My Honeymoon Husband Was Going to Drown Me for My Inheritance — Then a Girl with My Face Screamed from Below Deck

Chapter 4

The communications room was cold and humming with low-voltage light. Amelia pressed her thumb to the biometric scanner and watched the red light bloom.

ACCESS REVOKED.

They had already removed her from her own ship.

She tried twice more, then dropped to her knees and pried open the maintenance panel beneath the terminal — the ugly, oversized panel her father had insisted on installing because he never trusted pretty things. Inside, a manual satellite distress unit, no more sophisticated than a fisherman’s radio.

His second route.

Amelia reached for it.

A hand closed around her wrist.

She screamed — short, panicked — and twisted, ready to claw and bite and fight.

“Quiet.” The voice was low, urgent. “Miss Hartley. Stop.”

She looked up at the man who had pulled her back: the ship’s engineer, Marcus Cole. Forties, quiet, a coiled stillness about him — the man Bennett had dismissed as “a handyman my father hired.”

“Get away from me.”

“I’m here to help you.”

“Everyone keeps saying that.”

Marcus glanced toward the corridor and lowered his voice. “Your father sent me.”

Amelia stared. “My father?”

“Richard Hartley. Yes.”

“How do I know that’s true?”

He reached into his jacket and held out a photograph — Amelia at twelve, standing on the jetty of the family lake house, holding a fishing rod, her father’s arm around her shoulders. The same photograph that lived in Richard’s study behind the glass of his desk.

Amelia’s eyes burned. “He’s alive? Bennett said they have men on the mountain pass. He said — ”

“I know.” Marcus’s jaw tightened. “He’s alive. And he’s been suspicious for weeks.”

“Of Bennett?”

“Of everyone.” He paused. “Including your mother.”

The words landed like a blow. Amelia turned away, gripping the console. “I heard her. Downstairs. She was the one who — ” her voice broke, ” — she planned all of it. She told them to make me call him so he’d sign over the account, and then — ”

“I know,” Marcus said quietly. “I know.”

He opened the panel and keyed in a sequence of codes. The transmitter’s light blinked to life. “Burst transmission. Five seconds. Coordinates and the emergency code your father will recognize.”

“Can’t I talk to him?”

“If they detect a voice call, they’ll shut us down before a single word lands. Trust me — he’ll know what it means.”

The transmitter chirped. Done.

Then an alarm beeped — not the ship’s siren, but a short, sharp chirp from Marcus’s belt.

Marcus swore. “They found the second phone.”

“What?”

“They’ll know you took it. They’ll sweep the ship.” He pulled open a hatch in the bulkhead, barely big enough for a person. “Get in.”

“Marcus — ”

“If Bennett finds you here, we both die.”

She climbed in. He closed the panel over her. Darkness, sudden and total.

The door to the communications room opened.

“Marcus.” Bennett’s voice. Friendly. Murderous.

“Mr. Ashworth.”

“Have you seen my wife?”

“No.”

A pause. “She’s missing.”

“That’s unfortunate.”

“Mind if I look around?”

“It’s your yacht.”

“Technically my wife’s.” A soft laugh. “Although perhaps not for much longer.”

Amelia pressed her fist against her mouth. She heard drawers opening, cabinets, footsteps crossing the room. Then Bennett spoke again, casual as weather.

“You know, Marcus — I know Richard hired you.”

Silence. Then a dull, terrible sound — a fist meeting flesh — and a heavy body hitting the floor. Marcus grunted, and Amelia nearly screamed.

“Found you, actually. Days ago.” Bennett’s voice drifted past her hiding place. “You should have stayed retired, old man.”

Another impact. Silence.

Amelia heard Bennett’s footsteps approach the hatch. Her blood went cold. She couldn’t see, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t run.

The panel slid open. Light flooded in, and Bennett stood there, knuckles bloody, eyes bright, and he was smiling.

“Found you,” he said, and reached in and grabbed her ankle.

She kicked. Her heel caught his jaw, sent him staggering, and for one glorious second she was free — scrambling out of the hatch, past him, into the room where Marcus lay crumpled and bleeding — and she almost made it to the door.

Bennett caught her by the hair, hauled her backward, and slammed her against the console. Pain exploded behind her eyes.

“Stop fighting.”

“You’re going to kill me!”

His face went strange — the mask of the devoted husband peeling away like wet paper, revealing something underneath that had never loved her. “Yes,” he said, almost gently. “But not yet.”

He marched her up through the service corridor, past the crew quarters, into the main lounge.

Her mother was waiting. So were the Ashworths, and the silver-haired stranger.

For a long moment, no one spoke.

Then Amelia said, quietly, “Mom.”

Rosalind closed her eyes. “Amelia.”

“Why?”

“That question has a very long answer.”

“Try me.”

The silver-haired stranger laughed — a deep, satisfied sound. “You always had Richard’s temper.”

Amelia looked at him. “Who are you?”

He smiled. “Malcolm Beaumont.”

The name meant nothing to her. But her mother went rigid at the sound of it.

“Tell her,” Malcolm said, very softly. “Or I will.”

Rosalind looked like a woman watching a building collapse.

“Tell me what?” Amelia whispered.

Malcolm stepped closer, and Amelia noticed something she couldn’t explain — his eyes were gray-green, the same unusual color as her own.

“Richard isn’t your father,” Malcolm said.

The words hit her like cold water. “That’s not true.”

“Ask her.” He gestured at Rosalind. “Go on. Ask your mother.”

Amelia turned, desperate, and found no denial on Rosalind’s face. Only silence. Only the slow, terrible admission of a woman who had decided, after twenty-six years, to stop running.

“Then who — ” Amelia’s voice came out broken. “Who is my father?”

Malcolm smiled — the smile of a man who believes he has already won.

“Me,” he said.

And beneath them, somewhere below deck, a young woman screamed in rage:

“AMELIA! DON’T BELIEVE THEM!”