Chapter 10: Her Last Version

The investigator played Martin’s recording in a small interview room the next morning.

Elias sat beside his lawyer. Across the table, the investigator pressed play and left the phone faceup between them.

Adrian’s voice came first.

“If he refuses the sale again, we need someone aboard who can say how he behaved.”

A chair scraped. Then Selene spoke.

“Owen won’t lie for us.”

“I wasn’t talking about Owen.”

There was a pause. In the background, a door closed.

“Then use Martin,” Selene said. “He already believes Elias isn’t well.”

“He won’t get on that boat.”

“Someone else, then. Someone who sees Elias lose control before we reach the islands.”

The recording ended.

Elias looked at the investigator. “Is that the section you wanted me to identify?”

“Yes. Do you recognize both voices?”

“Selene and Adrian.”

“Did either of them tell you they planned to bring another person aboard?”

“Selene said Adrian might meet us. No one else.”

The investigator nodded. “We’ve checked the rest of the file. They discuss asking the deckhand to report any argument he witnessed. We found no evidence that he knew what they intended or agreed to give a false account.”

Elias thought of the young man locked inside the cabin while Adrian dragged him toward the rail.

“Have you told him?”

“Yes.”

The deckhand had been frightened by the recording, the investigator said. Before the voyage, Selene had asked whether Elias drank on board and whether he became angry with the crew. He had answered that he had never seen either. She had changed the subject.

There had been a second person in Selene’s plan, but not a second accomplice. She and Adrian had wanted a witness they could shape after the fact.

The investigator stopped the recording and took out a folder.

“Martin’s account led us to the original file Adrian kept. We can establish when it was made. He’s also given us the messages Adrian sent with the edited dinner video.”

Elias glanced at his lawyer. “What does Martin want in return?”

“He wants his cooperation taken into account,” the investigator said. “His interests aren’t yours. We’re checking everything he’s provided against other records.”

That answer reassured Elias more than a promise would have.

Outside the interview room, his lawyer explained what was expected to happen next. Adrian and Selene faced charges arising from the attack on the yacht. The disputed marina agreement and the attempts to use Elias’s accounts were being investigated separately. The recordings, witnesses, equipment records, and financial files would be considered together.

“Selene’s lawyer wants to meet,” she added.

“About East Point?”

“About the marriage. Her current account is that Adrian led her into the property scheme and threatened to expose it when she tried to leave.”

“Does she still say I attacked him on the boat?”

“She hasn’t withdrawn that claim.”

Elias walked to the window at the end of the hall. Cars moved through the parking lot below. He had spent years believing he could resolve a bad deal by sitting across from the other person until they told him what they really wanted. He did not know what Selene wanted from him now.

“I’ll meet her,” he said. “With you there.”

Two days later, they sat across from each other in an office overlooking the harbor. Selene wore a plain gray coat. Without the red dress, without Adrian beside her, she looked tired. Elias noticed a small bruise on her wrist and hated that his first impulse was to ask who had hurt her.

Her lawyer spoke briefly. Selene asked to address Elias directly.

“I know you’ve heard the recording,” she said.

“Yes.”

“Adrian kept records of every conversation. I didn’t know he recorded that one.”

“What would you have said differently?”

She lowered her eyes. “I would have told him to stop.”

“You could have told him that on the boat.”

“He said the plan was to frighten you. Make you think he could take the company and force you to negotiate.”

“You hit me.”

“I panicked when you moved toward Daniel.”

“You said you were afraid I would take everything from you.”

“I was.”

Elias leaned forward. “I was tied to an anchor. Adrian had his hands on me. You stood close enough to untie the cord.”

Selene’s eyes filled. “I thought he’d pull you back.”

“He shoved me over, and you watched.”

“I know what I saw.”

For the first time since the voyage, she did not try to replace his memory with a gentler one. Elias waited.

“I heard the chain go,” she said. “I thought you were dead.”

“And what did you do?”

“I stood there.” Her voice broke. “I stood there until your hand came up beside the ladder.”

Elias remembered her face when he climbed aboard. Terror, certainly. He had once mistaken that look for fear of losing him.

“Did you love Adrian?” he asked.

She appeared startled by the question.

“I thought I did. He kept telling me there was a way out of living in your shadow.”

“There was. You could have left me.”

“I would have left with nothing.”

“You had your own money. You had a home.”

“I wanted the life we built.”

Elias sat back. At last, she had given him an answer he believed.

Their lawyers returned to the financial questions. Selene offered to withdraw her challenge to the company’s pause on East Point and to provide her correspondence with Adrian. In exchange, she wanted Elias to state that she had not known he would be thrown overboard.

He looked at her.

“You can hand over the messages,” he said. “I won’t tell anyone what you knew when you’ve given me three different answers.”

Selene closed her eyes.

His lawyer made a note. The meeting ended without an agreement about Elias’s statement. Selene did, through her lawyer, arrange to provide the correspondence.

Outside, Elias stopped on the harbor steps. Daniel was waiting by the car to drive him back. The bruises on Elias’s shoulder had begun to fade, though raising his arm still hurt.

“How was it?” Daniel asked.

“She told me she thought Adrian would pull me back.”

Daniel opened the passenger door but said nothing.

“I keep trying to decide whether she believed it,” Elias said.

“You may never know.”

“I know she let him do it.”

Daniel nodded. Elias got into the car.

As they pulled away, his lawyer called. Selene’s messages had already begun arriving. One, sent to Adrian the night before the voyage, contained a single instruction about Elias:

If he says no again, make sure he can’t come home and undo it.

Elias asked his lawyer to send the message to the investigator. Then he looked out at the water until the harbor disappeared behind the buildings.