On Our Honeymoon, My Husband Was Planning to Murder Me, but After One Call, the Smile Disappeared from His Face

On the third night, at the door of my own bedroom, I heard my husband promise his parents that he would throw me into the sea by midnight.

When I heard the voice, I was standing on the staircase, my fingers clutched around the gilded railing as if it were the only thing still connecting me to this world. I was dizzy. My knees were trembling. I had slept almost constantly for three days, and Flynn had blamed it on seasickness.

“How much did you give her?” his father, Aidan, asked from below.

“Two pills last night,” Flynn answered calmly. “And today I mixed them into the soup too. By midnight, she will barely wake up.”

My breath caught.

My husband spoke as if he were discussing the dinner menu.

“Then tonight?” his mother, Fiona, asked.

“They expect the storm after midnight. I’ll take her outside, pretending she needs fresh air. Then one push.”

Silence fell.

“The ocean will do the rest itself,” Flynn added.

My palms grew cold. An hour earlier, this same man had kissed my forehead and told me I was the most beautiful bride in the entire Caribbean.

Our yacht had been given to us by my father for the wedding. The smell of expensive wood stood on the deck, and my father’s favorite brass compass hung on the walls. Since childhood, I had known that this ship was almost a small palace. Now it seemed like a cage to me.

“Her money?” Aidan asked.

Flynn chuckled.

“She signed the power of attorney before the wedding. As soon as they declare her missing, we’ll transfer the assets. Three hundred million dollars will remain with us.”

I heard the light clinking of glasses.

Of the champagne my father had bought.

On the yacht my father had given us.

And with the people who were celebrating my death.

I should have run back, but my body would not obey me. While returning up the stairs, my left foot missed a step. I clutched the railing and clenched my teeth so hard that my jaw hurt.

“What do we do about the parents?” Fiona asked.

This time Flynn answered immediately.

“They’re going to the mountains by car next week.”

“And?”

“My people will take care of the car.”

“An accident?” Aidan snickered.

“Brake failure on an icy road. After that, no one from the Sterling family will remain who can get in our way.”

I covered my mouth so I would not scream.

Father. Mother. My family. They were not satisfied with only killing me.

Flynn had taken my mobile phone. After lunch, he had told me that its battery needed charging. Now I understood why.

I barely reached the bedroom and locked the door. Then I collapsed beside the bed and slipped my hand beneath the carved wooden frame. My fingers found cold metal.

On my seventeenth birthday, my father taught me the code for a secret emergency system. After a kidnapping threat, he had installed such a device on all the Sterling ships.

I opened the panel and entered the code.

A green light came on.

“Sterling Security. Identify yourself,” came from the hidden speaker.

“I am Evelyn Sterling,” I whispered.

There was silence for several seconds.

Then the voice returned.

“Mrs. Sterling, we have been waiting for you to activate it.”

“Waiting for me? Why?”

He did not have time to finish answering, because the door handle slowly went down. Someone was trying to enter the room, while I leaned toward the speaker and waited to hear the officer’s next words…

“Because your husband’s conversations have been recorded for the last seventy-two hours,” the officer said.

The door handle moved again.

“Do not let him know that the system has been activated,” he added. “Keep your voice low.”

“Evelyn?” Flynn’s voice became soft and caring behind the door. “Are you all right? You shouldn’t sit alone in your room in this condition.”

I saw the glass of water trembling on the bedside table.

“I just wanted to lie down,” I answered, adding weakness to my voice.

“Why did you lock the door?”

“I’m sleepy.”

“Did you take the pills I left for you?”

I stared at the two white pills. Their surfaces looked cold and clean beneath the lamp. A few minutes earlier, these pills had been my path toward death. Now they had become the first piece of evidence.

“Not yet,” I said.

A brief silence fell behind the door.

“Take them, darling. You’ll feel better soon.”

“I want to decide for myself when I take them.”

Flynn’s breathing changed. Only for one second, but I noticed it.

“You’ve been acting strangely these last few days,” he said.

“It’s probably the sea.”

“Or maybe someone whispered something to you.”

Ice passed through my heart. Did he know? Had he seen me on the stairs? Maybe he had hidden a camera in the room?

The hidden officer quickly told me:

“Mrs. Sterling, there are two of our agents on this yacht. They are nearby, but they will act directly only after your verbal consent.”

“Contact my father,” I whispered.

“We have already contacted him. Your parents are safe.”

I closed my eyes. For one moment I wanted to cry, but I did not allow myself to.

“Flynn said they are going to the mountains next week.”

“That is precisely why we are taking additional measures. However, we still do not know who his accomplice on land is.”

Flynn’s footsteps did not leave the hallway. He stood behind the door.

“Evelyn, open the door,” he said. “I came to help you.”

“Tomorrow morning.”

“I need to check now whether you feel nauseous.”

“Don’t come in.”

My voice surprised both of us. For the first time, Flynn said nothing.

Then the door handle was pulled down hard.

“This is my room too,” he said in a low voice.

“But I’m inside it.”

On the other side, it seemed as if I were looking someone in the face. On our wedding night Flynn had told me that he would always protect me. Now the same man was thinking of breaking down the door.

Footsteps sounded in the hallway. Then Aidan’s voice:

“Flynn, we’re out of time. Fiona said the crew is on the aft deck.”

Flynn answered:

“I haven’t recorded her confession yet.”

My whole body froze.

“What confession?” I whispered.

The officer answered me immediately:

“He is trying to shift the responsibility onto you. He may force you to drink alcohol or make you sign an additional document.”

A shadow appeared beneath the door. Someone dropped to their knees.

“Evelyn, if you don’t open the door, I’ll call your father and tell him you’re having a psychological crisis,” Flynn said. “Then doctors will come, and I will decide everything for you.”

My fear slowly turned into anger.

“You can’t call my father. You have my phone.”

Flynn delayed his answer.

“It needed charging.”

“Then why did you turn it off?”

In the hallway Fiona whispered quietly:

“Flynn, let’s go. Someone may hear.”

The officer told me:

“Now the choice is yours. We can break down the door, but we still need complete confirmation of his crime.”

I stood up from the bed. My legs were still unsteady, but I went to the door and put my hand on the lock.

“If I open it, will you come in alone?” I asked Flynn.

“Of course, darling.”

His lie was so calm that I almost laughed.

“Then come in.”

I turned the lock, but did not open the door all the way. Flynn burst inside, and Aidan and Fiona appeared behind him. Aidan held a leather folder.

“Sign it,” he said.

“What?”

“Confirmation of the temporary power of attorney. Otherwise”—Flynn picked up the glass—“this will no longer be water.”

The officer quietly said in my ear:

“Buy a little more time. Your father’s people are already on the deck.”

I reached for the folder. Flynn exhaled in relief. But as soon as I turned over the first page, I saw a small red mark in the upper corner. My father used that mark only in one case—when a document was a trap.

I raised my head and asked:

“Do you want me to sign?”

Flynn stepped forward, although he did not yet know that a person who had recorded every word he said was already standing in the hallway…

My father’s head of security, Daniel, appeared in the hallway, and two crew members stood behind him. They were not holding weapons, but their calm faces were enough.

“Put the folder on the table,” Daniel said.

Flynn immediately stepped back.

“Who are you? This is a family matter.”

“No,” Daniel answered. “This is already a criminal matter.”

Aidan looked at his son with a pale face.

“Flynn, what are they doing here?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Evelyn probably called someone in a panic.”

I stood by the door, and my hands trembled so much that I could no longer recognize my own fingers.

Daniel connected a small recorder to the speaker. The room was silent for several seconds. Then Flynn’s voice sounded, exactly as I had heard it on the stairs.

“One push. The ocean will do the rest itself.”

Fiona’s glass slipped from her hand and shattered on the wooden floor.

On the recording Aidan asked:

“Her money?”

Then Flynn’s laughter sounded.

“Three hundred million dollars will remain with us.”

The color drained from Flynn’s face.

“This could have been edited.”

Daniel played the second recording.

“They’re going to the mountains by car next week,” Flynn was saying. “Brake failure on an icy road.”

This time Aidan grabbed the chair.

“You didn’t say that,” he whispered.

“You were there, Father!”

“I didn’t know you would really do it.”

Fiona leaned against the wall. All the color had disappeared from her face.

“We only wanted the money, Flynn. We didn’t say to kill your parents.”

“Shut up!” he shouted.

It was then that I realized they could not even protect one another. None of them was thinking about me or my family. Only about how to save himself or herself.

“The pills,” I said. “What was in those pills?”

Daniel called for a doctor. A few minutes later, a laboratory test was already being conducted in the ship’s medical room. The doctor placed a fragment of the pills into a special container, dropped several drops of liquid onto paper, and waited for the result.

Flynn stood against the wall.

“Evelyn, I swear, it was just a sedative.”

“I’ve been sleeping for three days.”

“You had seasickness.”

The doctor raised his head.

“There is a strong depressant here. The dose is so high that repeated use can cause breathing to stop.”

A ringing began in my ears.

“So I could have died during those three days?”

The doctor looked at Flynn.

“Yes.”

Daniel opened the folder and took out a copy of the power of attorney.

“This document is forged too. The signature was taken from your old bank form. But that is not all.”

He handed me a second sheet. On it were my father’s lawyer’s seal and a letter drawn up in my name.

The letter said that my family was financially unstable and that control of their property should temporarily be transferred to Flynn.

“I never wrote this,” I said.

“We know,” Daniel answered. “The letter was sent to your parents’ office this morning. And its sender is the person Flynn has been paying for months.”

Flynn stepped forward.

“Shut up, Evelyn! You have no idea how much I put into this family.”

“You put drugs into me,” I said. “Then you planned my death.”

He lowered his eyes.

At that moment I saw, for the first time, not my husband, but a strange man who had stood beside me in the wedding photographs.

Daniel’s phone rang. He listened, then turned toward me.

“Mrs. Sterling, your parents are safe. But the police discovered another transfer. It was made last night from your personal account.”

“How much?”

Daniel exhaled before answering.

“One hundred million dollars. The money is already in an overseas account.”

Flynn closed his eyes, as if the news were unexpected even for him.

Then a new message arrived on Daniel’s phone. He looked at the screen and suddenly stopped breathing.

“What happened?” I asked.

He turned the phone toward me. The message had been sent from my mobile phone, but I had not written the text.

“If you want to save your daughter, you must come to the shore alone in the morning.”

I looked at Flynn.

For the first time, he was not smiling.

But the most frightening thing was that the sender of the message was still on the yacht…