Page 132 of The Company

We slow down again as the boat captain tries to weave his way through the sailboats to get to the open garage of the yacht. It’s the High Summer. My favorite. The one I left last summer. The one where I committed all my crimes. My father is waiting. He actually smiles, and then he frowns. I follow his gaze and it lands on Sasha. She’s ignoring everyone. Me, James, the looks my father is shooting at her. The seat she’s sitting on is way in the tip of the bow, and she’s leaning over. I look back to my father and catch him nodding in my direction.

But it’s not me he’s nodding at, it’s James.

When I look back to James he’s got a gun out. It’s a big gun with a silencer thing on the end of it. He points it at Sasha, just as she stands up on her cushion and turns to smile and wave at me.

James shoots her in the chest, the fluff from her life vest flies up in the air, and then her body falls overboard.

All I hear is my scream and then I’m being hauled out of the boat and into the garage. Four men are holding me by my limbs. I’m not even allowed to walk, I’m carried. I squirm, elbowing one in the neck as he loses his hold, my feet get free, and then James is in front of me. I lift both legs and give him a two-footed kick to the chest. He stumbles backwards, the breath knocked out of him. But he never stops looking at me.

His eyes are saying something, but it’s not anything I want to hear.

“You’re a traitor,” I spit at him. “You are a traitor!” I scream it this time.

He says nothing. My father walks up to him and claps him on the back. “Well done, James. And the card? Did you find the card?”

James shakes his head. “No, sir. But I know where it is. I’m going there next.” He drags his eyes from me and stares at my father. I’m being carried away, my arms and legs again captured by the security guards, and some of his words get lost in the bustle.

But then I hear it.

“Ten days,” he says. “I’ll have your son and the card in ten days.”

He looks straight at me and lowers his sunglasses.

And that’s the last I see of James Fenici as I’m dragged into the interior of the ship.