Chapter 2 - The Sound of Anchor Chains
The word struck the teak deck with the weight of an artillery shell.
Wife.
Camilla Vance stumbled backward, her metallic heel catching the edge of a mahogany sunbed. Her throat clicked audibly as she tried to draw breath, her manicured fingers clawing at the pearls strung around her neck.
“Wife...?” she choked out, her voice shrill, cracking against the ocean wind. “Matteo... Don De Luca, this is absurd! She’s an hourly wage cutter! She’s listed on the catalog invoice under labor costs!”
Julian Sterling scrambled to his feet, abandoning his smoldering cigar on the wood, frantically brushing ash from his silk lapels as his hands trembled violently.
“Don Matteo, please! Allow me to speak on behalf of the Sterling family! There has been a catastrophic failure of communication! We were told the master lapidary was an anonymous artisan from Antwerp—we had no idea she had any connection to your house!”
Matteo did not look at Julian.
He turned slowly toward the yacht’s master, Captain Hendrick, who stood frozen by the salon doors, clutching his brass navigation clipboard against his chest like a bulletproof vest.
“Captain,” Matteo murmured.
“Y-yes, Don Matteo?” the captain stammered, beads of cold sweat dripping into his silver collar.
“Drop the stern anchors,” Matteo commanded softly. “Cut the satellite relays. Shut down the main turbine engines. If a single radio transmission leaves this vessel before I give the order, I will have your crew tossed into the channel without life vests.”
“Right away, sir! Right away!”
Within three seconds, the hydraulic winches shrieked, and two twelve-ton steel anchors plunged into the dark water of Biscayne Bay with a thunderous roar that sent vibrations shivering through the hull. The twin four-thousand-horsepower diesel engines died instantly, plunging the superyacht into an eerie, unnatural silence broken only by the lapping of waves and the rustling of evening gowns.
Matteo turned his obsidian gaze back to Camille Vance.
She was shivering now, her gold sequins catching the harbor spotlights in jagged, frightened flickers.
“You said my wife owns nothing on this ship, Camille,” Matteo said, his voice smooth as polished marble and twice as hard.
He reached into his breast pocket and produced an embossed ivory leather folder stamped with the gold seal of the Maritime Admiralty Court.
He flicked it onto the low glass table.
“The Sovereign is registered under a shell holding corporation chartered in Grand Cayman,” Matteo said, stepping forward with slow, predatory strides. “Purchased six months ago with clean shipping dividends. The sole shareholder on the corporate articles is Maeve De Luca.”
A collective, suffocating gasp tore through the fifty billionaires gathered on the aft deck.
Camille swayed on her feet, her eyes dilating in sheer, unadulterated horror.
The luxury vessel she had swaggered across, the ballroom where she had preened for society photographers, the very floor she stood upon—belonged entirely to the woman whose dress she had just sliced open for a speck of rouge.
May you like
“Now,” Matteo whispered, stopping two inches from Camille’s face. “Give my wife the diamond stylus.”
---
