DOGS. Legacy Saga II

54

The New Lion needed all its spares and the merchantmen's, but over the afternoon and the day following the battle, the crew was able to patch it up as well as they could at sea. However, the Phantom's broadside against her starboard side had damaged beyond repair half the cannons in that battery.

Castillano ordered to throw them to the sea, to get rid of the weight and have more room for their many wounded. Only half his crew was still in shape to work on the repairs and steer the ship. Now they could only pray they wouldn't come across any more pirates before reaching Trujillo, or they'd be in big trouble.

Facing up to the English pataches would've been only routine for Castillano and his men. They were used to fight the English scavengers back whenever their route took them near Jamaica. But the Phantom's sudden intervention had completely tipped the scales.

Had it not been because of the filibusters, the New Lion would've still had all her men and all her guns. And she wouldn't have a hole up and down the works, thanks to the Phantom's bowsprit. Lucky them, the bumps were still working and they'd been able to patch the hole, in order to stay afloat and on course.

However, alone in his cabin that night, Castillano couldn't help a smile. The gash in his ship's works was a fair price to watch the child stand on the bowsprit, her raven hair floating in the wind, to jump on them like an angel of death. A vision that would feed many a man's nightmares, but that lit a spark in his eyes.

The following night, as soon as his lieutenant and his bosun left the cabin after dinner, he opened the windows to the night and the eastern horizon. The child had left that way, towing the pataches. He'd expected her to come back for the merchantmen, now that he was in no shape to protect them anymore. But the Phantom's three mast hadn't shown up in the horizon.

He rested his elbow on the wooden sill and rubbed his neck. It burned, the scratch left when the pirate had yanked the chain off. But mostly he missed to feel it there, and the ring stroking his chest with every breath.

He had nothing left of her.

Not even her respect.

Not even her resentment.

Not only had she scorned him. Castillano hadn't missed the fact that she'd fought him only to protect the English boy. Not had he missed her concern to cover him and get him away from the fight. Nor the way she'd held him up. He knew her, or had known her, enough to tell the English boy was more than just a friend or one more man in her crew. Something in the way she'd looked at him. In the way she'd said his name. In the way her arm had circled his back.

Castillano's lips refused to hold back a sigh.

He had nothing left of her.

The child hadn't only moved on with her happy, carefree life. She'd also found someone to love.

If he'd ever harbored any doubt about how true she'd been when she'd told him she hoped to never see him again, now there was no doubt left.

He didn't fight the belated regret eating him up inside.

A thousand times over the last year he'd made vows to go for her. And a thousand times he'd hadn't. Because Don Carlos needed to deliver a cargo somewhere across the Caribbean. Because Alonso and Alma brought their happy tales from Tortuga.

Because he was a bloody coward, afraid she might reject him again.

Well, there he was, reaping the fruits of his lack of guts. He would spend the rest of his life dreaming of her black eyes and her honey lips. While she was in somebody else's arms. And it was all on him.