Total pages in book: 113
Estimated words: 106541 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 533(@200wpm)___ 426(@250wpm)___ 355(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 106541 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 533(@200wpm)___ 426(@250wpm)___ 355(@300wpm)
Although ninety-nine point nine percent of the passengers are over the age of sixty, I’ve loved the first two weeks of my twenty of the most colorful destinations in the world tour.
Procida can’t be accessed by a cruise ship, so it docked at a neighboring harbor, and guests were shuttled to town.
“Photographs don’t do it justice.”
“It doesn’t,” I agree with Jeanette before taking a seat behind her. She is also traveling solo, so we often sit together at dinner so we don’t look like losers. She is fifty-five going on thirty-three. Her husband passed away from Parkinson’s two years ago. He purchased this trip the month before he died. He didn’t want her to stop living when he passed and thought this would be the best way to ensure she didn’t.
His admiring features had me thinking back to my conversation with Sofia six months ago. She didn’t eavesdrop on my time with Ghost. He mentioned to her my wish for hideous drapes and carpet when she was shuddering through a fifth botched abortion. That one saw her lose her uterus, and it was the reason Ghost was absent a lot during my first month at the mansion.
Sofia said he still snuck in to sleep next to me every night, though.
Her disclosure doubled my grief instead of easing it.
I’m still grieving now.
“Dinner tonight?” When I nod, Jeanette asks, “Six o’clock?” When I roll my eyes, she says with a laugh, “What? I like to go to bed early.”
“Why?” I don’t give her the chance to answer. “So you can wake up early and count down the hours until you can go back to bed?”
Travel was supposed to encourage me to enjoy life again, but I’m one early night from retirement. Don’t get me wrong, the cities we’ve visited are beautiful, and the air is the freshest I’ve breathed, but something is missing.
Someone.
My interest is piqued when the driver murmurs, “Be careful when we arrive at the harbor. Despite what your travel insurance company tells you, pirates still exist.”
“They’re just called the bratva these days.” Jeanette’s comment gets the bus giggling. It freezes my heart, especially her final snickered comment, “We can only hope after the books I’ve been reading. Who wouldn’t want to be held captive by a Massimo or a Nikolai?”
I muster up a fake grin to hide my hurt, then free a real one when I realize this is the exact reason I wanted to travel to exotic locations. No one here knows me as Katie Bryne, the girl who was abducted and held against her will for nine years.
They only see Kate.
“Careful. Very good.” The driver helps me step down from the bus before offering his hand to Jeanette. “Don’t forget the souvenir bags you packed in the undercarriage, Jeanie. Don’t want your grandbabies missing out on all those goodies you snaveled up.”
“I’ll grab it for you,” I offer when Jeanette groans about another twenty pounds being added to her beautifully plump frame.
I lost a few pounds the hormones Sofia slipped into my food added, but the final ten refuse to budge. They’re with me for good.
“Jesus, Jeanette. If you buy any more junk, you’ll sink our boat,” I murmur to myself when the removal of her bag has it tearing open under the strain.
When I bob down to collect the bobble-headed sea turtles and plastic snow globes, my heart freezes for the second time today. A shipping container dock is across a wide gravel driveway. Several ships are being loaded with stock, but one stands out more than the rest.
It couldn’t be. Surely.
With my heart thumping out a tune it hasn’t played the past year and a half, I absentmindedly make my way closer to the industrial dock on the other side of the harbor. It is secured from the public by a large chain fence, but there is a cut-out close to the rocks being sprayed with salty whitewash.
My head screams for me to turn around when my trance-like trek is concealed by dozens of men and a handful of scantily clad women, to return to the cruise side of the harbor before I stumble onto something I don’t want to acknowledge, but my heart refuses to listen.
The cargo ship is beckoning me to it, and no amount of logic will stop me from crossing the gangway and gliding down familiar corridors.
It is exactly the same. A massive city on the sea with insides far too opulent for its rusty shell. The dining room is grand, and the rec room with its twinkling lights and boyish games could house dozens. The kitchen’s multiple pantries are brimming with bags of flour and enough canned food to spend months out at sea, and there are men in almost every cabin except one.
Ghost’s.
I know it’s his room because it smells like him, and the bathroom door is still hanging off its hinges.