Chains in the Deep

Don’t go to sea. Your husband wants to kill you.

The sender was Marcus Cole. A fellow countryman I had just met, staying at the same hotel as us. As a suspense novelist, he possessed an almost instinctive sharpness and terribly poor sleep. In the middle of the night, he went for a walk outside the hotel due to insomnia and inadvertently stumbled upon a suspicious transaction, prompting him to hastily send me a warning.

By the time I saw the message, it was already too late.

There were only three people on the boat: me, Alistair, and the boatman.

The boatman was a local fisherman, with dark, shiny skin and a muscular, bare torso. He skillfully maneuvered the sail, letting the small boat ride the wind, drifting further and further from the safety of the shore.

This country had once been colonized by Spain, and Spanish was the common language-an area in which Alistair was well-versed. He could communicate with the locals without any barriers, while I was like a deaf-mute.

As they conversed in low Spanish, the boatman’s gaze occasionally swept over me, and suddenly he grinned, revealing a smile. Against his dark skin, his teeth and the whites of his eyes appeared starkly conspicuous, lending the smile a sly and eerie quality. He looked at me as if I were a fish already caught in the net.

Clearly, he had long been bought off by Alistair.

The phone screen dimmed, and I stood frozen, my mind blank.

“What’s wrong?” Alistair stood up and walked toward me. “We rarely get to see the sea, so let’s not look at the phone.” His voice was calm and unruffled.

He reached out to take my phone, and I snapped out of my daze, instinctively trying to snatch it back.

Just then, a sudden gust of wind and waves hit, causing the boat to lurch violently. I lost my balance and pitched forward. Alistair quickly reached out, firmly supporting my waist.

But my phone slipped from his fingers and, with a “plop,” fell into the unfathomable depths of the sea.

I let out a cry of despair, instinctively wanting to lunge toward the boat’s edge, but I forcibly stopped myself. -I couldn’t go near the edge! I could only curl up in the center of the boat, the relatively “safe” spot.

Alistair crouched down, his gaze level with mine. His brows and eyes maintained their gentle contours, but beneath them lay a barren wasteland of coldness.

“Let it go,” he said softly, with no trace of regret in his tone.

The phone was gone. Surrounded by the sea, all I could see was the sky and endless water. I was completely cut off from the world.

At this moment, I was trapped on a lone boat with two men intent on murdering me. One of them was the husband I had loved for twelve years. This was my predicament.

Don’t expect miracles from novels or movies to happen to me.

Looking around, there was nothing but sea and sky; it was impossible for a giant ship to appear mysteriously;

There were no seagulls circling overhead, which meant there were no islands nearby, and the scenario of “being thrown into the sea and washed ashore on a deserted island” had zero probability;

I couldn’t communicate with the boatman, and under Alistair’s watchful eyes, there was no environment for communication, let alone turning the third participant against them-pure fantasy;

I was just a woman with no strength to even truss a chicken, defeating two men? Absolutely impossible.

…

All possible paths to survival seemed to be blocked one by one.

No miracles, no coincidences, no divine intervention. Reality was cruel and logically rigorous; this was a real, desperate situation where cries for help would go unanswered.

If I couldn’t save myself, today would be the day I die.

I would sink into this vast ocean, leaving no trace behind.