The billionaire’s gambit

Susannah Fontaine-Williams lay on the prow of a strange man’s  yacht propped back on her elbows, wishing she had her wide-brimmed floppy hat to shade her from the hot sun. The fast boat etched a creamy V through the Aegean Sea at nearly 50 knots.

She had already bought her ferry tickets to the Island of Delos when a man who introduced himself as Tassos offered to speed her there personally on his yacht. It was the kind of opportunity that presented itself to her frequently when she traveled alone, and the sort of offer she rarely refused. Who would? It didn’t hurt that he was striking.

But she hesitated an instant, perhaps because he had one blue eye and one brown one. In that moment between yes and no, Tassos convinced her, explaining that he had made his fortune in shipping which allowed him to indulge his interest in archaeology. “I will be your personal guide on ancient Delos. I can show you things you could not possibly discover on the tour.”

Before boarding the 60-foot craft, she’d said, “I thought you said you had a yacht.” She had then taken a look around to see if there might be someone else with a larger boat waiting to whisk her away.

She reached into her bag hoping that maybe she had stuffed a hat in at some point but knowing she hadn’t. Her hand felt something smooth and cold and pulled out an ivory-handled dagger with a leather blade cover. She gasped, not with surprise, but at the knife’s intricate beauty. She turned it over, unsheathed it, rubbed her thumb along the blade.  “Sharp,” she thought. It had the symbol of the ankh delicately carved on the fat part of the blade on both sides.

She tucked it back in the bag, remembering where so she could study it later at her leisure. She rooted around some more and pulled out an unfamiliar floppy sun hat which she placed upon her head. It fit perfectly and the wind did not blow it off.