Apocalypse Queen: My Space, My Rules Chapter 94: Desperate Measures and the Debt of Blood

"Impossible. I saw her die with my own eyes." He stopped again. He hadn't actually seen a body.

In those circumstances, the odds of Mariella surviving had been nearly zero.

Fannie was sobbing, begging. "Harvey, please. You have to save Kingston."

Connor was staring at him with desperate hope. "Harvey, is there anything you can do? Get Kingston out or help us get a yacht."

Harvey felt his scalp prickle. He was already regretting coming over.

"I'll try to get Kingston back. But a yacht... that's not something I can just produce."

Fannie broke down entirely. "If Kingston dies, I die with him!"

Roxanna looked at Harvey with wet, pleading eyes. "Harvey. Please."

"It's not that I won't help. It's that my grandmother runs the family. I can only move so much." Harvey couldn't stand seeing Roxanna upset, but he wasn't going to drain the Graham fortune for Kingston.

He gritted his teeth. "I'll try to free up some resources. The rest of your family will have to find a way to cover."

Connor nearly wanted to spit blood at the thought of giving up the fortune he'd spent half his life scheming for.

Fannie kept crying the same thing. "I just need my son alive."

Harvey, wanting to keep Roxanna's faith in him, made a grand promise. "Roxanna is the person I love most. Even if the Shepherds go bankrupt, I'll take care of her. I'll take care of all of you."

"Harvey, you're so good to us." Roxanna collapsed into his arms, tears and smiles mixing. "I don't know what we'd do without you."

Harvey usually savored her adoration. Right now, all he felt was a nameless pressure and irritation.

Before, whenever he had a problem, Mariella had been the one to step up and fix it.

Ever since he'd turned on Mariella, nothing had gone right. Now, everything was falling apart.

Roxanna's dependence on him was suffocating.

A yacht.

Even if he didn't have to pay for it, he had no idea whose strings to pull.

The helicopter had been a rental.

Because the one he owned had been taken by that disaster, Kingston, along with the pilot, both of whom had vanished.

He'd paid out a massive settlement and spent weeks cleaning up that mess.

Now they wanted him to spend more money, pull more strings, all for that same disaster.

Everything in him resisted.

Roxanna was lost in Harvey's warmth, completely oblivious to the storm behind his eyes.

She simply felt that with him here, nothing was too big a problem.

He loved her. So, he should protect her and solve every problem for her. Shouldn't he?

...

Mariella sent the text, then tossed the phone and the severed thumb back into her storage space.

Given the Shepherds' current finances, a mid-sized yacht would drain them dry. Three days probably wouldn't be enough.

And that money had originally belonged to the Townsends. To Mariella.

Her lovesick mother had been played by a gold-digging husband who'd transferred all the shares into his own name.

At least, her mother had remembered that she had a missing daughter and locked 30 percent of the shares in a trust.

Connor had only gone to the orphanage to bring Mariella back because recovering her unlocked 10 percent of those shares.

The remaining 20 percent was earmarked as Mariella's wedding gift. That was why Harvey had agreed to the engagement.

There was no family love, no romance. Just money pulling the strings.

This time around, Mariella saw it all for what it was. She'd stopped thinking of those so-called relatives as people.

They were jackals. Hell was where they belonged.

"Take the wheel. I'm going after crocs." Chandler cut into her thoughts just as she was grinding her teeth.

Lost in old resentments, Mariella had almost forgotten someone else was on the boat.

She looked up and finally noticed what was on the water.

Several crocodiles were closing in, silent and fast. If Chandler hadn't spotted them, she'd have mistaken them for floating debris.

"Keep driving. I'll handle the crocs." Mariella pulled a chainsaw out of her storage space.

She waited patiently for the first one to get close, then struck like lightning.

Bzzzt! The chainsaw roared to life and tore through half the crocodile's skull.

Bone, flesh, and blood sprayed across the water, staining the surface red. The croc flipped belly-up.

The chainsaw's roar scattered the remaining crocodiles in every direction.

The inflatable boat didn't slow down.

Behind them, several rafts and kayaks raced toward the dead croc. Multiple groups fought over it.

A full-grown crocodile weighed well over 100 pounds, enough to feed a family for a long time.