CHAPTER 4: Seven Seconds Before the Sea

Later, investigators would ask whether Maren was pushed.
The correct answer was more humiliating and more precise. Vivienne did not shove her like a villain in a cheap story. She peeled Maren’s fingers from the rail one by one while Gideon watched, while Leo cried, while the yacht tilted over a trough of black water.
Maren tried to hold the railing with her free hand.
Leo’s weight shifted against her hip.
Gideon said, “Vivienne.”
Not stop.
Not help her.
Only the woman’s name, as if etiquette had been scratched but not broken.
Maren’s last clear image before the fall was Vivienne’s face above her: beautiful, furious, and suddenly afraid of the consequences she had already started.
Then the deck vanished.
Cold air struck first. Leo’s scream went thin inside the night. Maren twisted around him before the water hit, locking both arms across his back so the sea would have to take her before it reached him.
They fell past the yacht’s black hull, past reflected lights, past their own distorted shadows.
The ocean rose up without manners.