Chapter 673: Ticket Out

Leal grabbed his hand torch, helped Ami into her room, and started to pull clothing from wherever he could find it. He knew the woman needed to get out of the wet clothes she was wearing, but he also knew that she would not want him to help her change. He sternly told her that he was giving her fifteen minutes to switch clothes, and after that, he was coming back in. The woman was a shivering mess, and he knew it would take her a long time to change, especially because most of her 'bulk' was fake, and probably also soaked through.

After the time elapsed, Leal cautiously opened the door, and when he saw that Ami was decent, he entered, sitting beside her on the bed. Her lips and nail beds were blue from the cold, and he wondered how his brother could be so cruel to someone they both knew was made of all fluff and no tough.

The season was beginning to shift from summer to fall, and the area they were in typically saw colder temperatures, so it was already jacket weather, but Ami had none. She had not purchased one because she said the prices were too high, but Leal knew it was because she was already heavily padded.

"What did you do?" He asked the still shivering woman, who's lips trembled as though she were going to cry. He wished he could get her something warm to drink but the ship was still dark, and Nael would probably kill the woman if he knew his ship was turned on just for her.

Mina told Leal exactly what happened, and while she did not want to cause trouble between the brothers, she felt like she would, so she begged him not to say anything, and he reluctantly agreed. The man left her room, and after a few minutes, he came back with his own bedding, piling it over her in an attempt to help her warm up faster. Leal hated seeing any woman mistreated, but his brother seemed not to care despite the fact that it made him more like the man he swore he would never become: their father.

----

After pulling off the small heist he had told his brother about, Nael returned to his ship, eager to set sail. His legs felt heavy, and he disliked the area they had chosen to visit. Had it not been for the need for fuel and supplies, he would have waited a few more weeks before going into any port. It was starting to get cold, and his crew was no match for icy winds, so he needed to get to a place where he could get rid of the old and bring in the new.

However, his entire mood shifted when he saw that his brother had lit a fire in a trashcan within their suite. It was not that cold, and when he saw Ami curled up on his sofa, he knew it was for her. Nael stepped forward, looking down at the woman, who appeared to be asleep. She had a bad cough and just looked sick.

"What the hell is wrong with her?" He asked, but Leal ignored him. "What is your problem?"

"I don't have one," Leal quipped, "but you do."

"What is that supposed to mean?"

"Why couldn't you just give her your key?"

"Why should I have had to?" Nael retorted and his brother shook his head at him.

"She got caught in the rain, I don't know how many hours she was there but the man you put in charge of watching her said he stood with her for at least two of them."

"Then she's an idiot. Why couldn't she have gone into someone else's…" Nael paused. He had unintentionally answered his own question within his mind, and actually felt bad about it. She was generally disliked among his crew, so they wouldn't have helped. "Then why didn't she come back?"

"So that you could hit her again, mock her, treat her like sh*t?"

"Leal, be real with me; what sort of relationship do you and Ami have?" Leal scoffed. All his brother knew was violence and sex.

"We have a relationship of mutual respect for one another. She is our ticket off this boat. Isn't that what we both wanted? To settle down, find a woman, raise a family?" Nael felt the anger within him rising. At one point, he did want those things, but the woman he wanted them with ran away, and now, she was starting a new life with someone else.

"Is that what you really want Leal or is that the dream Mills sold you?" Leal glared at his brother. They had both been in love with the woman in the past, but it was Nael who drove her away.

"She may have put the thought into my mind, but it's what I want." Nael scoffed, mockingly asking his brother why he had not already left. "I'm still here because mom told us to stick together."

"What does any of that have to do with Ami?" Nael snarled. He hated that the two most important women in his life were being tied to a misshapen and scarred nobody who was good with numbers.

"Are you kidding me Nael? You saw what she's done with the money we let her use. How many other men have we had on this ship who took and took only to have us end up taking death wish jobs to survive? There is no way you don't see that."

"Is that really all? Because you've got a f*cking fire lit in my suite."

"There is no power, so I can't turn on a space heater, and she's been this way for the last two days. She's been taking medicine but she's burning up." Nael rolled his eyes and reached out his hand to touch Ami's head. She was extremely warm, and he now understood why his brother was worried.

"She probably just has a cold. She'll be fine, she is a tough girl; I'm sure she's been caught in the rain before." Leal nodded, smirking a little at his brother's words.

"You know, she said the same exact thing about herself before she fainted."

----

Mina felt warmth coming from a single point and she reached in its direction. She was so cold that it was hard to stay sleeping, but she felt so terrible that it was hard to stay awake.

"Don't move," she heard Nael say, and the minute she heard his voice an overwhelming feeling of depression washed over her. Before she could even stop it, she began to cry, and when she opened her eyes to see the man dragging a space heater closer to her, her tears turned into a chuckle.

Nael was hot then cold, up then down. He would be nice to her one minute, then treat her like trash the next, and the worst part about that was how it reminded her of President Lee. In the beginning, the man would make kind gestures, and while she was always suspicious of President Lee, she did not have that same pretense with Nael, but it was something she told herself she would start. He was not her friend, and likely would never be.

It was a shame to Mina that Leal was so devoted to his brother that he did whatever the man said, and she wondered if she would have been that way with Sadie had Troy not come along. When she was little, she idolized her sister in a way that suddenly made no sense to her. Yes, she did help her, yes, she did fight for her, but at the end of the day, she chose herself and her own happiness, whereas Mina had chosen her family on multiple occasions, Sadie had chosen Troy.

----

Nael could hear Ami's sobs, but then he could hear her chuckling, but he ignored it as a type of delirium from being out of it for a few days. After moving the space heater, he tried to hand her a bottle of water, but she turned her body away from him. It was obvious from the dryness of her chuckle and lips that she was dehydrated, so Nael just put the water within her reach and left her to it.

As he thought, Nael came back an hour later to see that Ami had finished the water he left beside her, she had gone back to sleep, and truthfully, he was starting to feel bad about what he had done. Her appearance had nothing to do with her character; she was always nice to him, and to others, and whatever happened to her in the past could have been a result of her kind nature. He had gotten so used to foul and grimy women that he could not see her as an innocent victim.

In Nael's mind, Ami had done something and got what she deserved, but maybe he needed to start looking at her from the other angle. Maybe someone had done something to her, and they were waiting to get what they deserved.

"Ami, wake up. You need to eat something," Nael said. He had seen his brother wake the woman every so often and force her to take a few bites of granola before feeding her medicine. Leal was busy rounding up men, and because he was better at the sort of thing, that left just Nael to take care of the woman. "Come on, get up," he said, slightly growing impatient.

"I'm not hungry," she whispered. Her eyes were still closed, and the paleness of her skin let Nael know she was still very ill.

"I need to use the restroom," she suddenly said, throwing the blankets off her body in a swift motion that nearly threatened to make her fall. She stumbled to the commode and shut the door, but Nael could hear her groaning inside.

"Are you okay in there? Do you need anything?"

"Where is Leal?" the woman replied, and Nael found himself becoming annoyed.

"Obviously he isn't here. What do you need?"

"In my room there is a small black pouch. Can you bring it to me?" Nael rolled his eyes, sighing at the injustice of being ordered around by a woman and not in a pleasurable way. He found the little bag and opened it. He knew what was inside, he just wanted to see it for himself.

"It's in front of the door." Ami cracked the door open slightly and her small hand shot out and snatched the package like lighting. "I already looked inside," Nael said.

"Pervert," Ami replied, and he found himself chuckling

"Perhaps, but at least I'm not a woman." There was no response, but he could have sworn that he heard the woman mumbling about him being a low-level lifeform. In any other situation that would have offended him, but with Ami, it was actually kind of funny.

When Mina finally exited the restroom, she did so with a red face. She still felt horrible, and her cramps were the worst she had ever felt in her life. She could barely stand straight, and with her nursing whatever sickness she had, she was overall drained. It was not long before she stumbled, but to her surprise, Nael caught her.

"Careful, if you get hurt on my watch, Leal might stop talking to me again." She ignored the man who took a deep breath before guiding her back to the couch. "Listen, Ami, I want to apologize for-"

"Don't," the woman interrupted. "Sorry is not a magic word that undoes any of our mistakes. It feels good to say, but it means nothing." The man just stared at her, and Mina did her best to ignore him. If he wanted to kill her, he could.

"Fine, but at least I know I was wrong," Nael replied.