14. RAVEN

14

RAVEN

"Maddy. Milena. Maddy. Milena," I scribble in my notebook, then pick up a random book from a shelf, open it randomly, and read the first paragraph on the top left page:

"It was something completely new, capable of creating a whole world, a magical, rich world, and in an instant you forgot all the loathsomeness around you and felt so rich, so at ease, so free, so fine…"

If you want a message from the universe—open a random book and read the first sentence. It sure can mess with your mind.

The quote is from Süskind's book about a gifted perfumer who is a serial killer and murders the women he is fascinated with for the sake of preserving their beauty.

Huh.

Some of the most beautiful words come from deranged minds. I wonder if that's the key to understanding beauty—you simply have to know all the ugliness to understand beauty's value.

I wonder if Maddy's dark past is what turned her into the complete opposite—the girl everyone turns to for help or advice.

My fingers smell like her. So do my clothes. I feel like a dog, having licked her up, my body twisting inside out from the traces of her perfume that overwhelm my senses.

I imagine stripping her naked, my body simmering in the fantasy. The memories from our last encounter invade me again. The way my hand traveled up her warm body. The way she leaned into me. Her hummingbird pulse.

Control is a skill that can be learned, but one's body often acts of its own accord. Maddy can't hide it, not from me. I will push her until she gives herself freely and enjoys what I have to give in return. Maddy is a new beginning to a short story, but what a story it will be.

A message from one of my guys interrupts my thoughts.

The guy I sent to the port to pick up the latest shipment reports back—special deliveries are now brought via speedboats from Port Mrei Port to Ayana's docks. I don't exactly trust the road deliveries. Nor do I want to go to town more often than I have to. I used to go every day. Now, I prefer to do business from my office in the Center—I won't take a chance of having sensitive info on my computer at home. I don't even lock the house. But Port Mrei is becoming a real threat.

How did this island get so fucked?

The only nice thing about this lately is the girl who is starting to occupy my thoughts on an hourly basis.

I call my guy in the Center and get access on my phone to Maddy's Ayana account. I am one of the very few who can do this without clearance from Marlow or Archer. I can easily log into the security dispatch board and find info and work logs for anyone working or living at Ayana.

It's not a secret but a universal truth that the most precious thing in the world these days is information. And boy, do I have enough of it. Granted, I fulfill the requests of Ayana residents when they don't want or can't go through the official route.

There's another reason for that, too. When they have something shameful, a secret they can't tell even their closest friend, they look to unload it elsewhere. There are no strangers at this resort. Except me.

I know that Qishan overdosed a number of times.

I knew about Archer's overdose before even his closest bro, Kai, found out.

Cece flew in one of her beaus without a request for clearance, setting off a security alert that almost initiated a drone attack.

Corine gets pills for her metabolism disorder and cries on my shoulder because her parents are not loaded and she can barely afford them.

Margot from the Center and her friends went four-wheeling at the waterfalls, escorted by security guards. But somehow, she ended up at Bishop's place at the Divide and stayed there for several days.

When Axavier got drunk and fucked Milan for the first time, he freaked out, came to the beach, saw me walking from my alcove, and spilled the whole story, then asked if this island was changing him.

Everyone has secrets. And the more perfect something looks—Ayana definitely does—the more secrets there are to hide. I am the insider who knows all the dirty-raunchy-sleezy-sad dealings at Ayana. I am a secret keeper. Maybe a laundry man. Occasionally, a shrink. Am I proud? No. Who cares, right?

Well, that's where you are wrong. Because everything has a price. I don't blackmail. I find connections and accept favors. Not only do I know all of Ayana's residents, but also their families, what they do for a living, and how they can be useful to me.

Oddly, Maddy is the only person I ever blackmailed.

I get access to Maddy's Ayana bracelet in my phone. That will show me her location at any given time as well as her vitals alerts. Already, I feel like I'm getting a tighter connection with her.

I open her health monitor and study the little blue graph that shows her heartbeat and pulse. Maddy's heart—I smile at the screen, thinking to myself how vulnerable that thing is.

Next, I activate the camera on Maddy's porch. Big mansions have their own security systems set up. But almost every smaller bungalow has a porch camera controlled by the main Ayana security center. Most are turned off—Archer did that a while back to give the residents a sense of privacy. Fuck privacy. Maddy is now my responsibility, and considering I managed to find out her secret, it's only a matter of time until someone else does.

The camera goes into effect almost right away, and I stare at her dark porch for some time hoping she miraculously appears on the screen.

Finally, I close the app and move on to the files I got from my guy on the mainland.

It's uncanny how many people think that if they delete something from the Internet, it's gone, whereas everything they ever post online is preserved forever. I know people who can dig through the web archives like surgeons cut into a human body.

I go through all the Milena Tsariuk's files from social media, the archived posts, the deleted ones, the pictures of the actual Maddy Wise. Milena and Maddy, the actual Maddy, used to be inseparable, and sure, they looked kind of alike. Milena looked like a princess, rich and haughty. Judging by the party pictures and many guys around her, she used to be a man-eater.

Despite the web being down for some time after the Change, people managed to salvage a lot of the old data. My connection from Brazil is a guy who does exactly that—scrapes the crumbled info off the web. He sent me a whole bunch of files about Milena Tsariuk. Parties. Men. Tsariuk himself. Photos of her travels. Childhood photos from Russia. College times—blonde hair, high heels, VIPs, shopping.

I check out multiple videos.

There is one from a club. Her grin is so wide, her wink so suggestive when she looks at the camera, that it's day and night with the composed Maddy I know now. In the video, Milena is dressed to kill, all skin, with the shortest skirt, slender shoulders, and that high blonde ponytail that hangs back along her spine like a slate. She looks like a sexy minx, emanates money and taste. Her movements are loose but confident. And when she laughs, it's with her mouth wide-open, throwing her head back, like those supermodels on the beach photoshoots.

She is magnetic.

I've never seen her laugh. Smile, yes, but is she happy now that she's run away from herself?

I watch the videos on repeat until my eyes burn. Until I feel like I'm finally getting to know Milena while trying to reconcile her with the Maddy I know at Ayana.

It requires a lot of effort to change who you are, and I'm not talking about the appearance. Thinking about Milena-Maddy, I wonder what was so bad about her life that she dropped everything and everyone she had and decided to be a loner on a tropical island in the middle of the ocean.