Chapter 1 - THE PUSH
Ryan’s hands struck the middle of my back before I understood he had stopped pretending.
The yacht railing vanished beneath my palms. For one suspended second, I saw his white shirt, Vanessa’s red dress, and the champagne glass lifted near her smiling mouth.
Then the Atlantic hit me.
Cold water closed over my head. My seven-month-pregnant belly pulled me forward, and salt flooded my nose as I fought to turn upright. Above me, the yacht’s lights blurred into trembling gold lines.
“The fortune is ours now,” Vanessa called from the deck.
Ryan laughed.
That sound hurt more than the fall.
I pressed both hands around my stomach. The baby moved once, hard beneath my ribs. I forced myself not to kick wildly. Panic consumed oxygen, and I needed every second the waterproof beacon in my bikini strap could buy me.
Two weeks earlier, I had found a doubled life-insurance policy, a fabricated psychiatric report, and a message on Ryan’s hidden phone.
After tomorrow night, she disappears.
I had not expected him to act before midnight. The security boat shadowing us was still nearly half a mile away.
My lungs tightened.
Through the darkness below, a red light blinked against my chest. The beacon had activated on contact with seawater.
“You think I didn’t plan this?” I shouted when my face broke the surface.
Ryan leaned over the rail. His confidence disappeared.
“What did you do?”
Behind him, Vanessa lowered her glass.
A dark shape rose beneath me. An arm locked across my chest, keeping pressure away from my belly, and a diver’s mask appeared beside my face.
“Don’t fight me,” a man said. “Your team sent us.”
As he pulled me toward a low rescue boat, I looked back at the yacht.
May you like
Ryan was no longer watching me.
He was staring at Vanessa, and she was quietly slipping his phone into her purse.
