Stranded by My Island Billionaire Husband novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Orders

The dying pilot says Veda ordered him to take the safe first and never come back for Lena, in Rhys's name, and Lena finds a sealed envelope in the wreckage with her name on it.

I gave Junie to Abel before I even thought about it.

"Hold her. Don't let her out of your arms."

"Where are you going?"

"Down there. He's alive."

"Forty minutes," Abel said. "Thirty-five now. Lena, you come back inside that."

"I will."

I ran.

The ground was soaked and littered with stripped branches, and twice I went down on my hands in the mud.

The air was so still that I could hear my own breath sawing in my throat.

Overhead the eye stood open, and the stars looked washed.

The beach was a hundred meters of wet sand scattered with palm fronds.

The helicopter lay on its side, and the fire on its belly had already burned itself small.

The pilot had stopped crawling.

He lay on his back with his helmet off and his visor cracked across, staring up at the sky.

I dropped to my knees beside him.

His flight suit was black from the hips down, and his legs were wrong in a way I recognized.

I worked at the buckles of his vest with shaking hands.

"Don't," he said.

"I'm a nurse. Hold still."

"Ma'am. Don't. I know what it is."

His voice was a dry whisper, but it was clear.

I stopped, and I looked at his face.

He was perhaps forty, with a sunburned nose and a wedding ring.

"You're the wife," he said.

"Yes."

"Where's the baby?"

"Safe. In the cellar."

He closed his eyes for a second, and when they opened, they were wet.

"Good. I wanted to turn back. I tried. The turn came and the wall hit us before I got the nose around."

"Why didn't you wait for me?" I said. "You said twenty minutes."

"They said I was to say that."

My hands went still on his vest.

"Who did?"

"Ms. Lorne." He coughed, and it took a long time.

"She called me yesterday, and again this morning. Safe first, then wheels up, straight to Cairns."

"And?"

"And don't go back for you. Say a second trip, say twenty minutes, whatever keeps you calm."

The still air pressed on my ears.

"Veda told you that."

"In Mr. Vandeleur's name." He swallowed.

"I thought it was a joke. A man doesn't leave his wife and a newborn on an island in a category five."

"But?"

"But she had his authority on the paperwork. And I have a daughter in school."

"Did Rhys sign it off?"

"I never spoke to him." His head turned toward me, slowly.

"I'm sorry. I should have put you in the seat and thrown the box in the sea."

I wanted to scream at him.

I wanted to grab his vest and shake him until he took it back.

But he was dying, and I had seen that face in a hundred ER bays.

It was the face of a man who has said the true thing at last and cannot take it back.

So I took his hand instead.

"Thank you for telling me," I said.

"Tell your husband."

"I will."

"Tell him I did what the paper said." His fingers closed on mine. "That's all I ever did. Whatever the paper said."

He tried to say something else.

It never came out.

The grip loosened.

I sat beside him in the wet sand with his hand in mine, and my pulse raced.

When I could stand, I pulled his flight jacket closed over his chest.

I didn't have time to cry for him.

The stars on the western edge of the eye were being eaten, one by one, by a black line.

I got up and looked at the helicopter.

The cargo door had burst in the crash.

In the sand beside it lay a gray steel box with its lid sprung open and paper hanging out.

The safe.

Veda had wanted it out so badly that it flew first and fell first.

Now it lay in the surf line at my feet.

I knelt and pulled out everything I could reach.

A waterproof pouch, thick as a book.

I held it up to the last of the starlight.

Inside were the deed to the island, with my name printed on it.

Under it was a folded trust agreement with Junie's name on the first page.

And one more thing, tucked between them.

A cream-colored envelope, sealed, gone soft at the corners from the damp.

My name was written across the front in Rhys's handwriting.

Below it, in smaller letters, he had written four more words.

*Open when it matters.*

The wind found my hair, from the other side.

Behind me, the sea began to roar.

← Chapter 2 · All chapters · Chapter 4 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend