Chapter 10 - The Rescue in the Dark
The rescue vessel reached me four minutes after I surfaced, though floating in the freezing Atlantic made the time feel like an eternity. I drifted in the absolute darkness, rising and falling with the massive swells while the cold spread mercilessly through my arms and legs. Every breath I took burned my lungs. My fingers had become completely numb, and the inflated chambers around my body felt less like a guarantee of survival and more like a temporary argument against the sea.I kept one frozen hand pressed firmly against my stomach. “Stay with me,” I whispered to my daughter through the howling wind. “Please stay with me.”
A low, powerful engine hummed through the fog. The black rescue boat appeared without navigation lights, slipping through the water like a phantom. Julian leaned over the side, his strong hands grabbing the fabric of my dress as two crew members hauled me from the water and onto the deck.
The moment I landed on the hard floor, my body began shaking so violently that my teeth clicked together. I could not speak. The medical team sprang into action, slicing away the wet, heavy outer layers of my silk dress. They wrapped me in specialized thermal blankets and placed chemical warming pads beneath my arms, along my ribs, and at my neck. A paramedic named Sofia Grant pressed an oxygen mask over my face.
“The baby,” I managed to choke out, pushing the mask away.
“We’re checking right now, stay calm,” Sofia said.
“I need to hear her.”
Sofia placed a portable, waterproof fetal monitor against my cold abdomen. For several terrifying seconds, the device produced only the harsh sound of static. I closed my eyes, a fresh wave of terror threatening to consume me.
Then, a rapid, rhythmic heartbeat filled the small cabin.
Swish-swish-swish.
Strong, quick, and undeniably alive. My daughter had survived the fall.
I began to cry. Not with relief exactly, but with the violent release of terror I had held trapped inside my chest for three weeks. Julian crouched beside me, wrapping another blanket around my shoulders.
“The transmitter worked perfectly,” he said, his voice a low rumble of reassurance. “We captured everything.”
“Did the yacht turn back?” I asked.
May you like
“No.”
I knew the answer before I asked, but hearing it confirmed changed something fundamental inside me. Adrian had not acted in a moment of sudden, blinding anger. He had watched the mother of his child disappear into freezing water, and he had simply continued sailing.
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