Undone: A New Adult College Bad Boy Romance (Mature Young Adult Fun Contemporary Romance) (17 page)

The patrons of the ship screamed in terror as they fell from their seats to the floor. Desperately trying to break free of the room as one of the hijackers, with long blonde hair and dark green eyes, shot a round of gunfire into the roof. He hopped up onto the dais and took hold of the Captain, holding the gun to his neck.

“Good evening ladies and gentlemen!” The Blonde Hijacker shouted, “My name is Wilhelm Castle. And I am here to steal your gold.”

The ballroom stared wide eyed at the dais and the man who identified as Wilhelm. Terror coursed through their bodies as their minds tried desperately to adjust to the situation they found themselves in. Luckily, the fear which enveloped them kept everyone too preoccupied to notice that Charles Lippincott had his phone in his hand and was desperately texting:

Carolyn, don’t come back to the dining room!

Chapter 2

Carolyn wavered drunkenly towards the bathroom in her cabin and concluded the business she had gone there to do. Once she was done in the bathroom she laid down on her bed, trying to reel in her senses. She’d had one too many glasses of wine and if she didn’t compose herself she knew she’d be a wreck for the rest of the night. Her attention was suddenly piqued though by a metallic clanging, far off in the distance. Intrigued, she got up off the bed and left the cabin, not noticing the buzzing phone which had slipped from her pocket onto the bed.

Carolyn traversed the snaking hallways of the ship, aware that an eerie solemnity seemed to have taken over the once vibrant vessel. As she had walked from the dinner towards her cabin she could hear the chattering voice filtering from the dining room for the entire journey but now she was met with little more than silence.

As she approached the dining room again she saw that the door was closed and there was an odd looking man stationed outside it. She opened her mouth to ask him a question when fingers closed around her lips and dragged her into the shadows of a nearby storage closet. The artificial buzz of a strip light turning on pervaded the air and as Carolyn’s eyes adjusted to the brightness she saw that the hand belonged to the man from the pier, her hero, for whom she had been searching so long. He raised the index finger of his free hand to indicate quiet. She nodded seriously and he removed his hand from her mouth.

“Hey stranger.” Carolyn said with attempted flirtation.

“Ssh.” He warned.

“What’s going on?” She asked, regaining her composure.

“I’m not sure,” he said, glancing nervously through a small crack in the door, “I think the ship’s been hijacked.”

“What?!” Carolyn bellowed, louder than she meant to.

“Ssh Ssh!” He exclaimed, folding his hand round her mouth once more. He peaked out through the crack in the door to see the man guarding the dining room glancing about suspiciously, before shrugging and resuming his post.

Dwight breathed a sigh of relief as he removed his hand from Carolyn’s mouth and lounged back against the wall.

“Sorry.” Carolyn whispered.

“It’s okay,” Dwight told her, “Just….don’t do that again.”

Carolyn imitated the motion of locking her mouth with a zip. He nodded and surveyed through the sliver in the door.

“Who’s doing this?” Carolyn asked. As sobriety began to take hold of her fear suddenly surged within her. “My friends are in there! I have to go help them.”

“You can’t,” he said resolutely, “these guys have got serious firepower and they’re not afraid to use it. You’re just gonna have to hope that whatever these guys want, we can give it to them.”

“Who are they?” She questioned.

“I don’t know,” he confirmed, “but judging by the ink on their arms I’d guess they’ve still not quite come to terms with the dissolution of the third Reich.”

“Nazi’s?” She balked.

He turned to look at her, “Yeah, Nazis.”

As Dwight continued to survey the area Carolyn took in the view of his body. It was a slight squeeze in the maintenance cupboard, boxed in as they were by mops, brooms and other cleaning products. The result of this was that Carolyn and Dwight’s torsos were pressed close together, and Carolyn could feel his rigid muscles rubbing against the softness of her own body. Suddenly Carolyn was hot and flustered. He looked round at her and smiled.

“You okay there?” He asked.

She giggled lightly and brushed a brunette curl out of her eyes, “Yeah, I’m good.”

“Good,” he said, turning suddenly serious, “cause I’ve got to get out of here.”

“To go where?” She asked disappointed.

“I need to get to the bridge. Hopefully there’s some communication equipment there, and we can get through to someone. It might be they’re communicating with the outside already, asking for some kind of ransom. But I don’t think so. They’d be sitting ducks out here, it’d be too bigger a risk. Whatever they want, I think it’s on the ship.”

“So how are
we
gonna get there?” She asked pointedly.

“Well I…” He stopped in his tracks, “wait, we?”

She wiggled her eyebrows at him and he frowned.

“You’re not getting rid of me that easy.” She assured him. He smiled mischievously.

~

“Okay!” Wilhelm explained in his strange Germanic/American mixed tongue, “I told a slight little fib. I’m not here to steal your actual gold. But what we want is worth its weight in gold and what’s a little white lie between friends huh?”

At that moment one of the guests burst up from the floor and bounded screaming towards the door. Wilhelm nodded at one of his Lieutenants, a gruff man who must have weighed 25 stone, and indicated that he should stop the escapee. The Gruff Man held out his arm as the man ran shouting past. He crashed into the outstretched appendage and the audible crack of his nose breaking could be heard throughout the dining room. The attendees groaned at the thin web of blood which cascaded into the air.

“You know, I’m glad that happened,” Wilhelm said, keeping hold of the Captain's head, the gun still pressed to the old man’s neck, “because it illustrates what is going to happen to anyone who tries to escape. You are hostages now my friends. And you shall be released whenever I deem it fit.”

“What do you want?” The Captain asked angrily.

“Oh, have you found your courage Captain?” Wilhelm asked sardonically, “Good for you. And do you know what? You’re right. It is about time that we got to the point. So, here it is. Ladies and gentlemen. I am a descendant of the fallen Third Reich, its trueborn son you could say. I believe in the teachings of the supreme dictator Adolf Hitler and the collection of Jerusalem’s children I see gathered here is offensive to me. But that is a battle I live to fight another day. What I am interested in now, is art.”

“Art?!” The Captain spat through gritted teeth.

“Oh, you bore me old man. Time for sleep now.” Wilhelm pistol whipped the Captain to a collective a gasp from the crowd. The Captain slumped, unconscious as a couple of Wilhelm’s cronies appeared to stand watch over him.

“Sorry about that unpleasantness everybody but he was irritating me. Now what was I saying? Oh yes, art. There is a painting on this ship. One of you has it. The Captain no doubt knows about it but he will never tell me anything, so he will be a sacrifice. The painting, as one of you
brave souls
knows was composed by the great Fuhrer Adolf Hitler himself. The boy and the raven it as called. A beautiful portrait of a young Arian boy courting a raven that flutters in the air above him.” Wilhelm spoke passionately about the painting but it did not go unnoticed to the Lippincott’s that his utterances were laced with an air of irony.

“This painting is not only valuable from the point of view of antiquity my friends. No, this painting has something even more precious. For you see, hiding within the paint, beneath the precise brush strokes of the Fuhrer’s hand is a map, which leads to a certain location, a bunker, where Hitler kept many artefacts. I want that painting, I want that map, and one of you has it. If you don’t come forward in the next hour, the Captain here will die.”

Wilhelm grabbed the Captain by the scruff of his collar and lifted him into the air, violently holding the gun against his neck. The Captain’s eyes groggily half opened and peered out into the crowd, unsure of where he was.

“So unless you want Ahab here to perish, by your hand, I suggest you come forward very, very soon.”

As he cowered beneath the table Charles kept glancing at his phone, only to be met by disappointment. He was worried about Carolyn but he was more worried about his wife and as Wilhelm made his proclamation he stared nervously over at her. She was the most important thing in the world to him, and there was no way he was going to let this mad man take her from him.

~

As Carolyn and Dwight carefully made their way through the myriad corridors that existed on the ship she began to learn something about him, an important and vital part of his character, and that was that he made it nearly impossible to learn
anything
about him.

She’d gotten his name, as he’d discovered hers, but that was all the mountain of a man was willing to divulge. Carolyn would try to question him about his past, his parents and his romantic conquests but he remained tight lipped, often telling her to hush up for fear that they might be discovered.

Undeterred Carolyn would press on, and try to wade through his scepticism. After a time though she began to sense that there was something buried beneath the muscled exterior, that he was hurting, and what started out as simple attraction began to turn into something more. She sensed the pain that was within him, and she identified with it. And all she wanted to do now was help him. 

“Is it much further Dwight?” She asked tiredly. She wasn’t used to being on her feet so much, especially at that time of night, and now that sobriety had fully set in she was beginning to be accosted by a more unpleasant sensation…a hangover.

“Just a few more corridors,” he assured her without turning round, “we’d better slow down a bit. I don’t want to run into any of those guys and be unprepared.”

She groaned, “What happened to you?”

He stopped momentarily and turned around, glaring at her only slightly. “What do you mean?” He asked.

“I mean what’s made you so…” she had to think about it for a few moment, “serious?”

“I’ve had a rough life.” He said simply before turning back and carrying on.

Suddenly, Carolyn noticed something she hadn’t before, the slight groove on a finger on his left hand. The recent site of a ring which had been disbanded.

“You were married, weren’t you?” She pried sympathetically.

“What makes you say that?” He asked without stopping.

“The mark, on your finger.” He looked down at the spot to which she referred and inwardly cursed himself, before imagining that he still had the phantom ring on it, sending a tender stab of longing to his heart.

“Okay,” he finally relented, “you got me. I was married. I have two daughters. I hardly get to see them and it kills me. There, are you happy?”

She said nothing for a moment as he briefly halted, awaiting her response, “I’m sorry,” was all she could muster. 

Sharp tears stung his eyes as he desperately tried to damn the flow. She couldn’t see his face but she could almost sense that he was trying to avoid crying, as if the salty aromas of his tears were dancing their way over to her nose.

She wanted to approach, to hug him, to comfort him, but she knew that he would only shrug off her advances. She had met this type of man before, the kind who felt he needed to protect himself from his emotions. And so, she simply reached out, and gently grazed his shoulder. He stood up, erect, and wiped his nose.

“Let’s go.” He declared.

He carried on down the hall and Carolyn dutifully followed in his wake. She watched as his strong back struggled against the confines of his shirt. Despite the way he shielded himself from her she couldn’t help but feel more and more attracted to him. She longed to see those muscles break free from their bonds, ached to feel his strong hands reach around and caress her curves. Her heart ached for closeness to him. She’d never felt this way about a man before, not even Richard had stirred these feelings within her, and she desperately wanted to be able to explore them. To discover what they meant.

After a few more minutes of trawling the hallway Dwight turned around and pressed a finger to his lips. She nodded as he silently rounded the corner. She peered over to see him stealthily approach a guard who stood watch over a large door which could only have led to the bridge. He snuck up behind the man and forced his hand over his mouth. The Guard struggled for a few moments but it didn’t take long before he crumpled, unconscious, down to the floor. Carolyn trembled at his display of raw power, acutely aware that if he had wanted to do that to her when he was holding her mouth he could have, and she would have let him.

Dwight looked in her direction and indicated for her to come forward. She obliged.

“Take hold of this,” Dwight whispered, passing her the Guards pistol, “I want you to keep watch out here whilst I take out the guards inside.”

“But Dwight I…” She protested as he shoved the gun into her hand.

“Carolyn, you insisted on coming along, now…” His sentence was cut off as an older, greying Watchman poked his head out of the door. “Shit.”

The Watchman reached for the radio attached to his waist as Dwight barrelled into him, forcing his way through the door and into the bridge beyond. Carolyn followed him in, unsure of what to do, to be met by the bombastic spectacle which unfolded within. Dwight was a machine. As one man charged towards him with a knife another cocked his gun and with two well placed manoeuvres Dwight had them both unconscious on the floor. They were not alone though. The silver haired Watchman was already on the floor but there were three more surrounding them. As Dwight expertly punched a blonde another lackey, red headed this time, lunged towards Carolyn. Unsure of what to do she pulled back the firing mechanism of the gun and took aim.