CHAPTER 3 – THE NIGHT I BECAME HIS | 18+ |
I'm still shaking when the speedboat cuts the engine and drifts under the Phuket pier lights.
My ears ring from the quarry guns. My thighs are sticky with Sea's cum, my own cum, and someone else's blood. The towel around my waist is the only thing I'm wearing. Surf tosses me a black hoodie that smells like gun oil and salt. I pull it on. It swallows me whole; it's Sea's.
Sea stands at the bow, cigarette glowing, Tsunami sitting between his feet like a loaded weapon. The moon paints silver on the scars across his back. I can't stop staring at the fresh cut I put there with my nails when he fucked me against the shower wall and told me he loved me.
Love.
From a man who just killed six people in under four minutes.
From a man whose real name I still don't know.
I should be terrified.
I'm not.
I'm alive in a way Bangkok money never made me feel.
Java kills the running lights. The boat bumps against barnacled pylons. Surf ties us off with a rope thick as my wrist.
"Safehouse is topside," Java says, voice low. "Two hours till sunrise. Sleep, shower, fuck, whatever. Then we plan Bangkok."
Bangkok.
The word lands like a fist in my gut.
My father's city.
My cage.
Sea finally turns. Moonlight catches the split in his eyebrow from the cage fight, the blood crusted black. He offers me his hand. I take it. His palm is warm, rough, steady. Mine is still trembling.
We climb the ladder onto the pier. My bare feet slap wet wood. Salt air tastes like freedom and gunpowder.
The safehouse is a half-rotted fisherman's mansion on stilts—teak floors, no glass in the windows, just mosquito nets flapping like surrender flags. Inside: one mattress, one table, one fridge that hums like a dying animal. Surf and Java disappear into the back room. I hear a zipper, a grunt, the unmistakable slap of skin on skin. They don't waste time.
Sea locks the front door, slides a chair under the handle. Tsunami curls up on the threshold, eyes glowing.
Then it's just us.
He doesn't speak. Just looks at me—really looks—like he's memorizing every bruise he left on my body. I feel suddenly shy. Stupid, after everything.
"Shower's outside," he says finally. Voice rough from screaming my name in the quarry cage.
I nod. My throat is raw from screaming his.
He leads me through a back door onto a wooden deck over the water. There's a single hose hooked to a rainwater tank, a bar of soap the color of rust. Moonlight turns everything silver.
He strips first. Hoodie, jeans, boots. Naked, he's a weapon made of scars and ink. The kraken on his back looks ready to swallow the sea.
I drop the towel. Step under the hose.
Cold water hits like needles. I gasp. Sea steps in behind me, chest to my back, arms caging me. He turns the nozzle warmer. His hands—those hands that just ended lives—slide soap over my skin like he's washing sins away.
I close my eyes.
And that's when it happens.
The smell of the soap—cheap lemongrass—hits me like a memory I didn't know I had.
I'm sixteen again.
Father's penthouse bathroom. Same lemongrass soap.
He's holding my head under the marble sink because I smiled at the pool boy.
Water in my lungs. His voice cold: "You are Suvijak property. Act like it."
I jerk back to the present, gasping, hose water flooding my mouth.
Sea's arms tighten instantly. "Keen. Breathe."
I can't. I'm drowning on dry land.
He turns me, cups my face. "Look at me. You're here. With me. Safe."
Safe.
The word cracks something open in my chest.
I grab his wrists. "I need to tell you how we got here. All of it. Before we go to Bangkok. Before I ask you to burn it down with me."
He nods once. Kills the hose. Leads me inside, dripping.
We sit on the mattress, legs tangled, Tsunami's head in my lap. Surf and Java's moans echo from the next room like a heartbeat.
I start talking.
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### HOW I MET THE KRAKEN (Keen's POV – 48 hours ago)
Two nights ago I was still Keen Suvijak, prisoner in a 77th-floor tower.
Father had locked me in the penthouse after I refused the marriage he arranged—some oil heiress with teeth like pearls and a heart like concrete. He took my phone, my cards, my shoes. Said I'd learn gratitude.
I learned something else.
I learned I was done.
I waited until the guards changed shift at 2 a.m. Used the Montblanc penknife I stole from Father's desk to cut the tracker out of my ankle. Blood everywhere. Didn't care. Tourniquet with a Hermès tie. Limped to the service elevator. Bribed the night cleaner with the Rolex on my wrist.
By 3 a.m. I was in the underground garage, keys to the Lamborghini in my fist. White Huracán—Father's latest toy. I hot-wired the gate, drove south like hell was chasing me.
Twelve hours later I was on a cargo ferry to Koh Lanta, ankle throbbing, fake name on a fake ID. I'd heard the stories in Bangkok's secret chat rooms: the pier road, the racer called Sea, the man who makes rich boys disappear.
I wanted to disappear.
I wanted to matter.
I arrived at dusk. Checked into the Long Beach villa under the name "Prince." Staff didn't blink—money talks everywhere. Showered, changed into white silk, bandaged the ankle. Drove the Lambo to the pier at 11 p.m.
The crowd parted like someone pressed a button.
And there he was.
Sea.
Leaning against a matte-black Silvia, cigarette glowing, eyes blacker than the water behind him. Shirtless. Ink moving when he breathed. Scars like stories I wanted to read with my tongue.
I walked straight to him. Heart hammering so hard I thought he'd hear it.
"You're Sea," I said.
He looked me up and down—slow, predatory. "And you're bleeding through your pants, rich boy."
I glanced down. The bandage had soaked through. I hadn't noticed.
I smiled anyway. "Race me. I win, I ride with you. You win… I'm yours till sunrise. No limits."
The crowd went silent.
He stepped closer. Smelled like smoke and salt and danger.
"Keys," he said.
We raced.
He won.
Then he claimed me on the hood of his car while the island watched.
Bit me until I bled. Fucked me until I forgot my own name.
Carried me to his cliff lookout and let me ride him slow while the ocean listened.
That was forty-eight hours ago.
Since then:
- I killed my first man.
- I said "I love you" in a shower of blood and cold water.
- I watched Sea burn a quarry rather than let anyone else touch what's his.
Now I'm sitting naked on a mattress in Phuket, Tsunami snoring, Sea's fingers tracing the bite marks on my throat like he's reading braille.
I finish talking. My voice is hoarse.
He's quiet for a long time.
Then he leans in, kisses the lemongrass-scented hollow of my collarbone.
"Tomorrow," he says, "we take the fight to Bangkok. We walk into that tower. We make him kneel. Then we burn the crown and build our own."
I nod. Tears I didn't know I was holding slip free.
He wipes them with his thumb, licks it clean.
"Sleep, Prince," he whispers. "Tomorrow you stop being his son."
I curl into him. His heartbeat under my ear is steady, strong.
For the first time in twenty-one years, I fall asleep without fear.
Tomorrow we go home.
Tomorrow we end it.
Tomorrow I become the man Sea already loves.