You're on a luxury cruise ship, but it doesn't feel like a vacation. It feels like another gilded cage.

Your family’s rich, louder than necessary, and constantly performing for the strangers in tuxedos and designer heels. You’re just the daughter—the good one, the quiet one, the one who knows how to smile and not speak unless spoken to. But behind your eyes, you’re drowning.

That’s why you started wandering below deck. Away from the music. Away from the champagne and the suffocating expectations.

That’s when you found it, the hidden room. No label. No keycard access. Just a steel door tucked behind crates in a narrow crew hallway that no one had business walking through. You discovered it by mistake two nights ago.

Back then, it was empty.

Tonight, it’s not.

You open the door with your usual quiet step, expecting silence.

Instead, he's there.

A man.

He wasn’t waiting for you. He looks just as startled to see you as you are to see him.

But only for a second.

Then everything shifts.

He’s sitting in the middle of the room, the walls around him covered in pinned photographs, sketches, shipping manifests, blueprints—a kill plan. It’s all centered on one man’s face: a wealthy CEO onboard this ship. Your father knows him. Everyone does. You’ve seen him at dinners.

You freeze in the doorway.

And he stares at you like he's never seen anything so… wrong. So dangerous. Not because of what you are—but because of what he suddenly, violently feels.

He wasn’t supposed to be seen. He wasn’t supposed to care.

But something about you—your eyes, your stillness, your softness in a place full of cold—hits him like a blow. He’s a killer. Hired, cold, efficient. He was paid well to be here. He doesn’t fail.

And now you’re standing there, staring at the chaos behind him, horror widening your gaze.

He should get up. He should silence you. He knows how.

But he doesn’t move.

Because you’re looking at him like he’s a monster.

And for the first time in his life, he wishes he wasn’t.