Chapter Seven
1470 Words
storm hit at midnight.
Not the gentle rain from before. This one had teeth. Wind screamed through the rigging. Waves lifted The Rusty Spoon like a toy and slammed her back down. Inside the cabin, Lux braced herself against the table while cups slid off hooks and shattered in the sink.
Rafael sat on the floor with his back to the wall. Eyes closed. Face calm. She hated how calm he looked.
"Aren't you scared?" she shouted over the noise.
"Of the storm?"
"Of anything."
He opened his eyes. The boat lurched. A plate fell and broke.
"I'm terrified," he said. "I've just gotten good at hiding it."
She wanted to snap back. Wanted to tell him that hiding and surviving weren't the same thing. But the boat rolled again, and her stomach rolled with it, and suddenly she was on the floor beside him, knees pulled to her chest, breathing through her mouth to keep from vomiting.
He didn't say I told you so. Didn't touch her. Just sat there, solid and still, while the world tried to shake them apart.
After a while, the wind eased. The waves stopped trying to kill them. Lux uncurled her spine.
"We should check the mooring lines," she said.
"In a minute."
"Rafael—"
"In a minute." He turned his head. Looked at her. The cabin light was dim — a single bulb swinging from a wire. It carved shadows under his cheekbones. "Tell me about your father. The real story. Not the version you give strangers."
She laughed. A short, broken sound.
"You're not a stranger anymore?"
"I slept on your couch. I ate your bad eggs. I think that makes me something."
Lux pulled her knees tighter. Stared at a c***k in the floorboards.
"He was a dreamer," she said. "The kind who never met a treasure map he didn't believe in. We moved around a lot when I was a kid. Marinas. Different islands. He'd chase a rumor for months, come up empty, and just... smile. Say next time. Never got angry. Never got bitter."
"What changed?"
"His brain." She touched her chest — over her heart, not her head. "The Parkinson's came first. Slow. Easy to ignore. Then the dementia started stealing pieces. Small things at first. Where he left his keys. The name of the dog we had in Trinidad. Then bigger things. My birthday. My mother's face. My name."
The bulb swung. Shadows danced.
"He called me by her name once," Lux continued. "Marina. He hasn't said her name in twenty years. But he looked right at me and said Marina, when did you get so old?" Her voice cracked. She pressed her palm against her mouth.
Rafael didn't move. Didn't offer a handkerchief or a hug or any of the useless things rich people thought fixed grief.
He just said: "That's why you dive."
"It's why I need the gold."
"No." He shook his head. "It's why you dive. Because underwater, nothing changes. Wrecks stay where you left them. Artifacts don't forget your face. The ocean doesn't call you by the wrong name."
She stared at him. The bulb swung. The shadows shifted.
"That's the most honest thing anyone's ever said to me," she whispered.
He held her gaze. "Don't get used to it."
---
Morning came gray and hungover.
The storm had moved east. Left behind a sky the color of old bandages and a sea that still heaved with memory. Lux stood at the helm, nursing a cup of coffee that had gone cold an hour ago. She hadn't slept. Neither had Rafael, but he'd stopped mentioning it.
They motored to the trench in silence.
The gear sat ready on the deck — twin tanks, rebreathers, extra lights, a reel of line she'd use to mark their path through the tunnel. Rafael checked his own equipment now. Didn't wait for her instructions. She watched him from the corner of her eye and felt something twist in her chest.
Pride. Annoyance. Fear. All three tangled together.
"Depth today," she said, cutting the engine, "is three hundred forty feet. That's ninety feet deeper than your certification. You feel wrong at any point — dizzy, confused, like the walls are closing in — you signal me immediately. No heroics."
"Heroics aren't my style."
"Bullshit. You dove into a collapsing tunnel for a memory card."
He zipped his wetsuit. "That wasn't heroics. That was stupidity with good intentions."
She almost smiled. Caught herself. Turned away before he could see.
---
The descent felt heavier than before.
Water pressed on them like a hand. Lux watched her gauge tick past two hundred, past two fifty, past three hundred. The light had vanished entirely. Just their beams now, cutting tunnels through the black.
The tunnel entrance appeared. She paid out line from the reel — orange nylon, bright against the gray rock. Breadcrumbs. In case the silt kicked up and swallowed the exit.
They swam through the narrow pinch. Her tank scraped the same spot as yesterday. This time she felt the gouge in her paint. Didn't care.
The chamber opened.
The footprints were gone.
Lux stopped. Shone her light across the floor. Where yesterday there had been clear impressions — heel, toe, a walking gait — today there was nothing. Just smooth silt, undisturbed, as if no one had ever set foot here.
Rafael grabbed her arm. Pointed at the Santa Águeda.
The hull had changed.
A section of planking had been removed. Not broken — removed. Clean cuts along the edges. Someone had taken a saw to three-hundred-year-old wood and carried away whatever was inside.
Lux swam closer. Shone her light into the gap.
Empty.
The cargo hold — or what remained of it — held nothing but sediment and small bones. Rat bones, maybe. Bird bones. Nothing human. Nothing valuable.
Rafael pushed past her. Shone his light into every corner. His breathing quickened. She heard it through the water — fast, shallow, edged with something that wasn't panic.
Frustration.
Despair.
She touched his shoulder. He shook her off.
She grabbed his arm. Hard. Forced him to face her.
He was crying. Tears mixing with seawater behind his mask. His mouth moved — words she couldn't hear, didn't need to hear.
He was here. My brother was here. And someone took him.
Lux pulled him close. Pressed her forehead against his. The neoprene squeaked. Their regulators bumped.
She held him in the dark while his shoulders shook.
The chamber glowed green around them — the ghost fire, watching, indifferent.
---
They surfaced an hour later. Empty-handed.
Rafael climbed the ladder first. Sat on the deck with his head between his knees. Didn't remove his mask. Didn't speak.
Lux unclipped her tanks. Let them fall. The clang echoed across the water.
"The box," she said.
He looked up.
"La Caja del Olvido. It was supposed to be in the galleon's cargo hold. But Mateo's notes said chamber below. What if the box was never on the Santa Águeda? What if the Santa Águeda was just a marker? A signpost pointing to something else?"
Rafael pulled off his mask. His eyes were red. His face was haggard.
"The footprints," he said slowly. "They walked. You noticed that yesterday. How do you walk at three hundred feet?"
"You don't." Lux sat across from him. Pulled off a fin. "Unless the chamber isn't always flooded. Unless something changed the water level. A shift in the rock. A collapse that opened a passage to the surface somewhere else."
"A cave."
"A cave with an entrance on land." She pointed east. "There's limestone bluffs on the north shore. Sinkholes. Underground rivers that run to the ocean. If one of those rivers connects to the chamber—"
"Then someone could walk in during low tide. Take what they want. Leave footprints that wash away when the tide rises."
Lux nodded.
Rafael stood. Walked to the rail. Stared at the eastern horizon.
"Voss," he said. "He's been in that chamber. Probably multiple times. He took the box already. Maybe took Mateo's remains."
"Maybe."
"Then why are we here? Why dive at all?"
Lux joined him at the rail. Their shoulders touched.
"Because your brother left you a message on that memory card," she said. "He said tell Dad I finally did something right. That's not a man who got caught. That's a man who knew he might not make it back and wanted someone to know he tried."
Rafael closed his eyes.
"I don't want a message," he whispered. "I want him."
"I know."
The water slapped the hull. Somewhere beneath them, the chamber sat empty. The Santa Águeda waited in the dark, her secrets stolen, her ribs exposed.
Lux put her hand on Rafael's back. Left it there.
He didn't pull away.
- Writer
