Mr & Mister Danvers: Initiation - Prologue. PROLOGUE

PROLOGUE:

The creature was dying, and so was I; both were swallowed whole by the ocean.

Like an ungainly animal urgently attempting to escape an impassable bog, the freighter dove into the roaring surges of the dark, furious waters.

I held onto my stomach as the crimson cascaded downward, sprinkling the ground with a sea of red.

It poured forth into the small opening outside this shipping container, where I hid against the shrapnel lodged in my sternum and the bullet I had nursed inside my stomach.

The bleeding was harsh. Minutes more, and with the rivulets of blood I'd lost, I knew death was about to collect me.

The pounding waves grew to enormous proportions and banged against the bulkhead under the might of the midnight winds.

The white mist that soared to the night sky spilled forth on the highest level.

The crashing waters woke me.

Whenever it angrily knocked on the door, my head would startle, shake roughly, and stifle the closing of my eyes as the loss of blood kept draining me out of my consciousness.

All around, there were sounds indicative of lifeless suffering: wood scraping against other wood, cables stretching till they broke.

All around, the ship was about to explode, and there was no more time to escape.

The noises of the water, the wind, and the agony of the ship were abruptly broken by one massive explosion.

Once it triggered, running was impossible, and escaping was implausible.

The noise arrived from the cabin, barely illuminated, and soon spread across the ship. I lunged out of the shipping crate while gripping my stomach with one hand and the railing with the other.

I planned on finding a raft, a smaller boat, something that would safely draw me away from this bloodsoaked ship.

Then, the man who had pursued me from Marseilles to Trouveille-Sur-Mer dropped down from the second-level shipping container. Cautiously, he aimed his rifle with a murderous desire to end my life.

I shouted, "Why are you doing this? Who are you?"

Deaf in both ears, he stood against the rocking, but he did not listen.

He lifted his rifle and fired a shot that grazed my arm while supporting himself against the cabin floor, against the trembling of the ship.

As the boat severely rocked, the guy fatally shot by my pursuer dipped over the edge of the boat into the chaos below.

I flung both of my hands up to my head and bowed backward as the freighter's bow abruptly sank into the valley of two enormous waves, taking me off my feet and slamming my head into the ground.

My head was split open, my hands grabbing whatever I could hold, and my eyes were bloodshot from the ocean’s constant spray, now swollen from the wounds. My legs crumbled as my body lunged forward since there was nothing I could cling to.

I was tired.

I was exhausted.

After killing almost everyone on the boat—everyone who was out to get me—I had accepted my fate and that this was my last stop. My final course.

This was the place where I would draw my last breath and die.

My pursuer took off his mask.

"It can’t be," I muttered against the crime of disbelief that he was still alive. That regardless of his choices, his deeds, and what he’d done, my heart still yearned for him, as the palpable echo whose name I cried countless nights and whose pleasure had marked beneath my loins. "Why? Why did you do it? Why?" I asked, for it was as late for me as it was for us.

I was losing consciousness, and my final words were nearing.

He dropped his gun and ran towards me, clutching my body from the raging torrents that wished to pull me away.

He held my face, kissed my cheek, and whispered, "Don’t you see. Everything I did was for you. All of it...all of it. Don’t give up on us now."

And as my eyes fluttered to close, the words that dipped into my lips were as sweet as they were cheerful. "Take care of Brady and Izzie. Promise me…"

"I’m not promising anything. No one's dying today, you understand?"

"You’re a piece of shit," I grunted, the curves of my lips bearing some hope. "How I missed you. Stay. Don't go."

He leaned forward and kissed my lips. "You smell pungent and rank. You haven't showered in days. You need a bath," he said, smiling with that smile I hadn’t seen in ages.

It brought comfort to me that his face was the last thing I had seen...

And then it went black.