The water broke around him, and Westcott’s mouth tore open in a ragged gasp. The girl didn’t move. Her head lolled, her mouth slack.
Strong hands from above seized them both, hauling them onto the yacht’s swim platform. Westcott collapsed, exhausted. His entire body was shaking.
He turned his head, only to see that Nailah was already by the girl’s side, checking the child’s pulse. And then, without hesitation, she locked her hands and began chest compressions.
“One, two, three, four—” Nailah counted under her breath.
On the fifth compression, the girl jolted, and a gush of seawater poured from her mouth. She coughed violently, choking and sobbing. His wife pushed damp hair from the child’s face and looked directly at him. Something had changed in Nailah’s expression, a softness he hadn’t seen in months. His wife pulled the girl into her arms, murmuring soft Spanish into her ear as the girl’s small hands found Nailah’s linen shawl and clung to it.
Westcott rolled to his stomach, then rose unsteadily, his heart still hammering in his chest.
He had done it.
By sheer force of will, he had stolen the girl back from the ocean. And in that act, he saw a glimpse of something larger. The world was a cold, indifferent sea that swallowed the weak without remorse. But he, Everett Westcott, could be the hand that reached into water and chose who survived, and who thrived. Perhaps it was arrogance, or maybe a calling; he couldn’t tell yet.
But as he stood there, dripping and trembling, he felt something settle inside him. Something that felt dangerously close to clarity. Or could it be destiny?
Fate was just another current, wasn’t it? Blind and cruel, for sure, but hadn’t he just defied it and won?
Yes. I did.
And this girl, this silent, shivering child in his wife’s arms, was proof. She had been plucked from nothingness by his resolve alone. Withouthim, she wouldn’t have made it, and that truth burned bright and absolute in his mind. He had chosen her. Saved her. He had redirected the course of her life.
And if I can do that for one girl, then why not more? Why not millions?
Someday soon, Westcott was sure of it now, it wouldn’t just be one frightened little girl rising from the sea off the Venezuelan coast. No, it would be entire nations that would rise or fall by his hand.
No ... by our hands,he thought, looking at his wife.
Hadn’t they just proved that shaping fate was possible? That salvation wasn’t random?
It can be engineered. Just like resin.
One only needed vision. And the stomach for it.
And the girl they’d just saved, she would play a role. He knew that too. She didn’t know it yet, but her life had been claimed, just like his.
Chapter One
Palm Beach, Aruba
From the swim platform of the thirty-six-foot dive boat docked in front of the Marriott’s Aruba Surf Club, the asset had a great view of Palm Beach in all its manufactured glory. From the powder-white sand freshly groomed by tractors to the palm trees swaying like props on a set and the wall of hotels rising behind them, she scanned it all with contempt.
To her, it felt fake. All of it.
No charm,she thought.Nothing like Exuma.
Palm Beach was like a resort rendering brought to life, a place where influencers staged bikini photo shoots, where tourists drank watered-down cocktails with pastel-colored paper umbrellas, and where, today, two of the most corrupt men in the Democratic Republic of the Congo had come to play with their families.
“Welcome aboard, messieurs,” she said in French, helping the two men.
Her associate, Henry, stood at the helm, saying nothing. He wore sunglasses and a faded T-shirt, playing his part as just another quiet local helping the tourists burn through their money.
The first guest to step aboard, Destin Mpanga, was a former high-ranking officer with the Congolese National Police who’d become a powerful warlord within the Congo River Alliance, a rebel coalition whose main objective was to overthrow the DRC government. Mpanga was in his fifties, bulky with muscles gone soft, and his gut pressedagainst the zipper of his half-donned wet suit. The man was responsible for the deaths of at least a hundred civilians last year alone, and he had been accused of several war crimes, including enlisting child soldiers.
Behind him, Dr. Hervé Tchangana, a career politician and the current minister of land management of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, was the second—and final—guest to board. Tchangana was a parasite feeding on Mpanga’s chaos, bleeding his own people dry in the process. Just like Mpanga and his family had done, Tchangana, his wife, and four children had traveled out of the DRC under assumed identities.
The asset watched as the wives and children of the two men boarded a second vessel moored nearby, a white catamaran flying a tour company’s flag. The asset gave them a polite wave as the catamaran’s crew arranged towels and fruit baskets on the upper deck. A minute later, the catamaran headed north for a three-hour snorkeling trip.