Unbeknownst to me, this second near-death experience had released long-dormant childhood memories from the first. Sleep became my enemy, as I constantly woke up screaming from night terrors. Worse, I found myself deathly afraid of the water, the anxiety threatening my future as a marine biologist.

In the span of a few months, I had lost everything—my job, my career, my fiancée, and my quickly fading sanity.

I began drinking heavily. Being inebriated kept me from entering the deepest stages of sleep where the night terrors lay in wait. Days were devoted to recovering from hangovers, nights reserved for binging on expensive booze and cheap women, both of which I found in abundance in South Beach, my new haunt.

That’s where Maxie Rael found me. My half-brother, whom I never knew existed, had come to bring me back to Scotland.

The aforementioned five-star resort, known today as Nessie’s Retreat, had been Angus Wallace’s idea, and my father rarely met an idea (or a woman, for that matter) that he didn’t fall in-love with. The Wallace clan had left him title to a prime stretch of waterside real estate just south of Urquhart Bay, and once the zoning laws had been manipulated in his favor, Angus wasted no time in leasing the land to Mr. John Cialino of Cialino Ventures. As partners, my father and the well-connected “Johnny C.” intended on bringing luxury accommodations to the Scottish Highlands.

Then one fateful afternoon during the construction phase, my father and John engaged in a heated argument on Urquhart Bluff, and before you could say, “Yer bum’s oot the windae!” Angus struck his younger partner with a right cross, sending Johnny’s arse (and the rest of him) into Loch Ness, “ne’er tae be seen alive again.”

While I was struggling to survive my own post-traumatic symptoms in Miami Beach, Angus was locked away in a Highland prison cell awaiting his murder trial. He had sent Maxie to bring me to Scotland so that my estranged father would have both of his sons by his side in his fight to stave off the gallows and prove his innocence.

Seventeen years away from the old man, and I fell for his lies hook, line, and sinker.

It was all part of a well-orchestrated plan intended to save my father’s neck, jumpstart his new venture, and force me to face the demons of my past—all by placing my head in his noose.

That noose unexpectedly tightened when the creature’s temperament suddenly changed.