone doing lines off a mirror in the corner. Champagne everywhere. Music so loud it replaces thought.
This is home. This is where I belong. Not in penthouses with soldiers who count my drinks and judge my choices and stand behind doors wanting me but not enough. Here, where everyone is too fucked up to judge anyone else.
Someone hands me a pill. I don't ask what it is. Down it with champagne someone else provides. The yacht starts moving, pulling away from the pier.
I dance because that's what I do. Bodies pressed against mine, hands I don't recognize, mouths saying things I can't hear over the music. The pill kicks in, everything goes soft and bright and perfect. This is what I needed. To feel nothing. To be nothing.
Maybe some people aren't meant to be saved.
Maybe some people are just meant to sink.
9 - Nico
Iknow she’s gone before I open my eyes.
The apartment feels wrong. Too still. Too quiet. Like the air itself has changed density, thinned out where her presence should be filling space.
Before I finally fell asleep, I replayed every cruelty I dealt her today. The way I turned away when she brought me coffee. How I couldn't look at her without remembering her body beneath mine on that floor, back arching, lips parting. I had to be cold. Had to create distance. After yesterday, after almost losing every shred of discipline I've built, I had to remind myself what she is.
An assignment. A mission. Someone else's daughter.
Not mine. Never mine.
But the wrongness of the apartment pulls me from bed. Down the hallway. Her door hangs open.
The bed is empty.
For one second, everything stops. Training takes over. I clear every room, check every shadow. She's not here. She's gone.
Cold fury arrives like an old friend. She left. After the beach, after I told her it wasn't safe, she snuck out like a teenager breaking curfew.
My phone. The tracking app I installed her first day, standard protocol she doesn't know about. The blue dot blinks on my screen.
She's on the water. Moving. A yacht, heading out into the bay.
My hands shake, and not from pull-ups. She ran. Not from danger but toward it. Toward oblivion and whatever she can find to numb the pain I caused.
I move through the apartment gathering what I need. Glock. Phone. Keys.
Text to Gunner in case this goes South:She's gone. Yacht party. I'm retrieving.
Gunner's response is immediate:Need backup?
No.
I take her car. Drive too fast through empty Miami streets while my mind runs scenarios. How drunk is she? How high? Who's touching her?
That last thought makes my grip tighten until knuckles go white. Not yours, I remind myself. This is professional concern for an asset.
The marina spreads before me, boats sleeping in neat rows. But out there, maybe half a mile, the yacht blazes with light and bass that pulses across black water. She's out there in that mess of bodies and bad decisions.
Most boats are locked. But I have skills that don't appear on any resume. Three minutes, and I've got a speedboat humming beneath me, cutting through water toward those lights.
The yacht gets bigger as I close the distance. Someone's serious money. Three decks, probably two hundred people. Music pounds from speakers, bodies spilling everywhere, champagne flowing like water. The smell hits me even from here. Sweat and spilled alcohol mixing with salt air, expensive cologne failing to mask the underlying decay of excess.
This is her world. The world she lived in before me. The world she'll go back to after I push her away enough times.
I circle once, scanning. The boat's engine vibration runs through my bones, spray of salt water dotting my arms. Upper deck, near the bow.
