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6

Cindi

The morning sun kisses every inch of my exposed skin and warms me to my core.

The mildew and mist that hung in the air and on the grass is long gone, but everything is always crisp out here.

I think I could live out here—in the ocean, where no one can find me.

Maybe a secluded island with a house right along the beach where the water is at my fingertips, where the freshness of the salty breeze fills my lungs.

Most of all, pain doesn’t exist out here.

My wrist isn’t aching.

My fingers aren’t on fire.

The slight throb in my neck is gone.

The waves gently rock me and my surfboard side to side, lulling me like I’m being swung in a cradle.

With each sway, a little bit of my anxiety trickles into the water.

Not enough to make me forget about last night’s panic attack or the alarm tripped in the late hours of the morning, but just enough for me to unclench my jaw and relax my shoulders.

Sorrow twists in my stomach at the memory of weekends spent with my father—his laughter echoing over the waves, his hands steady as he helped me onto a surfboard for the first time.

I’d twisted my ankle that day, but he just grinned, nudging me back up, saying, “No pain, no gain.” Back then, I believed him.

Every Sunday, we’d be up at the ass crack of dawn.

We either went surfing or hopped on a Harley, riding to some quiet place to reconnect with nature.

It was our favorite thing in the world.

At least, that’s how it was before I met Tommy.

Dad ate healthy and was the fittest man on Earth—I thought he was going to live forever.

He was still in his fifties and went through life acting like he was going to survive well into his nineties.

But in the end, carbon monoxide poisoning got to him first, something entirely avoidable.

Tears sting my eyes.

I know it’s not rational; the what-ifs and had-Is might change the outcome of that weekend.

But it feels like his death could be my fault.

If I saw through Tommy sooner, if I broke up with him and didn’t engage in the argument about my “prioritizing Dad over him,” Dad would never have died.

I would’ve seen him that weekend.

He would still be alive, and I wouldn’t be running from ghosts and men with guns.

If I had just listened to Dad’s warning, none of this would’ve happened.

This morning when I checked the feed, all I could spot was a dog—or at least, I think it was a dog.

The dark blob looked about the same size as a midsized one, and it trotted around the same way a canine would.

It rubbed itself along my cabin, took pee breaks on the trees and posts, and pawed at the back door.

Whatever it was, it ate all the kibble I left out for the stray animals in the area.

Either way, it’s time for me to move on.

I’ve already been here too long.

“ Sialan ,” Deedee curses in Indonesian—actually, my vocabulary also extends to swear words.

“I’m pruning like a bitch.”

I peel my eyes open to glance at Deedee as she grimaces at her hands before resuming her fidgeting with the bracelet, staring out at the horizon.

I snort. She’s been out here for almost an hour and half.

I’ve already doubled that, because I got out here well before she did.

I crane my neck back to check if Nat is still sunbathing on the shore—sleeping off a hangover, apparently—then scan the streets to make sure no one has decided to join us at our secret spot.

The hair on the back of my neck prickles, and I survey the streets one more time to be safe.

I can’t hear anyone drive further out than this.

My focus returns to Deedee, the feeling of being watched as strong as it always is.

She has an unnatural sort of beauty, the kind where you look twice because her deep golden tanned skin glows without a drop of makeup, and she seems to wash her shiny hair with the Elixir of Life.

Her long, black braid is partially undone.

Chunks of hair stick out at odd ends.

Dark strands frame her face and catch the light every time she moves.

Her plait reaches the tattoo on her ribs—it’s the same matching one I have on my upper back.

The woman is well above her thirties—or so she claims—but she doesn’t look a day over twenty-five.

The one time I asked for her skincare routine, she laughed and said, “The blood of virgin men and Neutrogena.” It wasn’t very helpful, but I figured I’d need more than an oil cleanser to wash away signs of four years’ worth of trauma.

“I don’t want to look at the state of my hands.” I chuckle, cutting myself off at the frown she casts toward the open sea.

Her fingers stall on the golden bracelet.

“You good?”

She makes a noncommittal noise.

“Just memories. You know how it is.” She offers me a weak, placating smile.

Don’t I know it?

“Want to talk about it?” Sometimes, it’s nice to get things off my chest when the world feels too much.

I’ve confided in Deedee before—brief stuff, mostly, but she has a very generalized idea of the type of demons I’ve got under my bed.

She hasn’t told me much either, beyond losing her family and changing her name to feel like she’s taking back control of her life.

My stomach sours as I watch the corners of her eyes crinkle with pain and a haunted look passes over her.

Seeing her like this makes me feel hopeless.

She lost her sister decades ago, and she still hasn’t gotten over her grief.

I doubt I’ll ever stop feeling like I’m being torn in two whenever I think about Dad.

Deedee nods to our right.

“There’s a beach a couple kilometers that way where me and Ni Luh used to swim. My mother used to yell at us every time she found out we snuck away—beat us with the broom a few times.” She snorts.

“Those straw ones that sting like a bitch? That .”

I grimace.

Dad’s form of punishment was only letting me have one scoop of ice cream instead of two—but I was allowed to have some of his.

“Did she surf too?”

Deedee shakes her head.

“I didn’t get into it until recent years. I was too chickenshit.” She laughs.

My lips tip up at the corners as I cast a glance at the street.

“I’m pretty sure my dad would’ve insisted on a water birth if he knew what it was.”

“And mine would’ve loved an epidural if she knew about it.” She sighs, turning her bracelet around her wrist. “If she knew what I got up to now…”

The phantom sound of a car soaring past makes me flinch.

I clear my throat. “We really need to figure out what we’re going to do about the pirates.” Even though I’m getting out of here, I don’t want to leave them in the lurch after she got me set up and settled.

Deedee pioneered the whole gig.

She’s the one who began the factory, made the connections, built the clientele.

Nat came on board later to do the tech side of things.

Then, I injected myself into their operation.

“I think you should reach out to your contacts in?—”

She waves me off.

“Shit like this happens all the time. Don’t worry about it. Give it a week or two, and it’ll sort itself out.”

Tension returns to my muscles.

It’s hard enough that only fifty percent of the chips can be used—for the life of me, I can’t figure out why—and we’re producing more books than usable chips.

Although the quality of our stock is better, Nat and Deedee had to scale back on how many passports we ended up selling because of my many shortcomings.

It hasn’t impacted profit margins by much, but the wastage is bound to catch up on us—if the pirates don’t screw us over first.

The latest stunt by the pirates is going to screw us big-time unless we act.

“I don’t think crossing our fingers and hoping for the best is the best course of action. We need to be proactive.” In Tommy’s world, that meant either doing something legal, or something very illegal that even I wanted nothing to do with it.

“They’ve never taken a whole shipment before. At most, they’ve stolen half. In a few weeks, we won’t be able to operate.”

She rolls her eyes, and boy , does it make me want to scream.

“Just trust me. You’ve been doing this for about a year. I’ve been running this for a lot longer.”

I feel like pulling my hair out.

She saved my life by getting me a new passport back when I was searching dark web-forums, and we got to chatting.

She made Bali sound like the right place for me, so she helped get me here, found me a place to stay, trusted me with her business, and let me into her fold.

I owe her everything I have, but sometimes, her laid-back attitude pisses me the hell off.

How can anyone run a factory without a backup plan?

She might be a phenomenal artist, and I know the printing side of things is her domain, but without the microchips, we’re just another subpar passport manufacturer.

I take a deep breath.

After losing Dad and living under Tommy’s boot, I’ve learned my survival depends on knowing how to react to things going tits-up.

“At the very least, I think we should put contingency plans in place in case it doesn’t sort itself out .” Surely, that’s a reasonable compromise instead of doing nothing.

“Without the parts Wayan was meant to give me last night, I can’t fix the machine. We’re operating at?—”

“Cindi,” she says, voice soft but firm.

I almost flinch at the sound of my new name.

“Just breathe. It’ll all work out. I’m sure it’ll show up in a couple of weeks.”

For fuck’s sake.

I’m talking to a brick wall.

Deedee grins. “I know what will fix this.”

I hold my breath, waiting for her to continue.

I’m not going to like whatever idea she has.

“We’ll get you blackout drunk tonight so you forget all about it.”

Don’t roll your eyes.

Don’t roll your eyes.

My teacher once said if I can’t say anything nice, I shouldn’t say anything at all.

But I think my silence might be taken as an act of violence right now.

“My stomach’s been uneasy. I don’t think drinking is on the cards for me.” It’s not entirely a lie.

The cause of it is purely from anxiety.

Deedee was born and raised in Bali.

Hitting the town with her is an experience like no other—I assume so, anyway.

I’ve only been out of the house past dinnertime three times in the past year, and I didn’t dare have more than two drinks.

The one time I made it to the third, I was hyperventilating in the bathroom because I thought the guy who wanted to dance with me was Tommy.

With what happened with the pirates, this feels like the worst possible time to go out drinking in public.

But what I really want is to sleep for two days straight.

“Come on .” She drags the single syllable out.

After I got out, I promised myself no one would be able to pressure me into doing things I don’t want to do anymore.

I’ll have to make an exception.

This will probably be the last time I hang out with them.

I’ll wrap some things up at the lab, then head out within a few days.

It might be months, or even years, before I get the chance to surf again, so I’ll take advantage of it while I can.

“We’ll see how I feel tonight.”

Deedee gives me a look that says, “I see right through your bullshit.” I ignore it the same way she’s ignoring our problems.

My complacency sure as shit didn’t make Tommy any less abusive.

Doing nothing will only make our issues with the pirates worse, and I feel like I’m the only goddamn person who cares whether or not this business fails.

It might not be my problem in a couple of days, but I neither want to burn bridges nor watch them burn.

Nat and Deedee are good people.

I lower my chest onto the board and start paddling closer to the incoming wave before she can say more.

I speed up my strokes, preparing to move to my feet at the right moment.

This usually relaxes me—makes me feel invincible—but my mind is elsewhere, jumping from Tommy to passports to Wayan’s lack of response on when our next shipment might be, and…

rows of firm abs, silky black hair, hypnotic blue eyes, and his scent — Gods , I’m out in the open, breathing in the real thing, and I swear, he still smelled better.

I push to my feet as the wave catches me.

I know the second before I lose my balance that I’m going under.

Pressure forces the nose of my board upward, my feet with it.

Oxygen is yanked right out of my lungs from the force of the collision against the water’s surface.

Bubbles and the roar of the sea explodes all around me.

My arms flail, trying to get to my board, or at least get some kind of stability.

But it keeps coming, coming, coming, turning my body upside down, contorting me to the sea’s wish.

Panic, raw and debilitating, tears through me.

None of the tricks I was taught work.

Instinct isn’t saving me.

My leg slams into a stone.

Bubbles explode around my muted cry, and my lungs burn from the lack of oxygen.

I shouldn’t panic, but shit, I’m going to drown.

Something hard hits my head, sending me into a stunned daze muffled by the surge of adrenaline.

I twist my body to try to fight the water’s drag, using every ounce of my power to claw out.

Every time I get a glimpse of the surface, I’m yanked back under.

Something wraps around my legs just as my body curls from the force of another wave.

It stops me from being pulled further from the shore.

A scream tears through my throat and bubbles around me from the faint puckering against my bare skin.

Through my blurry vision, I just make out a huge, reddish-brown thing curling around my arm toward my board.

Is that a fucking tentacle?

Oh, fuck no.

I whip around, trying to dislodge whatever the hell it is.

I swear it lifts me toward the surface, because the next thing I know, oxygen slams into me at once with a choked gasp.

My board bobs beside me, and I scramble onto it, hoping and praying it doesn’t take my desperation for escape as an act of aggression.

It isn’t until my body is plastered on top of the board that I’m certain I’m not becoming octopus chow.

“Jesus Christ,” I gasp, lying on my stomach to catch my breath.

The shore has to be four-hundred yards away.

I can just make out Nat and Deedee’s ant-sized frames watching me from the distance, oblivious to my near-death experience.

Paddling back to shore, I try very hard not to think about what might be in the water.

If that thing latches onto me again, I’m going to pass out.

The next wave carries me along the water to make it back in half the time it would’ve taken me to paddle.

There’s none of the familiar joy or euphoria I’d usually get, only stone-cold relief.

I know I said I could die happy out here, but I wanted to go peacefully—not by getting mauled.

Drowning, on the other hand?

I wouldn’t hate it, I don’t think.

“Holy shit. I think a fucking octopus just touched me,” I pant as I use the last of my energy reserves to jog over to our area on the beach, surveying the surroundings.

Nat cocks a brow, looking at me from above her book.

Her blond hair is splayed out on the towel like a halo.

“Did it now?”

“It was giant .” I shove my surfboard into the sand and drop onto my ass, lightheaded from the lack of oxygen.

My body succumbs to the fatigue, and I collapse onto the sand.

“It wrapped around my leg and my stomach, and I thought I was going to get strangled—or eaten.”

I narrow my eyes at Deedee as she laughs.

“Cindi, zero. Seaweed, one.” She rummages through her bag and throws a few things onto my lap.

“What’s this for?” I croak.

Shielding my eyes from the harsh sun, I lift my head to inspect the painkillers, medicine bottle, and metal tube.

“Are we drug dealers now?”

“Hold up. I think I’ve got a condom in my car to add,” Nat teases.

“ Anjing .” I call her dog in Bahasa.

Deedee snickers. “The ointment is for your back. My doctor friend said it’s an antibacterial or antifungal cream—I can’t remember. Actually, it might be an antihistamine. Just try it. The rest are from Nat.”

I resist the urge to glare at her.

This is all her fault.

Maybe trusting a non-tattoo artist to do my first tattoo was a bad idea.

Slightly inebriated me was sure it was a great idea to get one at the time.

Tommy hated them on women, and I thought it was a good fuck you to Tommy and a symbol of my freedom.

It’s a cross between a motif design with a plant-leaf thing—I’m not really sure, honestly.

I let Deedee decide, and apparently, she chose to give me the exact same tattoo she has.

Hindsight is a beautiful thing.

Had I known I’d have a reaction to red ink, I would never have used so much of it.

It’s been over six months, and it still hasn’t healed.

Nat points at the painkillers.

“That’s what I took when I had a back injury.” She winks when she points at the bottle.

“And the vitamins are for your hangover tomorrow. But I should be giving you my condolences.”

“What? Why?” My brows flatten.

“Because we’re eating calamari tonight.”

Ugh.

“It was an octopus, not a squid.”

Can my day be over already?

Kill me now.

I’m getting too old for this shit.

Or maybe I’m too cynical.

Or altogether an angry, hateful woman.

My migraine is in full force from the loud, thumping, bad music and the screeching men and women alike.

I’m not sure what the science behind it is, but I feel two seconds away from a heart attack from all the flashing lights.

How I enjoyed these things when I was in college is beyond me.

I used to be out every Friday or Saturday night—before Tommy, of course.

As per his expectations , a proper woman wouldn’t have more than a glass of wine, and God forbid she do anything to enjoy herself.

I bounce the heels of my wedges against the floor.

I grip my drink, using the cold to numb the ache in my wrist. I keep close to the bar and dart my eyes around the room, studying every new face.

I can just spot Natalie dancing with another woman I’ve met several times, but I can’t remember her name.

Deedee isn’t that far away either, happily getting felt up by some guy—probably a tourist. They’re the most fun, apparently.

They’d both always had a carefree air around them, even though our line of business could land us in a ditch or in prison.

My second cocktail isn’t doing shit to stop me from grinding my molars.

My mind isn’t registering the taste.

The lack of food and water is making the alcohol go straight to my head—I don’t feel even remotely laid-back .

The atmosphere sure as hell isn’t any more tolerable.

Even if I wanted to drink more to prove to myself Tommy’s rules hold no bearing on me, the fear his family has ingrained in me is still there.

If I’m drunk, that means I can’t think straight.

If I’m hungover, I’m slower.

Anything could happen at any moment, and I need to be prepared to run.

I won’t become a victim just because I decided to indulge in a Sex on the Beach.

For what must be the thousandth time tonight, I check my cabin’s security footage.

I glance at the cameras in the corners of the room as I tap my fingers against my phone.

I’m so exposed out here.

What if someone is watching me from those cameras?

The Gallaghers have the means to hack into security footage.

What if they have access to facial recognition software I’m not aware of?

Does that even exist?

They could track me to this very spot and drag me out.

I blow out a breath, focusing on calming the fuck down before every person in this bar starts looking like Tommy.

Unshed tears threaten to spill as I fight the urge to bolt.

The cheesy pop tune hammers against my eardrums. I pretend not to hear Nat calling me over to dance.

I’ll lose my grip on my sanity if I do.

A hand curves around my lower back, and I jump away, breathing hard and trembling at the stranger who touched me.

Goosebumps rain over my flesh, and my stomach ties into a hundred knots that threaten to empty the contents of my stomach.

Every nerve ending in my body locks up, prepared to be struck.

A faint ringing sounds in my ear, and suddenly I’m back in the cold, white mansion, cooking dinner, terrified he had a less than savory day and he knows about a misstep I’ve taken that I’m unaware of.

No, I’m not there anymore.

My knuckles are bleached white on my purse.

I’m half tempted to pull out my taser to use it on the tourist just trying to make the most out of his holiday.

“You’re looking a little lonely over here,” he slurs.

“That’s intentional,” I mumble under my breath so he can’t hear.

I flinch, ready to be slapped for talking back, even though the rational part of my brain is aware I won’t be.

A year and a half ago, I would have been beaten black and blue for?—

I dig my long nails into my palm, focusing on the pain.

Stop thinking about him, Krist—Cindi.

Fuck. Mey name is Cindi, not Kristy.

I step back when he sways forward.

“How about you and I go for a little dance?” He touches my hand, and my fist flies before I can think better of it, hitting him square in the gut.

Holy shit. What did I just do?

The man buckles over with a grunt.

“I’m so sorry.” I stagger back, pulse racing.

My heart races. Do I run?

Make amends?

God, I’m fucked in the head.

I need to leave.

I spin on my heels and come to a complete stop in front of a wall of muscle.

Sea breeze trickles into my lungs, and warmth seeps through my bloodstream.

Something fizzles to life in my soul, a struck match in the darkest recesses.

My gaze collides with a pair of endless ocean blues.

For one brief, fleeting second, all my terrors, all my worries, disappear, and I finally remember what it means to be content.

Safe.

But it’s a fallacy.

Reality comes crashing down as the man’s appearance takes shape: his long, black hair, sharp jawline, and chiseled chest made by the Greek gods themselves.

The man from last night.

He’s following me.

“Why are you here?” I gasp.

“Did this man touch you?” His rage sends a bolt of shivers down my spine.

The initial shudder comes from the forbidden allure of hearing someone be protective of me.

Then, it’s the realization his anger might be directed toward me.

To Tommy, it was always my fault if someone got handsy, never theirs.

Panic chokes me. The man’s ocean-blue eyes morph into mold green, and I find myself nodding as survival instincts in.

I don’t stick around for follow-up questions.

I turn tail and run.

It’s the only thing I know how to do.