Blackheart's Treasure

I know I promised new writing this week, but I didn't get it typed up in time (it's quite long). It'll be here next week. For now, enjoy this scene from a romantic suspense story that I never got around to finishing. I do plan to come back to this story eventually. But not yet.

May 1635

Juan, El Corazòn Negro, looked over the side of his ship and sighed.  The sun was setting in the West over the land where he had settled his family.  He still missed his Spanish home, but his new home was beautiful as well.  And his sons were still able to have Spanish wives brought over from the old country.

A rare smile touched the old man’s face as he thought of his sons, Nicodemo and Ricardo, finding the letters he had left for them.  Let them fight over his treasure now.  All those years of piracy had made him a rich man, but for what?

“One more trip, Elisa,” he would say.  “Then I’ll stay home for good.”

But that one more trip always became one more and one more and one more, until now he was too old for one more trip and Elisa had died.  The smile fell from his lips and a tear slipped down the battle-scarred cheek of El Corazòn Negro.

Le Cœur Noir.  The Black Heart.  A merciless pirate known throughout coastal Europe and the Americas.  He had found nothing but gold on the seas while the true treasure waited for him on the land he had bought in the Colonies.

Since Elisa’s death three months ago he had found nothing to fill the hole in his heart.  A heart that wasn’t as black as his name described.  Not even his two precious sons could open his life once more.  He longed only to join Elisa.  While Nicodemo had grown up like his mother, Ricardo had, regretfully, grown up like himself, restless and full of an insatiable greed.  But since their mother’s death they had begun to fight tirelessly over the fortune Juan had amassed through his years of piracy.  He had eventually split up most of it to give them equal amounts.  However, there was one piece left.  The treasure from his final voyage, by far the most booty he had ever returned with.  His greatest prize settled now in a wooden crate back in a deep cave in the ocean.  The letters told them how to find it, but who knew how long it would take to find the three underwater caves?  And then they’d have to choose the right one and find their way through the mass of tunnels to the right place.

The letters said:

I know you will fight over the last piece of treasure until one kills the other, so I have hidden it.  There is a place deep within the ocean where three caves sit side-by-side and tunnels wind through them.  But I must warn you that the true treasure does not lie deep within Davie Jones’ Locker, the true treasure lies beside you each night and lifts their small arms to you each morning.  It is the love of your wife and child.  Do not repeat my mistake, son.

Your Father.

Juan wiped the tears from his eyes, tears that no one would ever have believed he shed, and took a match from his pocket.  He lit it as his eyes followed the line of black gunpowder to the three barrels stacked in the center of his legendary ship.  He touched the flaming match to the end of the line at his feet.

Years later, they would still talk of the demise of El Corazòn Negro and wonder what his last thoughts were when the ship was blown away.  Speculation abounded but none even came close to touching on his last thoughts.

In the final moments of his life, Juan Marcos-Ramirez cursed the treasure so that only love, true love could find it.  Then Juan Marcos-Ramirez, El Corazòn Negro, was no more.