Chapter 274: Chapter 274

Chapter 274

Ten days into the voyage, the Atlantic Ocean was nothing but black water and violent waves. The small cargo vessel pitched heavily to the left, its steel hull groaning under the pressure of a sudden, brutal mid-ocean storm. Down in the belly of the ship, deep inside the lower cargo hold, Ethan lay curled on a damp woolen blanket wedged between two rows of wooden freight crates.

His skin was burning with a high fever that had taken hold three days ago, making his head throb with every pulse of his blood. Every time the ship lurched over a wave, his bruised ribs screamed in agony, pulling at the rough stitches holding his side together.

Water had started sloshing across the metal deck floor an hour ago, cold seawater leaking through a damaged hatch seal up top. It washed over Ethan's boots, freezing cold and smelling faintly of diesel oil.

A sudden, massive swell hit the side of the hull with the force of a wrecking ball, throwing the entire ship sideways. Above him, a thick yellow strap holding a stack of three-hundred-pound timber crates snapped with a sound like a gunshot.

Ethan opened his eyes, blinking through sweat and salt water, just in time to see the top crate tilt forward. He rolled sideways onto the wet steel floor, dragging his legs out of the way a split second before the heavy wooden box crashed down right where his torso had been resting. The impact splintered the floorboards and sent a spray of saltwater into his face. He scrambled backward on his hands and knees, gasping for breath as white-hot pain shot straight up his ribs.

Before he could pull himself up against the adjacent wall, the heavy iron door at the top of the metal hold stairs groaned open. A beam of yellow flashlight cut through the dark, landing right on Ethan as he struggled to stand. It was Yuri, the thickset deckhand.

"You're supposed to be staying flat!" Yuri shouted over the roar of the engines and the crashing storm outside, his voice tight with panic. He gripped the iron handrail, watching the loose crate slosh around in six inches of rising water. "The hull is taking on water in the lower bay! If the captain comes down here and sees a half-dead American hiding behind freight, he’ll dump both of us in the sea!"

"Help me strap this down," Ethan yelled back, his throat raw and dry despite the cold air. He hauled his weight up against a corner post, breathing heavily. "If the rest of these boxes break loose, they’ll punch a hole right through the outer plating."

Yuri looked at the loose timber crates swaying dangerously with the tilt of the ship, then looked back at Ethan’s pale, sweat-soaked face. Fear took over the deckhand's eyes. He didn't come down the stairs. Instead, he backed up toward the doorway, pulling the heavy steel door tight against its rubber frame.

"Hey! What are you doing?" Ethan shouted, taking a staggering step toward the stairs. "Don't lock that door!"

"I can't risk it, man!" Yuri yelled through the narrowing crack of the hatch. "If this hold floods, the automatic seals drop! I'm not going to jail for human smuggling, and I'm not dying for your money!"

The heavy iron lever slammed down from the outside with a sharp, metallic clank. Ethan threw his body against the reinforced door, pounding his fist against the cold steel, but the deadbolt was already set. He was locked inside the flooding hold, trapped in the pitch black with loose heavy cargo sliding across the deck with every tilt of the ocean.

Ethan pressed his forehead against the cold metal door, taking quick, shallow breaths to keep from throwing up from the intense pain in his side. He slammed his elbow against the latch handle, trying to force the manual override, but the rust on the outer hinges held firm. "Listen to me, Yuri!" Ethan roared, striking the iron plate with all the strength left in his body. "You turn that latch back right now, or I swear to God I will tear this ship apart from the inside!"

Down on the floor behind him, another strap snapped. The sound of shifting wood echoed off the metal walls as a heavy box slid three feet through the rising seawater, crashing into the base of the iron staircase.

Ethan turned around in the dark, feeling along the steel wall for the emergency pipe ladders mounted near the upper ventilation shafts. His fingers locked onto the icy metal rung. He gritted his teeth, hoisted his body weight up off the wet deck, and began climbing upward into the dark overhead framework.

Thousands of miles away in California, Ariana sat on the edge of her living room sofa inside her  apartment, staring at the muted television screen on the wall. Rain beat softly against the double-paned glass windows, mirroring the bleak mood hanging over the quiet room. On the news channel, a local anchor was discussing the ongoing search for Ethan Castellan, showing a year-old headshot of Ethan next to a picture of his mother, Maria, who had gone viral after posting a tearful plea on social media.

Ariana picked up her lukewarm cup of herbal tea from the glass table, took a small sip, and set it right back down without tasting it. Her hands were cold. It had been ten days since she drove Ethan through the pouring rain to the industrial docks, ten days since she handed over her personal savings to a shady foreign deckhand to get him onto that cargo vessel.

She had heard absolutely nothing since. No text messages on the burner phone, no updates, no alerts. For all she knew, the ship could have run into a storm, or the crew could have thrown him overboard the second they hit deep water.

Her phone buzzed against the cushion beside her, making her jump. She snatched it up instantly, but the screen only showed a news notification about the Castellan family's dropping stock values. She squeezed her eyes shut, tossing the device onto the chair.

"Where are you, Ethan?" she murmured to the empty room, resting her chin in her hands.

She couldn't stop thinking about Isabelle, either. The last update Ariana had gotten through her gallery contacts in Europe was that Sam Keystone had moved Isabelle to a high-security private estate somewhere near the French border. She knew Isabelle was trapped, completely isolated from the outside world, probably believing Ethan was still lying in a hospital bed or dead back in California.

Ariana stood up and walked over to the floor-to-ceiling window, looking out over the faint city lights of the bay. She knew the kind of man Sam was. He didn't keep people around out of kindness; he kept them around as trophies and bargaining chips. If Ethan didn't make it across the ocean alive, Isabelle would spend the rest of her life trapped in Sam's golden cage, with no idea that Ethan had destroyed his own body just to try and reach her.

"Just stay alive," Ariana said softly, staring out into the dark fog covering the harbor. "Both of you. Just stay alive."

Back in the pitch-black hold of the cargo vessel, the air was getting thin and rank with the smell of diesel fumes. The water on the lower floor had risen to Ethan's knees, sloshing violently back and forth as the storm raged outside. Clinging to the narrow steel ladder near the ceiling, Ethan wiped a mixture of sweat and cold saltwater from his eyes with the sleeve of his jacket.

His body was trembling violently from the fever, his grip on the slippery iron rungs weakening by the second. His vision blurred, black spots dancing across his eyes as his bruised ribs throbbed with every breath he pulled into his lungs. He could hear the heavy wooden crates smashing against each other down below, breaking apart into jagged kindling against the hull.

He closed his fingers tighter around the cold iron rung, digging his fingernails into the metal. He thought about Sam Keystone standing over him in Monterey. He thought about Isabelle locked away in some distant house across the sea, sitting alone in the dark waiting for someone who was never coming.

"Not here," Ethan gritted out through clenched teeth, his voice barely audible over the roaring storm outside. "I'm not dying in this hole."

He jammed his foot into a small gap between the steel frame and the wall, forcing his body upward another two feet toward the narrow overhead service hatch that fed air into the engine room. He jammed his shoulder against the iron butterfly latch holding the small hatch shut, put every ounce of force he had left into his legs, and slammed his weight upward.

The rusted metal latch gave way with a loud pop, and Ethan shoved the heavy hatch cover open, dragging himself up into the hot, noisy corridors of the upper engine bay.