The suite had become a cage. Ella paced its perimeter for the hundredth time, her bare feet tracing a path across the cool marble that led from the bedroom to the sitting area, past the wet bar where two glasses of untouched whiskey still sweated condensation onto the mahogany, and back again. The *Aurora* hummed beneath her, a living thing, but the sound that had once felt like the heartbeat of adventure now pressed against her ribs like a warning. He had been gone for seven hours. She checked her phone again. Nothing. No message, no call, no cryptic text from a number she had memorized in spite of herself. The last she had seen of Alec King was the set of his jaw as he pulled on a weatherproof jacket, his knuckles white around the strap of a duffel bag, and the words he had thrown over his shoulder like a challenge: *Stay here. Don't follow me. I'll handle Julian.* That had been at dawn. Now the sun was a memory, and the sea had turned the color of bruises. She stopped pacing and pressed her palm flat against the window. The glass was cold, and beyond it, the Caribbean was a black expanse of nothing. No lights. No other vessels. Just the endless, hungry dark and the distant flicker of lightning on the horizon, too far to hear the thunder but close enough to taste the ozone. *He went alone.* The thought looped through her mind like a splinter she couldn't dislodge. Lucas's voice, sharp and crackling through the satellite phone, still echoed in her ears: *He went alone? He's an idiot. He's a goddamn idiot, Ella. You should have stopped him.* As if she could stop Alec King from doing anything. She had tried. God, she had tried. She had stood in the doorway of their suite, her arms crossed, her voice trembling with a fear she refused to name, and she had said, *Don't do this. Call the authorities. Let them handle Julian.* And Alec had looked at her—really looked at her, his eyes the color of winter storms—and he had said, *If I involve the authorities, the deal dies. Madame Delacroix will pull out. Everything we've built, everything we've—* He had stopped. Swallowed. *Everything we've become. I won't lose it. I won't lose you.* Then he had kissed her. Hard and brief and tasting of salt and desperation. And he had walked out the door. She had stood there for three full minutes after it closed, her fingers pressed to her lips, feeling the ghost of him, before the panic set in. Now she was here. Pacing. Waiting. Drowning in the silence of a suite that smelled like him—cedar and bergamot and the faint, clean musk of his skin. Max whined from his bed in the corner, his old bones creaking as he lifted his head to watch her. She had walked him twice, once along the promenade deck and once through the empty dining hall, but every shadow had been Alec. Every distant footstep had been his. Every laugh from a passing steward had been a knife twisting in her chest. *I love him.* The thought surfaced like a body breaking water, and she stopped breathing. *I love him.* She said it aloud, just to hear the shape of it, and the words felt like a confession in an empty church. "I love him." The room offered no absolution. The walls were too plush, too golden, too much a testament to a man who had built his life on control and precision and the careful management of every variable. And she had gone and fallen in love with him, which was the one thing he had never planned for, the one thing he had explicitly forbidden. *No real feelings.* That had been the rule. The contract. The foundation upon which this entire charade had been built. She had burned it to the ground. Ella walked to the bed—their bed, the king-sized monstrosity that had been a prop and then a battlefield and then a sanctuary—and she sat on the edge. The sheets were still rumpled from the night before, when he had held her through a nightmare she couldn't remember, his hand stroking her hair, his voice a low murmur against her temple. *I'm here. I'm here. I'm not going anywhere.* She picked up his pillow. Pressed it to her face. Breathed him in. *What if he doesn't come back?* The thought was a blade, and she let it cut. What if Julian had done something worse than sabotage engines? What if Alec had walked into a trap? What if the last time she would ever see him was the set of his shoulders disappearing down the corridor, the way he had paused at the door and half-turned, as if he wanted to say something, and then thought better of it? She should have stopped him. She should have screamed. She should have thrown herself in front of the door and dared him to move her. Instead, she had let him go. Because that was what you did when you loved someone, wasn't it? You let them make their own choices. You trusted them. You stayed behind and waited and tried not to imagine the worst. She was failing spectacularly at the last part. The hours crawled. She called Lucas again. He didn't answer. She called the port authority in San Juan, and a bored-sounding clerk told her there were no records of a private vessel matching Julian Croft's yacht docking at any of their berths. She called the ship's security, and the head of the detail—a stoic man named Reyes who had once served in the Royal Navy—told her that Mr. King had instructed him to stand down, that this was a personal matter. "Personal," she repeated, and the word tasted like ash. "He's out there alone, and you're standing down?" "I'm sorry, Miss Reed. Mr. King was quite clear." She hung up and threw the phone across the bed. The lightning was closer now. She could see it threading through the clouds, silver and violent, and she thought of Alec on the water, in a small boat, with a man who had already proven he would burn down an entire deal just to win. She thought of the cold. The dark. The endless, swallowing sea. *In my dream, he is drowning.* She didn't remember falling asleep. One moment she was sitting on the bed, her hand clutching his pillow, her eyes fixed on the door. The next, she was underwater. It was dark. Colder than anything she had ever known. And below her, in the green-black murk, she could see him. Alec. His arms were reaching for her, his mouth open in a silent scream, his eyes wide with something that looked like apology. She tried to swim toward him, but her limbs were lead, her lungs were burning, and the water was pulling her down, down, down— She woke with a gasp. The room was dark. The lightning had passed, or it was still coming, or it had never been there at all. Her heart was a trapped bird in her chest, and her face was wet with tears she didn't remember crying. The door was open. She saw him in the threshold, silhouetted against the dim light of the corridor. His jacket was torn. His face was shadowed with bruises, one eye swollen, a cut across his cheekbone that still glistened with fresh blood. He was leaning against the doorframe as if the act of standing required every ounce of strength he possessed. "Ella." His voice was hoarse. Raw. But it was his voice, and it was alive, and she was off the bed and across the room before she could think, her hands finding his face, his shoulders, his chest, cataloging every wound, every breath, every proof that he was real and breathing and *here*. "You're alive," she whispered. "You're alive." "Mostly." He tried to smile, but it turned into a wince. "Julian's in custody. The deal is secure. Madame Delacroix—" "I don't care about the deal." The words came out fierce, almost angry. "I don't care about Madame Delacroix or the merger or any of it. I care about *you*. You went alone. You *left* me. Do you have any idea what that was like? Waiting here, not knowing, imagining—" "I know." He caught her wrists, gently, and pulled her hands away from his face. His fingers were cold, but his grip was steady. "I know, Ella. I'm sorry." "Sorry isn't—" She stopped. Her voice broke. "I thought you were dead. I dreamed you were drowning." Something flickered in his eyes. Pain, or guilt, or something deeper and older that she couldn't name. He reached up and touched her cheek, his thumb brushing away a tear she hadn't felt fall. "I'm not dead. I'm here. I'm not going anywhere." "You promised that before." "And I'm promising it again." He stepped forward, into the room, and the door swung shut behind him. He was close enough now that she could feel the heat of him, the trembling in his muscles, the exhaustion that pulled at his frame. "It's over, Ella. Julian is done. The deal is done. The only thing that matters now is—" He stopped. Swallowed. And for a moment, the man who had built an empire on cold pragmatism looked like he was standing on the edge of a cliff. "The only thing that matters," he said, "is you." She kissed him then. Hard and desperate and tasting of salt and relief and the terror that still hadn't fully released its grip on her heart. He kissed her back with equal ferocity, his arms wrapping around her, pulling her into the solid, living warmth of his body. When they finally broke apart, she was crying in earnest, and he was holding her face in his hands, his forehead pressed to hers. "I love you," she said. The words came out broken, jagged, but true. "I love you, and if you ever do something that stupid again, I will kill you myself." He laughed. It was a raw, ragged sound, but it was real. "I love you too. And I promise—no more stupid. No more alone. From now on, we face everything together." She wanted to say something sharp, something that would hide the depth of her relief behind a wall of wit. But she was too tired, too grateful, too full of the simple, staggering fact that he was alive and in her arms. Instead, she leaned into him, let him guide her back to the bed, and let the night take them both into a sleep that was, for the first time in hours, dreamless.