The Silk Trap: My Savior Was My Worst Mistake
Who do you think is in the helicopter? Her husband, or someone worse?
The white sand of this private island is so fine it feels like powdered bone.
In this shot, I’m wearing the silk wrap he bought me in Milan. He told me the floral pattern represented "new life." I believed him. I believed him when he said he would help me disappear from the Sterling estate. I believed him when he said the boat would be waiting at the north shore at midnight.
But the boat never came.
As I knelt here, posing for the camera he insisted on bringing, I realized the terrifying truth: My "savior," the man holding the lens, isn't my ally. He’s my husband’s younger brother.
He didn't rescue me because he loved me. He rescued me because I’m the only one who knows the password to the offshore crypto-wallets. He needed me away from the cameras of the city, out here in the middle of the ocean, where screams are swallowed by the wind.
He thinks I’m trembling because I’m afraid. He thinks this look in my eyes is desperation.
He’s half right.
He doesn't know that while he was busy checking the lighting, I slipped his satellite phone into the waistband of my bikini. He doesn't know that I’ve already sent our GPS coordinates to his brother’s rival—a man who is much more violent, but much more generous.
If I'm going to be a bird in a cage, I might as well choose the man who provides the most expensive seed.
"Smile, Mia," he says from behind the camera. "You look like an angel."
I give him exactly what he wants. I tilt my head, let the silk slip off my shoulder, and look directly into the lens. I smile, not because I’m happy, but because I can hear the distant hum of a helicopter that doesn't belong to him.
In the game of betrayal, the person who falls in love first always loses. And he just fell for the girl in the white bikini.
