“I’m afraid your father is in…heaven as well,” Sister Clara says, though she seems angry about this.
“They’re both in heaven?”
“Yes, dear.”
What does that mean? Who will take care of me now? Maybe they are both just waiting for me to go and be with them in heaven.
“Am I going to heaven too?”
“Oh no, Eric! Of course not,” Sister Clara says in a panic.
“Is…Mommy coming back then?”
She turns to Mother Agnes with a worried look on her face.
“Eric, your mother…” She pauses and gives Sister Clara a look before continuing. “Your mother and father are both dead. They aren’t coming back. You will be sent to a special place somewhere else run by the Church. You’ll stay there until they can place you with a couple who will take care of you from now on. Do you understand?”
Her voice is so different from Sister Clara’s soothing voice, that I’m afraid to answer no, even though I don’t understand at all. So, I nod.
“We’re going to give you a new name, since you’ll be living here in Spain. How does that sound?” Sister Clara asks with a nice smile.
“A new name?”
“Yes, so that—” Her voice falters a bit. “Think of it like Superman, how he pretended to be Clark Kent so everyone wouldn’t know who he really was?”
“Sister Clara,” Mother Agnes says in a stern voice. “We don’t need to resort to any more lies.”
Mother Agnes turns to me. “You can no longer use the name Eric Coleman. Do you understand?”
Once again, I nod, not wanting to upset her anymore even though I definitely don’t understand.
“How about something Spanish in honor of your new family? We’ll give you a name that is similar so it will be easier for you to adjust. How about…Enrique? That’s close enough, although it means Henry in Spanish.”
I nod again, still very confused. But Mother Agnes nods as though she’s satisfied with my response.
“Enrique,” Sister Clara says with a smile. It disappears as she leans in, looking just as serious as Mother Agnes did. “Can you say Enrique?”
“Enrique.” It is similar to my name, but I still don’t know why I have to change it.
“Perfect,” Sister Clara says with a smile of relief. “From now on, you are Enrique, and when your new family comes to adopt you, you’ll take their last name.”
Something inside me slowly begins to grasp at least part of what’s going on. Mommy and Daddy are gone, and they aren’t coming back.
And now I’m…Enrique.
“This last bit is important,” Sister Clara says, giving me such a serious look, I get worried again. “You can never tell anyone about your father and what you saw him do that night, do you understand? Don’t ever say a word.”
“I understand.”
Part I The Mermaid
Chapter One Enrique
“You’ve been very, very naughty,” I say in English, the lingua franca, especially on the high seas.
Constantin Papadopoulos stares back at me with the sort of smug defiance only a billionaire could maintain.
“One hundred million euros hidden away while you cut corners in your business?” I cluck my tongue at him, the way the nuns in Catholic school used to when I got into trouble.
“I found this one hiding out in the bedroom.”
I turn to see Diego, one of my men practically dragging a woman to the lower deck of the luxury yacht we’ve just boarded. He shoves her, and she falls onto one of the deck chairs in front of me. Since we arrived by night, as usual, she has on nothing more than a flimsy negligee that leaves little to the imagination.
“And yet another treasure that you’ve been hiding away,” I admonish before approaching the woman who is trembling with contempt and fear as she stares up at me. “It seems you’ve been holding out on us, Constantin, though I can certainly see why. This little gem is definitely tempting.”
She’s exactly the kind of woman you might find on the yacht of a rich bastard like Constantin. No doubt, just one of many in his personal harem of arm candy, each an exact replica of the other: whatever isn’t fake has been studiously contoured via a regimen of pilates, lettuce, and kombucha.
The unfortunate woman has every right to be scared. None of us who have taken over this yacht are good men. In fact, we’re almost as wicked as the man who owns this boat. We take what we want, from a very select group of individuals, without much concern for those whom we’ve stolen it from.
“I think I’ll take this one for myself.”
The look of panic on her face, the clenched fists, and the tense body language have piqued my interest. She scrambles as far away from me as she can on the deck chair, pressing into the raised back. Her fists sink into the cushion by her sides as her body remains taut and wary with apprehension.
I’m more focused on the long legs stretched out before her, leading up to the lacy edge of that barely-there thing she has on. It’s risen up on her hips, and now I can see the strip of silk between her thighs. The strain of her muscles has caused her back to arch, forcing those round globes—unfortunately fake, since they haven’t so much as quivered with movement—to be even more pronounced.
“Yes, this one is mine,” I say, staring down at her with eager eyes, not that she can see them. Like all of the men with me, we wear specially manufactured, full-body suits that leave no trace of DNA or fingerprints behind, or a clue as to what we look like, even our eyes, which are hidden behind specialized goggles. The best feature is the barely noticeable mouthpiece inserted into the front, turning our individualized voices into a uniform mechanized sound. I could brush by Constantin and verbally apologize to him at some lavish party when this is all over, and he wouldn’t recognize me as the man who is about to
