Cole

"Oh, for fuck's sake!" I yelled, pounding my fist against the sonar system's housing. It was the only tool I knew to be functional, but now the screen was black. "Fuck, fuck, fuck."

This was bad. I was officially in the shit, and more shit than my usual.

Abandoning the boat's failing navigation system, I stormed into the captain's quarters for my laptop and tools. It was dark in there, darker than at the helm, and it heightened my senses. The summer air was thick and close, and sweat was rolling down my back. My belly was rumbling with hunger and my eyes were bleary from straining to spot rocks and land through the heavy veil of night.

I wanted air conditioning, whiskey, sushi, and a good night's sleep. In that order.

"Un-fucking-likely," I murmured as I returned to the boat's control center.

The screen indicated I was minutes away from reaching my destination at Newburyport Harbor, but the sea and shore were dark. Too dark to be anywhere near a port city.

If not for the lighthouse shining in the distance, I would think I was miles from shore.

"If this is what I get for investing in start-ups," I muttered, "then start-ups can go fuck themselves."

I snorted at that notion and set to unscrewing the control panel. If it weren't for start-up investors, I wouldn't have been the youngest billionaire in history. But founding an all-things-internet company and making it a household name wasn't as golden and glossy as the media made it seem.

According to the company's public statements, I was on sabbatical. It was a good cover story, and my spokeswoman managed to weave in some cozy anecdotes about my childhood love of sailing to make it feel even more authentic. It was handy that I did love sailing. Or, I had loved it, back when my summers were spent helping my uncle build custom boats in Morro Bay. But that was a lifetime ago.

The truth was that my board of directors had ejected me from the CEO's seat after my latest initiative fell below Silicon Valley's expectations. Project DaVinci was supposed to turn the industry upside down. Instead of doing that, it was a gigantic flop that yielded nothing worthy of my company's name.

All told, the billions spent on that endeavor were nowhere near as painful as the landslide of bad press.

This was the first time I'd ever taken a true vacation, one without a whiff of work, since founding the company in my apartment three blocks from Harvard University's Cambridge, Massachusetts campus. I wasn't one for lavish holidays or extreme adventures. I was like all the other Red Bull-addled programmers who found it easier to admire smartly constructed code than the natural world.

I hated this PR-inspired bullshit walkabout. If it wasn't for my desire to keep my stock prices from plummeting, I would've thrown a bigger fit when the board stripped me of my control and saddled me with a lame title. Chief Innovations Officer was a long, hard fall from CEO.

I was known for that—fit-throwing. I wasn't especially proud of it, and I'd worked my ass off to get my temper under control in the early years of my success, but it still followed me. Any glimmer of impatience was filed under my storied tyrannical management style known widely as Scream, Fire, and Throw. There had been tell-all books written by people who didn't care about violating nondisclosure agreements. The ass-lickers called it a new, disruptive style of leadership. The haters petitioned Amnesty International to add me to their watch lists.

Over the years, I'd changed. But that didn't rewrite my history. For an environment that evolved by the nanosecond, the half-life of bad behavior was eternity.

I'd matured from the slouchy geek who'd changed the way people spent their time on the internet. I was still arrogant and more condescending than necessary, but now I kept all of that close to my bespoke vests. My chief of staff, Neera Malik, beat some corporate manners into me and helped me recognize the negative impact of my punk-ass attitude on investors, stock prices, and the Valley's mercurial moods.

I'd never realized how much my behavior mattered. I'd always thought my work could—and should—speak for itself. But I'd learned the hard way that how I handled things mattered mightily. I didn't have to like it. I didn't have to agree. But I did have to deal with it if I intended to stay in this business.

And for all that work, I was lost and alone on the North Atlantic. The money, the connections, the pseudo-fame, the illusion of power…none of it could help me now. I was the only one who could help me. I was on my own here.

The nav system was on the fritz, the electrical panel was shooting sparks, and in trying to find the flashlight, I walked straight into the stainless steel server tower.

It had been almost twenty years since I'd sailed. Now, with blood running down my face in the dark, I was failing at this, too.

And then the pirates arrived.