Chapter 691: Alive

Using the distraction Leal provided by arguing with his brother, Mina made her way back to her room. She could feel herself wanting to faint, but she knew that she needed to get away first. Oddly enough, Mina did not entirely blame Nael for his behavior; she felt she had also helped to get him to the point of violence. If she had not allowed the man to kiss her, he likely would have gotten the point, and if she had not given him false hope by telling him that they would speak about a possible future between them, he would not have been anticipating the conversation.

Mina knew Nael's need to be with her was mostly based on his desire to want to feel something. He was in a lot of ways, a broken man, who was raised in a family that knew extraordinarily little love. The only male role model he and his brother had growing up, was their father, who did not believe in monogamy and treated his 'girlfriends' as prizes. The man treated women like items that he acquired during his travels, rather than people.

Mina also knew that, despite Nael strangling her, he would not have killed her. She knew the man enough to know that he would keep her alive and would not have allowed her to leave the ship. He would have forced her to be with him, because in his mind, it was what men did when they really liked a person who did not like them back.

When Mina first boarded their ship, the brothers told her that they were capable of many things and each swore that they had no need to cross certain lines, promising her that she would be safe living with them. While Leal had continued with his promise, Nael obviously had not.

That said, Mina knew she needed to hide from the man, so she packed as much as she could, making sure to take all the cash she had, and the laptop which she used to do business. Nael and Leal were aware of their username and password for their e-traders accounts, so they could log in from anywhere, but she had not gotten a chance to remove all the information that could be used to trace her activities and whereabouts from the device, which her safety depended on.

As soon as Mina got to the part of the ship where she would be able to take a ferry into the main island of Bal, she was swarmed by men and women who had only joined Nael's crew because she was there. They were people with personal vendettas against the super-rich and in her, they saw a chance at revenge against those they believed were responsible for their economic struggles. Neither person asked what happened, it was clear that she was running, and because her clothing was disheveled; some of it tattered, they knew that someone tried to force themselves on her.

Taking her things, they helped her onto the ferry, and without words, they set on to make their new path, one that did not include trusting pirates.

----

Nael stayed in Bal searching for Ami for as long as he could before moving on to look for the woman in the slums of Sani. Events that occurred between them were eerily similar to the ones that had occurred between him and Mills, and Nael now knew that he had never changed. He was already angry with the woman, and he allowed it to get the best of him. So, when Ami rejected his advance after giving him hope mere hours before, it felt like she was trying to purposefully embarrass him, but in reality, he had been the one to embarrass himself.

Ami told him what she wanted, what she expected, and she told him that she did not believe he could give her those things. Many times, she had explained to the man that she had been in a relationship that damaged her trust in men, and even before then, she had many experiences that made her wary of males in general. Ami wanted certainty, she wanted to know that the person she was with, was only with her, and like an idiot Nael had allowed his drunkenness to guide his body. He violated the trust he had spent weeks building with the woman in a single night, and then, he had the gall to blame her for his actions, as if she were the one who made him sleep with someone else.

Unlike him, Ami had done nothing wrong, and like she said, she had not been asking him to wait months, she was asking him to give her a few hours and a sober mind, yet he could not even do that. However, in his heart, Nael knew that terrible morning was not going to be the last time he saw Ami. They were the same, and he told himself that when he next encountered her, he would be a different man, not for her but for himself.

Nael had finally understood what Leal meant when he would tell him that he was fighting for him, not fighting him. It was his brother's way of stopping him from becoming their father and it took losing Ami for Nael to see what that meant and how much chaos something like that could cause. While he still had a crew, it was now mostly made of people who were tired of living in Sani or Bal and did not have much interaction with Ami, but the ones who knew her previously, had all left the moment she did.

That really did not mean much to Nael because he did not plan to keep living on his ship for much longer anyway. He was in the market for a home, and he was going to set his life right while giving his brother a fighting chance in the process. Nael was not a fool, and he could tell that Leal was smitten with the woman named Ivy because in her, he saw a potential future.

Nael could only blame himself for not having that same level of possible happiness, but he did not plan to give up. Ami was extremely smart, and while he barely had a high school education, he was not a dumb person. They had spent many nights talking about her plans for Ela's Fish Market, and she had even left behind her route maps and outline detailing the course of action she had already put in place.

Nael had found them while digging through Ami's things, looking for anything that may give him a hint to where she would have gone, but all he found was 'wax flesh,' which, according to its jar, could be used to make realistic scars and burns. He also stumbled upon several containers of brown AccuVision brand contact lenses. In the past, a discovery of someone hiding their identity from him would have angered him into hunting them down, but this time it did not. He knew that Ami had not been trying to fool him in specific; she was hiding from someone else, and she needed to protect herself while doing it.

----

Leaving Nael's ship only set Mina back a few weeks in her agenda. She had been planning to leave the ship anyway, but was growing comfortable with the environment, which was why she had not been pressing forward to get away. If the incident with Nael had not happened, she probably would have stayed with the man for a longer time, but some things can't be avoided.

Fortunately, Mina did not have to start from square one after her departure. She had already built a level of 'trust' with the President of Sani, so she no longer needed Nael or Leal to help her in that country. In Bal, she was known as Madam Aych, a newcomer to the tourism industry that was making waves by employing mostly underprivileged young women to run her establishments.

Thirty percent of the proceeds from Mina's ventures went to educating the children she had taken under her wing. After all, they had been her inspiration for the restaurant slash art studio that had now become a chain establishment. Couples could eat, and if they chose, they could buy or paint something under the tutelage of an 'expert.' She also had several couples bonding clinics, where comparability could be compared against a person's significant other.

The technology used belonged to Luna Lee, and the money the woman spent to get access to the data Mina collected was extreme. It was as if the woman had put her entire life savings into whatever she was working on, and Mina planned to exploit the opportunity as much as possible. Any chance she got she tied one of her businesses to the lead group not because she wanted to see them succeed, but it was because when she collapsed her dynasty, she wanted them to suffer.

In short, by the time Mina's militia was ready to take over, the Lee group would be so dependent on her that it would not be able to interfere with the political unrest she planned to instigate. She had already stolen their secrets, robbed them of their money, and all she was waiting to do now was intercept an arms shipment.

In the meantime, Mina once again disguised herself. She traded her brown contacts for blue ones and invested heavily in realistic blonde wigs. She did not exactly fit in with the people of The Four Cities, but she did not stand out either. She was a simple restaurant owner who specialized in dishes from Pan, and while she was not expecting to Garner attention; her restaurant had blown up.

Mina had settled into an area with a large population of immigrants from Pan, so she knew it was possible, but she had not expected the semi flooded field to actually make any money for her. She was busy every night, and eventually, people wanted to meet her.

Caught in an inconvenient situation, Mina once again covered her face in scars and met with only a few city leaders, who she told she was scarred as a teenager. They were sympathetic to her and because she told them it made her uncomfortable, they did not include pictures when they published the article about her.

It was on a random day that Mina was in her restaurant when a couple caught her eye through the small window of the kitchen doors. She stood frozen, unsure if her mind was playing tricks on her, but her feet started to move on their own. She only stopped walking when she was certain that the couple she was looking at was the same couple who President Lee told her was dead.

Filled with anger, Mina called her people and when the Youngs' left her restaurant, they were pulled into an unmarked van.

----

With her face on full display, Mina stood in front of Adley and Mike Young, the couple who was supposed to be dead. They looked terrified, and had it not been for the fact that they claimed to have a child waiting at home for them, Mina would have already killed them for what they did to her.

"You don't understand Mina, I went back for you, but I couldn't get passed the guards."

"But you knew whose room I was breaking into. That's why you didn't take the risk yourself; do you know what happened to me?" Truthfully, Mina also did not know, but she could imagine.

"We didn't, but we named our daughter after you as tribute." Mina scoffed; a name was not enough to make up for her pain.

"I can think of much more effective ways to make up for what you've done." Mina trained her gun on Adley, but the woman's husband spoke up.

"We can tell you where Sadie is!"