Chapter 2 - The Screws of the Master Stateroom
The muffled shriek through the bronze vent grated like iron on wet stone.
I dropped the silver tray. It struck the teak planking with a deafening crash, rolling toward the gutter while forty high-society patrons scrambled backward against the varnished mahogany partitions.
“Lily!”
I surged toward the companionway stairs, but Victoria lunged sideways, her fingers clawing into the cotton lapel of my uniform.
“You stay on this deck, you insolent little rat!” Victoria hissed through clenched teeth. “You do not disrupt an international reception over domestic theatrics!”
She didn't finish the threat.
Christian’s left hand shot out like an uncoiling steel cable, wrapping around Victoria’s wrist and twisting with brutal, measured torque.
Victoria shrieked in agony as her fingers snapped open. She stumbled back into the buffet table, sending crystal bowls of crushed ice and Beluga caviar clattering to the floorboards.
“Touch her again, Victoria,” Christian murmured, his baritone level, terrifying, and completely hollow of mercy, “and I will throw you over this railing into the propellers.”
He didn't spare her another breath. He turned to his chief of maritime security, Leo, who had already cleared the salon threshold with four armed operators in tactical wool coats.
“Cut the music,” Christian commanded, his voice cutting through the Atlantic gale like an artillery report. “Drop the stern anchors. Kill the satellite relays. If any launch, tender, or personal watercraft attempts to clear this hull before I give the order, blow it out of the water.”
“Understood, boss,” Leo barked, bringing his suppressed weapon to the low ready.
Christian didn't wait for the hydraulic anchor winches to engage. He took my trembling right hand into his massive palm, his grip steady and unyielding as he pulled me through the companionway doors.
We took the spiral brass stairs at a sprint, down into the belly of the vessel where the ambient hum of the diesel turbines vibrated through the bulkheads.
At the end of the lower guest corridor stood the double rosewood doors of the Owner’s Master Suite.
Stationed outside was Donald Sterling’s personal chief of security, a six-foot-four private military contractor wearing an earpiece and a concealed shoulder rig beneath his dinner jacket.
When the guard saw Christian Vance rounding the companionway bulkhead with thunder in his eyes, his hand dropped toward his holster.
“Mr. Vance, this stateroom is reserved under private senatorial privilege—”
Christian didn't slow his stride.
He closed the distance in half a heartbeat. His left hand caught the guard’s throat, driving the man backward into the teak wall with concussive force, while his right palm struck upward beneath the guard’s chin.
The guard’s teeth snapped together with an audible crack. His skull bounced off the paneling, his eyes rolling into his head as he crumpled senseless to the runner.
Christian stepped over the unconscious body, drew back his right heel, and kicked the double rosewood doors straight off their brass hinges.
BOOM.
The heavy wood splintered inward, crashing onto the carpeted deck of the suite.
Inside, my twenty-year-old sister was pinned across the marble edge of the wet bar. Her laundry smock had been torn down the shoulder, her dark curls wild and matted with sweat, a dark red contusion blooming along her collarbone. She was clutching a broken crystal decanter neck in her bleeding hand, swinging it with feral, terrified desperation at Donald Sterling’s fifty-year-old chief of staff, Marcus Vance—Donald’s nephew and fix-it man.
“Get off me!” Lily screamed, her voice hoarse from shrieking into the ventilation shafts. “Get away from me!”
Marcus Vance had his belt unbuckled, his hands bruised from trying to disarm her, his mouth curled in an arrogant, drunken snarl: “Stop fighting, you stupid bitch, Victoria already took the deposit—”
Christian entered the room like a localized hurricane.
His hand closed around the back of Marcus Vance’s neck, lifting the two-hundred-pound operative off his feet with terrifying, effortless strength, and drove him face-first into the marble countertop.
The vanity shattered. Porcelain shards, crystal tumblers, and dark blood exploded across the suite.
Lily dropped the broken bottle neck, collapsing against the carpeted floorboards, sobbing so violently she could barely pull air into her lungs.
“Nora... Nora, he locked the deadbolt,” Lily wept, clawing at my knees as I fell to the floor beside her, gathering her shaking body into my arms. “He told me no one was coming down... he said Victoria traded me for the harbor permits...”
“I’m here, baby,” I choked out, wrapping my jacket around her torn smock, burying my face in her hair. “I’m here. You’re safe. You’re home.”
Christian let the unconscious fix-it man slide like a sack of wet flour onto the bloodstained rug.
He turned toward the shattered doorway.
Senator Donald Sterling and Victoria stood in the corridor, flanked by Leo’s tactical operators with carbines leveled at their chests.
Donald’s face had turned the color of cold tallow.
Victoria’s emeralds trembled against her throat like shards of green ice.
Christian walked out of the stateroom with slow, rhythmic strides, stopping three inches from Donald Sterling’s nose.
“You wanted to discuss the harbor permits, Donald?” Christian asked softly.
The Senator swallowed, his voice cracking into a high-pitched wheeze.
“Christian... listen to me. Marcus acted on his own. I had no idea he was down here—it was an unfortunate administrative misunderstanding—”
Christian didn't let him finish the lie.
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With the unhurried, terrifying precision of an executioner, Christian drove his right fist straight into Donald Sterling’s jaw.
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