Read Chapter 11: Betrayal on Deck

The first hint was the silence. The *Sea Serpent*’s engine had cut to a low idle, the deck lurching gently underfoot, and every man on watch had gone still. Mack came up from the galley with a mug of coffee gone cold and found Rosa at the rail, staring not at the water but at the horizon—at the sleek, dark hull of a boat closing fast.

“Who the hell is that?” Mack said.

Rosa didn’t answer. Her jaw was set, her knuckles white on the railing.

The boat cut the distance hard, spray flying. Mack counted six men on deck before he saw the one standing at the bow, arms crossed, grin wide as a carving knife.

Cruz.

“Rosa.” Mack’s voice went low and dangerous. “Tell me you didn’t.”

She turned to face him, and for a moment her eyes held something like grief. “Liam’s dead, Mack. Pete got possessed. You’re hiding gold, hiding packages, lying to Reyes’s men. What haven’t you told us? What’s next—one of us more?”

“I was protecting you.”

“From what? The truth?” She shook her head. “You had a plan. You never once asked if we wanted to be part of it.”

Cruz’s men swarmed the deck before Mack could answer. They came over the rails like they’d done this a hundred times—boots thudding, cables in hand—and within thirty seconds the crew was facedown on the planks. Mack started for Rosa, but a boot caught him behind the knee and drove him to the deck. Cable bit into his wrists, pulled tight behind his back.

Cruz stepped aboard with a theatrical sigh, looking around the *Sea Serpent* like a man browsing a market stall. “Marcus Donovan. You’re harder to find than a sober priest.” He crouched, his face close, smelling of cheap cologne and cheaper rum. “But I found you.”

Mack spat saltwater and blood. “Rosa sold me out.”

“No.” Cruz straightened, waving a hand dismissively. “Rosa made a smart call. She called me, offered the location. We negotiated. That’s business—you wouldn’t know, drowning in debt.”

He turned to his men. “Search the ship. Gold, paper, anything sealed. Bring it all.”

Mack watched them tear apart his vessel—the cabinets he’d built with his own hands, the charts he’d trusted, the bunk he’d slept in when the nightmares got bad. He saw Rosa standing off to the side, his crew bound at her feet, and she couldn’t meet his eyes. She looked at the sea instead.

Abigail, hauled up from below with a cable around her wrists, was shoved to the deck beside Mack. She was breathing hard but her eyes were sharp, tracking everything.

“They’re not going to find the gold,” Mack muttered to her.

“I know.” Abigail’s voice was barely a whisper. “But I found something else. The package—I got it open before they grabbed me. There was a letter, folded tight. The admiral’s instructions.”

“And?”

“It’s not just a delivery. There’s a time—a specific tide, on a specific date.” She swallowed. “And there’s a location. An island off the Carolinas. Matches the circular marking on the charts.”

Cruz’s men came back empty-handed. One of them—a heavy man with a scarred cheek—shoved Mack’s shoulder with his boot. “Nothing below, boss. No gold, no package, no papers.”

Cruz’s grin flickered. “Where is it, Donovan?”

“On the wreck,” Mack said, voice flat. “Where I left it.”

“Then it’s still there. We’ll dive it.”

“You won’t.” Mack looked up at him, and something cold moved behind his eyes. “You have a hundred questions about what happened on this ship. Why Liam died the way he did. Why Pete woke up raving about his sister. Why I keep looking over my shoulder at boot prints that don’t belong to anyone alive.”

Cruz snorted. “Superstitious nonsense.”

“The treasure’s cursed,” Mack said. “Every coin we pull up, Blackwood claims another soul. Liam’s on the watch now. Thirteen doomed souls, Cruz. You take that gold, you join the count.”

Cruz laughed, short and ugly. “You think I’m scared of a two-hundred-year-old pirate?” He leaned down, grabbed a fistful of Mack’s collar, and hauled him halfway up. “I’ve killed men with real guns and real grudges. Ghosts don’t scare me.”

“They should.” Mack’s voice was almost gentle. “They shouldn’t scare you—you should fear them. It’s different.”

For a moment, something flickered in Cruz’s eyes. He glanced down at the deck, almost involuntarily, as if checking the wood for wet boot prints. Then he shook it off, shoving Mack back to the planks.

“Search the wreck,” he told his men. “Every inch. Bring up anything sealed. And put these people below—I don’t want them watching.”

Mack felt the cable cinch harder around his wrists as they hauled him upright. Rosa was being pushed toward the hatch too, and for a moment her path crossed his. She stopped, looking at him with eyes full of accusations and regret.

“I did what I had to,” she said quietly.

“No.” Mack’s gaze was steady. “You did what was easy. There’s a difference. The ghosts found you anyway—the through line connecting Liam’s death to Blackwood’s terror wasn’t something you could stop. But you made your choice. Now the man who runs this ship just brought his soul to the auction block, and he doesn’t even know the bidding started.”

Rosa’s mouth opened, closed. She said nothing more.

Cruz’s men dragged them below decks, slamming the hatch behind them. It was dark in the hold, the smell of salt and bilge and fear thick in the air. Mack could hear his crew breathing around him, their anger and confusion rolling off them in waves. He leaned back against the bulkhead, felt the wood groan under his weight, and let out a long, slow breath.

Somewhere above, Cruz was laughing with his men as they prepared to dive the *Santa Catalina*.

And somewhere below, in the cold water they’d come from, Mack could feel Blackwood stirring.