Page 50 of Blue in the Deep Blue Sea

“I think that’s when he went to see my father,” I said. “Only instead of asking to borrow the yacht, he asked about the map and the ship. I’d bet on it.”

She stepped closer.

“My uncle had a case open about the stolen art, but he closed it after Annie died.”

“He never told me.” Isabella wrapped her arms around herself, rubbing at the sleeves. “But it makes me wonder… did she really jump, or was she pushed?”

“Maybe we should let the dead stay buried, Isabella,” I said. “If Gianni disappeared because of this, then both you and Gabriella could be in danger.”

“No shit, Sherlock.” Her hands flew into the air before she jabbed a finger at her chest. “I almost died, remember?”

“Why did you say you were pushed?” I raised a brow. “We saw you jump.”

“I lost my balance.”

“Nah.” I chuckled. “I think you saw someone, and you didn’t want to be recognized.”

“Think what you want,” she snapped. “Maybe I jumped because I was fucking afraid he’d push me overboard.”

She lifted her chin, brushed past me, and headed for the door.

“Gianni had suspicions you were seeing someone behind his back,” I shouted after her. “Was it Luca?”

“Fuck off,” she snapped. “I would never do that to Gianni.”

“Then why did he try to kill you?” I asked.

She turned, the color draining from her face. “Dante’s brother tried to kill me?”

“We saw him on the surveillance footage. And I know what Luca looks like.”

She leaned against the doorframe, twisting her butterfly necklace between her fingers as she clutched it. “I went to find him that afternoon, and he never boarded the yacht, Oliver,” she said. “I don’t know who you saw, but it wasn’t him.”

I turned away and walked to the window, holding myself against the metal frame. “What does he look like?”

“Just like Dante,” she said. “They’re twins. The only difference is Luca has blond hair.”

I scoffed. “Fuck.” My fist slammed into the metal bar with a dull clang. “Go,” I said. “I have to figure out what the hell is going on.”

She opened the door and slipped out, closing it quietly behind her.

I looked down at the sun deck. George and the captain stood together, cigarettes between their fingers, laughing as though nothing had happened.

My gaze drifted to the rolling waves, the sea carrying fragments of memory that surfaced one after another. I closed my eyes, trying to push them away.

Only one stayed.

The night of the Light Festival in 2001.

I saw her that night, running toward the sea with her best friend, Annie. Glitter still clung to her hair from the festival. Blue eye shadow smeared across her eyelids, while rhinestones shaped into tiny stars sparkled at the corners of her eyes. Some were coming loose, melting down her skin and making it look as though she’d been crying stardust.

Her pink lips curled into a smile. On anyone else, that shade of blue would have looked clownish. But on her? She was a goddamn star.

If she hadn’t been drunk, she would’ve told me how much she hated my guts—how disgusted she was by my very presence. But tonight, thanks to the two shots of tequila Gianni had talked her into taking, she smiled at me.

And for a moment, I saw a new color in her eyes—deep ocean blue, like the sea at night: beautiful enough to make you forget it could drown you. I wanted to lose myself in that color, to sink beneath it and never come back up.

But all I could do was admire it from afar.