Temptation Island

by Victoria Fox

  The man took a swing, punching him hard in the face. For a moment Reuben was dizzy, immobilised, and felt a trickle of blood escape his sinus and course a line through his nose and out his nostril. He crumpled to the deck.

  Enrique threw himself against the metal bow. Down below, her body drifted like wood on the waves, moonlight gleaming off her skin.

  Lori.

  There was only one thing he could do. He jumped.

  As Lori hurried past the main deck, she thought she heard a splash. The rest of the ship was so empty that every sound was wide open.

  JB was walking too fast.

  ‘What was that about?’ she demanded.

  ‘Go back downstairs, Lori.’

  ‘No. Not until you talk to me.’

  He turned on the stairwell. His gaze was ice on fire. ‘Go downstairs,’ he repeated. ‘I don’t want to see you. I never want to see you. Get back to your boyfriend.’

  She was undeterred. ‘Wait.’

  He waved a dismissive hand.

  ‘Don’t walk away from me.’

  They emerged at the top deck, elevated above the rest of the ship, totally deserted. An oval pool shone aquamarine beneath a starlit sky, on the bottom of which gleamed the VDM crest, magnified through the water.

  JB was looking for Reuben. He checked round the side of the ship. Where the hell was he? He was meant to be in the saloon thirty minutes ago. Guests were becoming anxious, especially after Dirk’s curtailed display.

  Lori stopped. ‘You have to give me this much.’

  ‘I don’t have to give you a thing.’ He spun to face her. ‘What happened between us, it was a mistake.’

  ‘A mistake,’ she repeated flatly.

  ‘Forget it. I have.’ His voice made her sad. She’d lost him.

  ‘You really have no clue, have you?’ she whispered.

  JB’s eyes were glass, azure as the pool behind. ‘Leave,’ he told her. ‘Leave this island and don’t ever come back. You’re not welcome here.’

  ‘How dare you?’ Lori’s hair billowed in the wind. ‘How dare you after the way you’ve treated me?’

  ‘The way I’ve treated you?’ At last, he reacted. Thrusting his hands in his pockets, he turned to go, thought better of it and turned back. ‘You’re pretty unbelievable, you know that.’

  ‘Coming from you?’ she sputtered. ‘You’ve played me since the moment we met. You lied to me from day one! Everything we had was built on a lie. And if it wasn’t a lie it was cowardice. I’m not sure what’s worse.’

  ‘I wouldn’t know how to be a coward.’

  ‘Give me a break. Where were you, JB? It’s been a year. How do you think I felt, endless months trying to contact you and all you gave me was a wall of silence?’

  ‘You know nothing,’ he growled. ‘You’re a baby.’

  The words flew free. ‘I know about Cacatra. I know what you’ve been doing on this island and I know what you meant me for.’

  His expression was blank.

  ‘Don’t deny it,’ she said. ‘Don’t even try. I know everything.’

  ‘Wrong. You could never even guess.’

  Her dress rippled like liquid gold. ‘Then have the decency to tell me.’

  ‘There’s no point. You wouldn’t understand.’

  ‘I’ve understood everything else you’ve told me. I’ve believed everything you said and I still do. Maybe I’m wrong about that. Some might tell me I was.’

  ‘Keep away from this,’ he warned. ‘You’re not involved.’

  ‘I am. Because all you said about the way you felt—’ her voice faltered but she caught it ‘—I have to know if that was true. That I wasn’t just … merchandise. That I wasn’t just an opportunity to make money.’

  ‘Women in your position are precisely the reason I do this.’ She had never seen him so full of passion and in spite of her temper she wanted him. ‘They need intervention. They need someone to answer for them because no one’s ever bothered before. Are you saying if I’d offered you this you would have turned it down?’

  ‘It’s wrong.’

  ‘It’s a humanitarian project, the first of its kind. It changes people’s lives. It gives them hope. It makes things right.’

  ‘It doesn’t sound like the first time you’ve justified it to yourself.’

  ‘I don’t lose sleep over it.’

  She laughed. ‘Why doesn’t that surprise me?’

  He took a moment to scrutinise her. ‘Did someone tell you?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘That’s for me to decide.’

  Lori thought back to the discovery of her documents on Cacatra and the uncertainty that had vexed her since. She realised she had known long before Rebecca Stuttgart had visited.

  ‘The night we spent together. Afterwards, in your villa. LA864. Except my file shouldn’t have been there. It should have been with the others, the women you have lined up but for whatever reason the prospect falls through.’

  In a flash she envisioned where the paperwork was kept. An image of the island lighthouse sprang to mind: abandoned, paint cracking, sea-washed walls thick and hard with salt.

  ‘In case you want to reopen further down the line,’ she murmured. ‘But I was the exception … because there was no further down the line.’

  JB’s suit jacket flapped in the cold. It was a while before he spoke.

  ‘Not for me,’ he said quietly. ‘There was no way I was going to watch you carry another man’s baby.’

  The statement hung in the air between them. Lori was shaking. Her breath was visible in the night, escaping in short, hard bursts, blooming then dissolving.

  JB spoke. ‘I’ve never found anyone who does to me what you do to me.’ His voice slipped. ‘But I cannot forget what you’ve done. You betrayed me.’

  She could hold it in no longer. ‘I didn’t.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter how you express it. The evidence is there.’

  ‘What evidence?’

  ‘Don’t make me say his name.’

  ‘Let me explain. You need to hear this—’

  ‘No!’ He sliced the night air with his hand, the word soaring up into the universe. She’d never heard him raise his voice before and the volume of it frightened her. ‘How could you do it? How could you be with him? After us?’

  ‘I—’

  He was on her, his lips on hers, his hands in her hair.

  Kissing her like it was the last kiss on earth.

  The waves hit Enrique with a stinging slap. Salt water rushed into his lungs, making him choke. He was a strong swimmer but not against this tide. The ocean tossed him like a child’s plaything, fathoms of space below and around him as empty as they were full. He gasped for air, with each undulation battling to keep his head above the surface.

  He caught sight of Lori’s body, not fifty strokes away. It was impossible to tell through the pitch if she was moving. An arm thrashing, a hand in the air—or was it a trick of the swell? In the next flash, utter stillness, as if she was dead or drowned, facedown on the oil-black sea or faceup to the charcoal sky, cracked with stars, observers to the moment of her expiry.

  Arms slicing, crawling through the distance, Enrique swam. The waves buffeted and rocked, throwing him off course, and it seemed with every stroke she only drifted further away.

  The yacht was behind them now. His chest was burning, his limbs on fire. By the time he reached the body, he clung to it like a raft.

  Reuben van der Meyde staggered indoors. He was dazed, catatonic from an assault beyond his comprehension. Somehow, his inbuilt sense of purpose found a way through. He was meant to be somewhere, doing something.

  Oh yes … there were guests. This was a party. His party.

  Better patch up quick.

  Thoughts whirled through his mind, hot and fast like flames licking up a chimney. It felt like his head was exploding. Maybe he had concussion.

  Shock numbed him as he lurched to his private quarters, veering into walls
and stumbling as he fought to regain his balance.

  He reached his cabin and opened the door.

  And came face to face with the barrel of his own gun.

  Enrique rolled the body. Dark hair was plastered across the face, obscuring her features. With a wet groan he realised she had been long dead: her skin was pale and she was cold, freezing cold, to touch. He put two fingers to her neck and felt nothing.

  Lori.

  He pulled her into his arms, a slopping pocket of water between them, and the movement brought a rush through his parted lips. It was not the saline that stung but a new taste: the unmistakable iron of blood. Her corpse floated like an empty sack, a wreck of driftwood, and his hands travelled down till they dipped into the still-warm puncture in her soft, yielding flesh. For a second his fingers disappeared and he gagged, shoving the body away.

  The motion washed the hair from her face. Straining to see through the darkness, Enrique saw a woman he did not recognise. He thought he must be wrong, reaching out to touch her, the chin he had cupped so many times before, and felt it was entirely different.

  Blindly he thrashed, twisting back towards the yacht, whose lights seemed now immeasurably far away. The coast, ahead of him, an equal distance.

  A shape slid across his vision. It came out of the night, several feet away, then swiftly vanished. He blinked. Fear crept up from his toes.

  There it was again, unambiguous this time.

  A fin, black and huge. Enrique whipped round, caught sight of another. Two fins, three, four, circling him and the body.

  Enrique’s legs pushed uselessly at the depths, numb and bone-tired. Around him a cloud of red blossomed as he hung suspended in the tepid residue of a stranger’s blood.

  They kissed frantically, each second of their months apart driven to this point and now his hands were on her body and her face and the smell and feel of him was heaven. He held her body to his, drawing her into his heat, arms encircling her waist so he could kiss her better. Lori fell into the hardness of his chest, the stiffness of that part that told her his want was as real as hers. Moving blindly, peeling off his jacket, unbuttoning his shirt, they reached the rim of the pool and, in a flash, felt the ground disappear. Cool water erupted as its silver sheet was shattered.

  Underwater, JB’s white shirt came away like sails filled with wind. He carried on kissing her, their mouths slipping over each other, their tongues entwined.

  They surfaced in a crash, sparks of blue water exploding. Fiercely Lori pulled at his hair, wrapping her legs around him, her body wet inside and out.

  With a piercing thrust he entered her. She clasped his shoulders, held him to her as his length drove deeper, his mouth on her neck and her breasts.

  Throwing her head back, she met the endlessness of space.

  The first tug pulled him straight under. Quick, sudden, total submersion, before he was released.

  Horror surged. Enrique whipped at the water, creating a storm, and heard a high-pitched moan, thin as air, seep from his throat. He pushed forward, veering inexplicably and abruptly left, and it was only when he thrust a hand beneath the surface, groping desperately, palm open, that he realised his right leg was missing.

  Another tug. No pain. This time his torso seemed to surge, light as a buoy, and a gush of viscous metal washed from his mouth.

  He choked. Something bumped against him, more solid than a wall. He kicked out; thought he was kicking because his mind said he was but there was nothing to kick with. Using his arms, he propelled himself forward but he was drained and his head was full of blood and terror. Reaching down, he felt the stumps. The left was cut above his knee, the right at his hip. A trailing softness was coming from them, gummy and tough and by some warped instinct he drew on the entrails, feeling the same satisfaction when they gave as for a stubborn knot loosening.

  One last cold slug of raw night air and he was taken.

  ‘Why didn’t you wait for me?’

  They were spent. Two lovers washed up on an abandoned beach.

  ‘I did,’ she gasped, recovering her breath, the water sparkling and washing around them as it had the first time. ‘There hasn’t been anyone else.’

  His beautiful face right there, the groove on his lip she had remembered kissing a million times. She knew that story. He had trusted her with it.

  ‘No more lies,’ he whispered.

  ‘I’m not lying.’

  ‘Maximo Diaz. Your child.’

  Lori reached for his hand and he let her take it, her fingers enlaced with his. ‘I tried to tell you,’ she said. ‘I swear I did. Rebecca wasn’t honest with you.’

  There was a flicker of doubt in him. Pain.

  ‘When she said you couldn’t have children,’ Lori continued softly. ‘You can. My child is proof. Our child is proof.’

  He didn’t take his gaze from hers.

  ‘It can’t be.’

  ‘It is.’ She stroked his thumb. ‘No more lies.’

  There it was; she could see it. Trust. Newborn, fragile: full of fear and hope.

  ‘Omar’s yours.’

  She pulled him close so he could feel her slow beating heart and know it was the truth.

  ‘He’s your son.’

  ‘Put the gun down, Aurora.’

  ‘Sit.’

  ‘Give it to me—’

  ‘Sit!’

  Reuben collapsed into a chair. His head was splitting from where he’d whacked it on the deck and he couldn’t think clearly. What was happening? He needed to get his shit together and fast. This was bad. This was real fucking bad.

  ‘You’re going to tell me everything.’

  All across the cabin, his belongings were strewn, smashed, shattered. It looked as if a bomb had gone off.

  ‘My real parents.’ The gun wavered in Reuben’s vision but he couldn’t tell if it was his skewed perception or her trembling aim. ‘Come on! Who are they?’

  ‘Please …’ It came out a sputter. Wretched. He had never begged before in his life.

  ‘You’ll get no mercy from me,’ Aurora spat. ‘Don’t even try, you pathetic old man.’

  Reuben liked to push himself. It was how he’d got so far in life. He’d think of the most outrageous idea he could and then test himself, dare himself, to go right ahead and do it.

  But he’d known at the time he had gone too far. He had taken the secret one step further. This was his knowledge to carry and his cross to bear.

  The weight of it threatened to crush him.

  ‘Relax.’ The barrel of the gun drew in and out of focus. ‘Please—before you do something stupid. Security,’ he mumbled, ‘you’ll be taken down—’

  ‘Who are they?’ Aurora screamed. ‘Tell me now before I blow your fucking brains across the room and I swear to God I’ll do it and I won’t even think twice.’

  Reuben gulped. ‘She was …’ His mind felt like mush. ‘She was from Finland. Poor. Desperate. Young.’

  Aurora thrust the gun. ‘Where is she now? Is she still alive?’

  ‘I—I think so.’

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ He held his hands up. ‘I can find out.’

  ‘You can find out? Something’s not right here. Aren’t you meant to be sending this woman a fortune every other month? No? What, then?’ His words that night on Cacatra floated back to her. ‘So much for a humanitarian outreach, you evil fucking bastard.’

  ‘Aurora—’

  ‘You repulse me.’

  It was as if Reuben were sitting next to his own shadow, and he watched his shadow get up and fight her, a silly thing, wrestle the weapon and tell her she was talking nonsense and have her committed because what sort of a kid came up with a story like that? But the real Reuben sat very still, unable to move, his head pounding and his body weak. Every day his sixty years.

  ‘What about him?’ she choked.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘My father. What about him?’

  In the recesses of Reuben’s cu
rdled mind, alarm bells rang. He grasped at the truth.

  ‘Tom Nash … He …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I can’t—’

  ‘Say it!’

  ‘Tom Nash is gay,’ he croaked.

  Aurora blinked.

  He said it again. ‘Tom is gay. He’s gay.’

  She laughed.

  ‘You wanted to know why?’ Reuben thrashed, desperate to throw her off the scent with the scandal he’d vowed never to expose. ‘There, that’s your reason. Tom Nash is gay and the world can never find out. That was why they did it, him and Sherilyn. They wanted a child they could call their own—a sweet-as-pie American family and you were the key. Kind of takes the sheen off when you learn he’s busy fucking asses from here to Timbuktu—’

  ‘I don’t believe you. It’s not possible.’

  But it was. It was. Tom’s and Sherilyn’s separate bedrooms, their odd relationship, their distance … that one Christmas on the Texas ranch when Aurora had walked in on her father and Billy-Bob Hocker in the stables, half dressed, buckles undone, but she’d been too young at the time to properly remember or trust what she saw.

  Calmly, single-mindedly, Aurora pressed the barrel of the gun into Reuben’s forehead.

  ‘If Tom isn’t my father—’ she released the safety catch ‘—then who is?’

  Lance Chlomsky was swept into a moving current of people coursing to the lower deck. Reports from above claimed that Reuben van der Meyde was missing. There was wild talk of an armed assassin, a psychopath who had boarded the ship and was holding the billionaire for ransom.

  Fiction. Staff inventing stories to pass the time.

  Nevertheless, true to form, Lance panicked. He had always been of a fretful disposition. Weak, they called it. He hung back, waited till the line of frantic gossip had passed and pushed open the door to one of the guest suites. A bad smell assaulted him. He flicked on the light.

  Maximo Diaz was facedown on the bed, one arm flung over the side, a contorted expression on his bloated face. His eyes bugged open and his tongue hung loosely out the corner of a grey-green mouth.

  Lance gagged on bile, staggering backwards into the corridor.

  At first he thought it was someone else shouting, someone else taking control.

  But no. It was him.

  ‘Man dead,’ he was yelling. ‘Raise the alarm!’