How Does Diving Into The Wreck End?

Not long after getting married to my husband, he says he wants to teach me how to scuba dive. My leg cramps when I'm practicing alone in the deep sea. However, my husband, a swimming instructor, chooses to save his unattainable love—she's jumped into the sea to commit suicide. I don't ask him for help. Instead, I allow myself to slowly sink. In my past life, I stopped my husband from leaving. He saved me with gnashed teeth and allowed his first love, Millie Quirke, to drown. By the time he went to save her, she'd already disappeared in the water. He comforted me and told me it was okay, that he was glad he'd saved me. However, one night, he brought me back to the seaside. Just as I let my guard down, he grabbed my neck and plunged my face into the water. Then, he dragged me out before I could suffocate. "You were just cramping—it would've passed! But Millie got dragged away by the current because of you! You can remain in the ocean with her!" When I open my eyes again, I'm back to the day I was scuba diving.

On our third dating anniversary, Enzo and I were caught in a cruise ship disaster. I gave him the only life preserver, and I was swallowed by the sea, lost without a trace. Three years later, after finally recovering from my injuries, I rushed back home—only to walk right into his grand wedding with my so-called sister. Bound by a life debt, he had no choice but to marry me—and resented me ever since. He hated that I'd come between him and the woman he truly loved. Even my own parents accused me of being selfish, of ruining my sister's happiness for life. Under the weight of everyone's coldness and rejection, I became desperate and unhinged. … Then, one day, when our family's old enemies came for revenge, he threw himself in front of me and took a knife straight to the heart. Blood gushed out as he used the last of his strength to drag me to safety. "Raina," he rasped, "you saved my life once, and now I've repaid the debt. Just do me one favor—don't come back to haunt me in the next life. All I want is to spend it forever with Selina, just the two of us." My heart tore apart, and I died with that grief. However, when I opened my eyes again, I was back on the day I had crashed their wedding.

The scholarship student, Izzy Waite, whom Craig Green had been funding, decided to seek some thrills by engaging in group intimacy in the open sea. They messed around in a way that drew blood and unintentionally attracted a shark. I risked my life to drag her back to shore. Once we made it to land, I warned her the ocean was full of bacteria and that she should get a check-up, just in case. She nodded and pretended to listen. However, the moment I turned my back, she ran to Craig, claiming I’d slandered her reputation. She even threatened to throw herself back into the ocean in some dramatic attempt to end it all. Craig was furious. Without giving me a chance to explain, he shoved me into the mouth of a massive, still-living shark. I beat against the inside of that monster’s stomach, screaming for help. The fishermen on the beach panicked at the sight. “Mr. Craig, please. This’ll kill her!” Craig simply held the weeping Izzy in his arms and sneered. “I heard people can survive inside a shark for a whole month. Doesn’t she love studying marine biology? Now, she can do some real research from inside.” Trapped in utter darkness, I curled up, gently cradling my belly. “Baby, this time, Mommy can’t protect you…” One month later, Craig finally came to gut the shark himself and bring me home. Unfortunately, all he found on the wind-swept shore was a skeleton.

As the only expert in the world capable of rescue dives below 3,000 feet, I received a once-in-a-lifetime salvage contract worth tens of millions of dollars. I had dived in those same waters over a decade ago. My son's research submersible had been damaged on the ocean floor. After his oxygen ran out, he suffocated in the dark. The grief nearly destroyed me. My husband, Griffin Lattimer, held me through it, staying by my side through countless miserable nights. I found out later that he had personally redirected the only rescue vessel capable of reaching the depths our son was at to save his childhood friend's daughter. That girl had merely choked on a mouthful of water in the shallows. I divorced Griffin and threw myself into deep-sea salvage like a woman possessed, diving over and over until I knew the undercurrents of those waters better than I knew my own home. I never wanted another child to die the way mine did. Today brought the same stretch of ocean, the same crushed hull, the same depleted oxygen, and the same impossible odds. When I opened the client's file, I went completely still. I recognized the name and face inside instantly. I would never forget either of them for as long as I lived. I smiled and slid the folder back across the table to my partner. "I can't take this one."

My wife, Ruth Quarmby, had a twenty-year-old male apprentice named Craig Smith. He secretly turned off a diver’s scuba tank underwater. This caused an accident. He then posted three posts on his social media feed. The first post said, [I played a little prank underwater by shutting off my instructor’s mother-in-law’s scuba tank. Now, she’s in a coma and heading into surgery. But hey, I’m innocent!] The second post said, [Toast one: from a broke mountain kid to a certified diver. All by myself! Toast two: I confessed my love to someone I shouldn’t have, but I didn’t cross that line. Toast three: here’s to every lonely night I suffered through.] The third post said, [Best instructor ever. Without her, who else would cover for my pranks?] I told my wife to pay for the surgery to save the person quickly. But in front of the operating room door, she told me solemnly to give up on the surgery. “Your mother is old and fragile. Saving her is a waste of resources. Even if she makes it out alive, she’ll be bedridden. She’ll wish she were dead. Just let her go.” She quickly signed the Refusal of Treatment form. Then, she threw the signed form in my face. I kept quiet. The person lying in the operating room was her own mother.

After the cruise ship strikes a hidden reef, panicked passengers shove me and Kristen Langford into the sea. My boyfriend, Elijah Jensen, is the ship's captain, so he plunges into the water. But instead of saving me, he grabs Kristen and boards the last lifeboat. I thrash and cry for help, but he slaps my hand away. "You can swim. Stop pretending for attention!" Elijah snaps. "Kristen's body temperature is dropping. I have to get her to a hospital!" The waters around me are pitch-black, and his words feel like a death sentence. When the tracking bracelet I always wear is discovered inside a shark, Elijah dives alone into shark-infested waters, searching for three days and nights. In the end, the brilliant captain who once ruled the oceans can never sail again.