Chapter 675: Honest

Luna felt as though her entire world had been shrouded in darkness. She had practically destroyed her relationship with her brother, her parents were treating her like an outsider, and the man she was in love with had pulled away again. She and Tavin had been growing close, but she was so consumed by the 'hurt' she thought Lisa was feeling that it put a strain on them, and the truth threatened to break them.

There was also the man who Luna had been engaged to. Instead of just accepting that she no longer wanted to marry him, he continuously sent her gifts. In the past, no one would have dared to continue pursuing her after she made it clear she was uninterested, but news travels fast, and the moment she was asked to move out of her family home, it was telling everyone that she was no longer a protected member of the family.

If that were not bad enough, Lisa was once again nowhere to be found. She was chasing behind Ian, taking every photo op she could. That only made Luna feel worse about her actions. She had thrown away her friendship with Mina over a misunderstanding that was instigated by Lisa, and now she had no one except Ellie, and sometimes Zane. Had she known that her brother and the woman had taken their relationship to a point where children could possibly be involved, she would have stepped back, but she was acting on emotion.

Luna genuinely believed that her brother had purposefully killed his own child to be with Mina, and she hated him for it, but now that she knew it was a lie, she hated herself more. She had pushed Mina over the edge, and the woman took with her the future of the Lee family. Almost every night since the memorial, she wondered what a child born of Ian and Mina would have been like, and those nights were the hardest.

----

Just as she had promised, Ami put their rift behind her and Nael could not be more grateful. The woman was not just good at making him money, but she was also good at planning. She was well versed in politics as well, which helped him because small countries that were in war, or on the brink of it, were always in the market for firearms. He did not know where they got the money, and he did not care; he was only about his bottom line.

Ami had listed out several countries where he could potentially make top dollar for the arms he already had, but Nael felt more comfortable going to a place where he had connections and influence. He would not make the most money there, but there were other things he did in that country that made him just as much, if not more than selling guns to mafias and other criminals.

The journey was a few days long, so Nael was not anxious about preparing for the stop, and when he was not ordering people around, he was teaching Ami how to shoot. She was terrible at it, but he knew she just needed a little incentive. He called two of his crew members to stand on either side of the board the woman was shooting at, and while terrified, they did as asked.

"I'm not shooting at them," Ami said. Her deep brown eyes were wide, and for the first time, Nael could see that she was wearing contacts.

"Do you need glasses?" he asked.

"I wear contacts to protect my eyes," she lied. Nael was not an expert, so he took her word for it. "I'm not shooting while they are standing there," the woman repeated, and both men looked relieved.

"Just concentrate on the board in the middle. They won't move."

"But-"

"Shh. Relax. Just aim and tell yourself that you won't hit them." Ami raised the gun, but as she lined it up, her hands began to tremble and Nael knew she would actually miss. "Alright, that's enough for today," he said, gently pushing the gun down before taking it from her.

Nael noticed that Ami was beyond gentle, she was bordering naive in her behavior, and he wondered if she were not tricked or deceived into falling in love with the person who had broken her heart to the point where she faked her death and became a pirate. There were many people within his crew who were running from something, including Huck, the man who he had put in charge of Ami's safety when he was not around.

In the beginning, it was just to make her feel like he was keeping his end of the bargain, but now it was real, and the man had been briefed on how important the woman was. He took his job seriously, and Nael scarcely saw the woman out of his cabin without the man a few feet away. She took shifts in the kitchen to keep herself from going crazy, and those were some of the best nights for the crew, who while not fussy, had grown tired of the cook's bland and repetitive recipes.

Once back in his suite, Ami went straight to the computer, but Nael wanted to talk to her. He found himself wanting to know everything about the girl and what she had gone through before she ended up on his ship. She had told them stories about being hungry, and stealing, but she never told them how she had gotten to that point, and aside from brief mentions, she never talked about her family.

"Ami, can you tell me how this happened?" Nael lightly brushed the bandaged side of the woman's face, and she took a deep breath as if she knew the question was coming.

"Leal should be here too. He made me promise not to tell you without him." Nael chuckled, and the woman let out a light chortle of her own. She had a sweet laugh and an even sweeter voice. Sometimes when she was cleaning, she would sing to herself, and no matter what he was doing, he would always find himself leaning back to listen to her.

"Fine, you get started on dinner and I will go get my brother." Nael shut the laptop and Ami stood to do what she was asked. She was so passive at times that he wondered how she survived in any setting, but then again, she was so good at talking to people that she may have amassed a following who were willing to protect her.

Within minutes, Nael returned to the suite with Leal, and they eagerly sat at the small table that Huck had repaired for them. Ami was the one who told them that the man was good with his hands, and since then, he had been repairing their worn-out furniture. Ami would keep him company while he worked, telling him stories about people she once knew. He said that listening to her was almost like watching television, and Nael and his brother were about to find out.

----

After serving the men the food she had prepared, Mina sat at the small table unsure where to begin but she understood that talking about her past might help her get over it. President Lee was happy without her, and while she once wished happiness for the man, she found that it was not as easy to ignore as she thought it would be. It had only been three months since she 'died', and he was already smiling and laughing as if she never existed in his life, so it was time for her to do the same.

"I grew up poor, I worked hard, I struggled, I cried, but every time I saw hope, someone would cover my eyes."

"What happened?" Nael asked, finding himself extremely gripped by the woman's opening.

"It started with a phone and a book," Mina replied. She went all the way back to Sadie meeting Troy, briefly touched upon her sister's accident, stopped at Ren, and then detoured to Maggie."

"Where were your parents during all of this?" Leal asked, but Mina had no answer for the man, for as much as she hid things from them, they had to know she wasn't okay; how could she have been?"

Once again, Mina continued to speak, feeling herself choke up when she came to the part of her story that involved President Lee. She did not want to go into graphic detail, but she told them what she remembered, and that was all the men needed to understand what had transpired in the hotel room. She controlled her breathing and started to speak again, touching on the torture, but when she came to a certain point in her story, she did not know what was real anymore.

President Lee had told her that everything aside from a few incidents between them were misunderstandings, and after Carmen and Lisa were discovered, she believed the man, but more and more lately she did not know what to think, so she told both renditions, and allowed the men to draw their own conclusions from it.

"He saved me so many times, and he treated me the way I had always wanted to be treated by… anyone," Mina admitted.

"And you fell in love with him?"

"It wasn't that simple. We kept misunderstanding each other, but he worked hard on our friendship, and eventually, I gave in." Mina wiped her cheek, which had started to feel itchy in the places that were covered in her tears. "At the very end, he made me feel like a princess, and then he reminded me that I wasn't." Mina chuckled self-deprecatingly and rounded her story with her driving herself off a bridge and contacting Leal a few days later.

Nael was absolutely amazed by Ami's tale. He knew she was telling the truth because of the emotions it sparked, but he could not understand it at all. She was truly a very naive woman if she believed anything the man in her story said to her, and the fact that she had given herself to him after he had taken her was all the evidence he needed.

"Ami, I hate to say this but, I don't think anything that man felt for you was real. He got bored with the woman he had and wanted a change. He may have been intrigued by you, but…" Nael searched for the proper words, but he didn't want to call the woman ugly, so he found something else that fit. "What are the odds that the same thing would happen to the man twice?" Mina smiled. Nael was not saying anything she had not already thought, but hearing the words still made her feel miserable. "It was your desperation that made you believe you had something with him. I mean, ten years? Why would he have-"

Nael closed his mouth when Ami quietly stood, removed her untouched plate, stored it, and walked away from the table. He looked at his brother who was wearing an expression that told him that the woman was not ready to hear a critique of her actions. It was clear that she knew she had been played; but Nael had not been thinking when he spoke.

"I was just trying to be honest," he whispered.

"You think she doesn't know that?" Leal replied in the same tone. "She didn't need a lecture; she has the scars of her ordeal to remind her of it every time she looks in the mirror." Nael winced. He could not imagine being hurt by Mills. He had plenty of scars on his body, but if he had a mark that commemorated the one time he lacked all sense of judgment, it would have been harder for him to forgive himself.

Silence fell on the men, but guilt was nagging at them.

"She thinks she deserves this life, you know?"