Ah, yes.My part.Steeling myself, I straightened, standing more than three inches taller than Laurent.Humiliating myself for the fat narcissist who’d threatened to murder the woman I love.How marvelous.
“Mr.Harper.”Akari met me with another smile.Standing next to a rather more fretful-looking Kaspar, the head judge motioned to me.“The president’s people have messaged to say he is waiting to receive you.”
“Are you ready?”I spoke directly to Kaspar that time, feeling a little more comfortable as I started to take control.While I had agency, everything would be okay.Once I handed that power over to Laurent, however, there would be little I could do except bow to Ian.
“Of course.”She flashed the small, laminated pile of paperwork the ICC and Swiss government had sanctioned for the occasion.“I will accompany you.”
“He’ll love the irony of that,” I murmured.“Me being delivered by a woman.”
“I am not a British citizen.”Kaspar snorted.“The president has no jurisdiction over me.”
Lucky you.I bit back on the retort, knowing it wouldn’t help me.“Is the boat ready to take us across to the Traditional Values?”
Kaspar glanced at Laurent, who was in conversation with another one of the crew members.
“Yes,” Laurent confirmed, halting one conversation in French to reply.“Bonne chance.We shall see you on the other side.”
***
ADJUSTING THE LIFEjacket the French crewman had insisted I wear, I turned my head away as another large wave crashed against the side of the small vessel.If I’d thought the swell on board The Libération had been bad, I was naïve.The rollercoaster of waves the smaller boat was navigating made the tiny surf I’d experienced on The Libération seem like pebbles under a car’s tire.
Worse than even the rising nausea of seasickness, though, was the looming threat of what was to come.There, blocking out the rising sun like an apocalyptic nightmare, was the hulking girth of the Traditional Values, its size easily dwarfing The Libération.
From beside me, Kaspar threw me a stare, but despite her tough exterior, the anxiety in her eyes was obvious.We’d spent so many hours together in recent days, she’d become easy to read.I wondered if my expressions were as simple to decipher.
“Okay?”I probed, hoping she could hold it together long enough to get us on board.
Ian was going to have a field day with a female official accompanying me as it was.I didn’t need her vomiting all over his shoes as soon as we arrived.
“Yes.”Her reply was curt, her brows knitting as she looked back out to sea.“Of course.”
“Good.”
It was odd that I—the man she’d arrested and whose life she’d thrown into such hideous disarray—should be the one to try to reassure her.Kaspar didn’t have a huge part to play in the fray to come, but Ian still had to believe she was a real Swiss envoy, not just a cop from Zurich who was feeling even more out of her depth than I was.
Clinging to my seat, I mused on how Kaspar’s existence had somehow become entwined with mine.It seemed as though we’d collided into each other’s lives and brought nothing but angst and aggravation to the other.There was a twisted succor in knowing we were in the mire together, and that she was just as uneasy as I was.
“We will dock as close to the ship as we can.”The crew member shouted to be heard over the roaring swell.“Then you will need to embark via the ladder on the side of the ship.”
He motioned to where he meant, my attention following his finger and landing on the narrow steps that would take me right back to Ian’s sticky grasp.“Any questions?”
I had about a thousand questions.Hundreds of shards of glass just waiting to slice me open and feed me to the sharks, but I kept them to myself, pushing them down to nestle with the furling knots in my stomach.
Whatever was going to happen, my only relief was that it would all be over soon.
“D’accord.”Apparently satisfied with our silence, the crewman glanced back to the impending challenge of docking close enough to ease our transition to the ladder.
“I should go first,” Kaspar told me, though her tone conveyed little in the way of conviction.“To hand you back to Jackson’s custody.”
“Custody?”I shifted on my seat, just about able to conceive a scenario where I might have been imprisoned by the Swiss, or the Dutch, but entirely unwilling to contemplate a life at Ian’s pleasure.
“You know what I mean,” she snapped.“He must believe you are his to do with as he wishes.”
“Right.”Blowing out a breath, I tried not to dwell on the implications of that.
I’d told Caroline I expected a beating, feigning nonchalance about the chances of being ill-treated at Ian’s command, but standing on the brink of that moment, I was less cocksure.I wasn’t as young as I used to be, not as resilient, and with Caroline in my heart, I suddenly had someone to lose if things went wrong.Vulnerability clutched at me cruelly in a way I’d never contemplated before my path had crossed with my little girl’s, and glancing up at Ian’s monstrous ship was only heightening my dread.
As though the god I hardly dared to believe in had decided I needed another test to prove myself, the sound of rotating blades overhead alerted me to the numerous helicopters suddenly flying above, all of which seemed to be circling in the air.
