Part 2

Elena stopped three feet from Matteo Volkov.

Close enough to see the sleepless ruin beneath his eyes.

Close enough to see that his daughter’s little mouth had gone pale from crying.

Close enough to understand that every person on that private jet had already decided what Elena was doing was either brave, insane, or fatal.

Matteo looked up at her slowly.

His eyes were gray.

Not soft gray. Not storm gray. The kind of gray found in old steel, in gun barrels, in winter rivers where bodies disappeared and never came back.

“Sit down,” he said.

It was not loud.

It did not need to be.

The bodyguard closest to Elena shifted one inch forward. His hand did not reach for a weapon, but it did not have to. The message lived in his posture.

Elena’s mouth went dry.

The baby made another sound.

Not a cry now.

A whimper.

Thin. Broken. Fading.

Elena’s fear cracked down the middle.

“No,” she said.

The cabin became so silent she could hear the engines beneath the floor.

Matteo stared at her.

The flight attendant near the galley stopped breathing. One of the guards muttered something in Russian under his breath.

Elena swallowed and forced herself to keep her hands visible.

“She needs to eat.”

Matteo’s jaw flexed. “I know what my daughter needs.”

“No,” Elena said, softer this time. “You know she needs a bottle. But she doesn’t want the bottle. She is too hungry to keep fighting it, and if she tires out completely, she may not wake enough to feed.”

Something passed through Matteo’s expression.

A fracture.

Only for a second.

Then the stone came back.

“Who are you?”

“Elena Rossi.”

His eyes sharpened at her last name, as if he had opened a drawer in his mind and found a file there.

“Rossi,” he repeated. “From Boston?”

The question touched something cold in Elena’s spine.

She had booked this flight under her maiden name after the funeral. She had told herself she needed distance, needed air, needed an ocean between herself and the apartment where grief had learned the layout of every room.

She had not expected anyone to recognize her.

“Yes,” she said.

Matteo’s gaze dropped for one brief, brutal second to the damp circles spreading across her blouse.

Elena felt heat burn up her neck. Humiliation hit hard, but she did not move. She had been humiliated by worse things than being needed.

His voice lowered.

“You have milk.”

The words were not a question.

Elena forced herself not to flinch.

“Yes.”

The baby twisted weakly against his chest, her tiny fists opening and closing like little pale stars.

Matteo looked down at her.

For the first time, Elena saw his hands for what they were in that moment.

Not weapons.

Not threats.

A father’s hands.

Terrified of being too strong and not strong enough.

“She will not take formula,” he said. “She has refused for hours. Her nurse—”

He stopped.

The silence after those two words was different.

Elena heard it.

So did the guards.

“Her nurse what?” Elena asked.

Matteo’s gaze lifted.

“You ask many questions for a woman on my plane.”

“I ask fewer than I should.”

A corner of his mouth moved, but there was no humor in it.

“My daughter needs to eat,” he said.

“Yes.”

“You are offering?”

Elena’s heart pounded so hard she thought she might faint.

Was she offering?

Her mind screamed at her to step back. To sit down. To remember that men like Matteo Volkov did not accept help like ordinary men. They turned kindness into debt, and debts into chains.

But the baby’s head had fallen back against his sleeve.

Elena had buried two sons who would never cry again.

She could not sit by and listen to a living child fade.

“Yes,” she whispered. “I am offering.”

Matteo did not move immediately.

Then he stood.

Everyone else in the cabin seemed to shrink.

He was taller than she had realized. Taller, broader, overwhelming in the narrow aisle of the jet. His suit smelled faintly of cedar, expensive soap, and smoke.

He carried the baby carefully, but his control was too rigid. Elena knew that kind of control. Men wore it when they thought tenderness might kill them.

“What do you need?” he asked.

The question was simple.

The obedience in it was not.

Elena looked toward the front of the cabin. “Privacy. A clean blanket. Warm water. And everyone stops staring at me.”

Matteo turned his head.

No one had moved, yet the whole plane seemed to recoil.

“Do it,” he said.

The flight attendant almost stumbled in her hurry.

The nearest guard stepped aside so quickly Elena saw fear cross his face before he hid it.

Matteo led her to the bedroom suite at the rear of the aircraft. It was separated by a polished wood door and furnished with impossible luxury: a low bed dressed in ivory linen, a leather armchair, gold fixtures, soft lighting. Everything looked untouched, too perfect, like a hotel room prepared for people who never slept.

Elena hesitated at the threshold.

Matteo noticed.

“Door stays open,” she said.

“No.”

Her pulse kicked.

“Then I don’t do this.”

The baby whimpered again.

Matteo’s face darkened. For one terrible second Elena thought she had made a mistake.

Then he looked over his shoulder.

“Nikolai.”

One guard appeared immediately.

“Stand outside,” Matteo said. “Door open. No one else comes near.”

Nikolai nodded once and took position with his back to the room.

Elena entered.

Matteo followed.

The flight attendant arrived with a folded white blanket, a bottle of water, and a bowl of warm water. Her hands trembled so badly the water rippled.

Elena thanked her.

The woman looked startled, as if gratitude was a foreign language aboard this jet.

When they were alone except for the guard outside, Matteo held the baby toward Elena.

Elena took one step back.

“Sit down,” she said. “You’re too tense. She feels it.”

His eyes narrowed. “You give orders naturally.”

“I had twins.”

The sentence left her before she could stop it.

Had.

Past tense.

The room changed around that little word.

Matteo heard it.

Of course he heard it.

Men like him survived by hearing things people tried to bury.

But he said nothing. He lowered himself into the armchair with the baby against his chest.

Elena washed her hands in the warm water, then dried them on the blanket. Her fingers shook as she unbuttoned her blouse enough to free one breast. Milk leaked at once, hot and aching.

For a moment the world tilted.

She was not on a private jet with a criminal king.

She was in a nursery washed in dawn light, holding two warm little bodies against her, one son nursing while the other slept with milk at the corner of his mouth.

Leo.

Luca.

Her breath broke.

Matteo saw.

“Elena.”

His voice was different now.

Not gentle.

But lower.

She blinked hard.

“Give her to me.”

He rose, slowly this time, and placed the baby in her arms.

The infant was lighter than Elena expected. Too light. Wrapped in a cashmere blanket, wearing a cream onesie with tiny pearl buttons, she looked like an heirloom someone had forgotten could break.

“What is her name?” Elena asked.

Matteo did not answer at first.

Then, quietly, “Sofia.”

Elena looked down.

“Hello, Sofia.”

The baby opened her mouth in a weak, furious protest.

“I know,” Elena whispered. “I know, sweetheart.”

She settled Sofia against her, supporting the small head, angling the body the way she had done a thousand times in another life. Instinct returned with merciless precision. Thumb at the jaw. Nose to nipple. Wait for the mouth to open wide.

At first Sofia turned away.

Elena did not panic.

She stroked the baby’s cheek.

“Come on,” she whispered. “You can do it.”

Sofia rooted once.

Then again.

Then latched.

The pull was immediate.

Sharp.

Painful.

Alive.

Elena bowed over her so fast her hair fell forward, hiding her face.

The sound that escaped her was not quite a sob.

Matteo heard it anyway.

But he was not looking at Elena anymore.

He was staring at his daughter.

Sofia’s body, rigid with hunger, slowly loosened. Her tiny fists unclenched. The frantic crease between her brows softened. She fed like a child returned from the edge of something dark.

Matteo sank back against the wall as if someone had cut invisible strings inside him.

For several minutes, no one spoke.

Only the engines.

Only Sofia’s tiny swallowing.

Only Elena’s broken breathing as grief and relief tore through her at the same time.

She had thought her body’s milk was a cruelty.

Now a starving baby lived because of it.

The thought was unbearable.

And holy.

And horrible.

Matteo’s voice came quietly from across the room.

“How old were they?”

Elena froze.

She did not ask how he knew.

“Nine weeks.”

His gaze did not leave Sofia.

“Boys?”

She nodded.

“Names?”

The question was too intimate.

Too dangerous.

Too much like kindness.

“Leo and Luca.”

Matteo repeated the names under his breath.

Not like information.

Like a prayer he had no right to say.

“What happened?”

Elena looked up.

Her eyes were dry now, but that made it worse.

“A drunk driver crossed the center line. My husband swerved. The car went through a guardrail into the river.”

Matteo’s jaw hardened.

“All three?”

“Yes.”

“And you?”

“I was supposed to be with them.” Her voice went empty. “I had mastitis. Fever. My husband said he would take the boys to his mother’s so I could sleep. I woke up to police at my door.”

Matteo looked at her then.

Really looked.

For one second there was no mafia boss, no empire, no blood-soaked reputation.

Only two people sitting in a room with the dead between them.

Then Sofia made a tiny satisfied sound, and the spell broke.

Elena shifted her to the other side.

Matteo watched every movement, intense and silent.

“You have done this before,” he said.

“I was a postpartum nurse.”

“Was?”

“I quit after the funeral.”

“Why were you on my plane?”

Elena almost laughed.

“Your plane?”

“It became mine after takeoff.”

Of course it did.

She should have been more frightened by that sentence.

Instead, exhaustion loosened her tongue.

“I was flying to Rome. Commercial. Then a man at the lounge desk said there was an issue with my ticket, and I had been upgraded through a private charter partner.”

Matteo went very still.

Elena noticed.

“Sofia’s nurse,” she said quietly. “What happened to her?”

The air tightened.

Matteo did not answer.

“Nobody accidentally puts a grieving lactating nurse on a private jet with a starving baby,” Elena said.

His eyes returned to steel.

“Careful.”

“No,” Elena said. “I think I am done being careful. I was placed here.”

Outside the open door, Nikolai shifted his weight.

Matteo spoke without looking away from Elena.

“Leave us.”

Nikolai hesitated.

“Boss—”

“Now.”

The guard disappeared.

Elena’s arms tightened around Sofia.

“Do not be afraid,” Matteo said.

“That is a stupid thing to say to a woman alone with you.”

A faint shadow crossed his mouth again. Not quite amusement. Not quite admiration.

“Yes,” he said. “It is.”

Sofia fed on, calm now, her lashes resting against her cheeks.

Matteo walked to the small cabinet by the bed and poured a glass of water. He brought it to Elena and held it near her hand.

She did not want to accept anything from him.

But nursing made her thirsty.

She took it.

Their fingers did not touch.

“My daughter’s nurse was poisoned three hours before we boarded,” Matteo said.

Elena’s blood chilled.

“Is she alive?”

“No.”

The word landed flat.

Not careless. Controlled.

“Who poisoned her?”

“My wife.”

Elena stared at him.

The engines hummed softly beneath them, indifferent to horror.

“You’re married?”

“Widowed,” he said. “As of yesterday.”

The room seemed to tilt again, but this time not from grief.

From danger.

Matteo’s face remained calm.

Too calm.

“Sofia’s mother tried to sell her location to my enemies,” he said. “When I discovered it, she fled. Before she ran, she made sure the nurse drank tea laced with enough sedative to stop her heart. Then she replaced Sofia’s formula with something bitter enough to make her refuse it.”

Elena looked down at the baby.

Sofia slept now, still latched lightly, one hand curled against Elena’s skin.

“She was going to let her own baby starve?”

“She was going to make me land in panic,” Matteo said. “At an airport she had chosen.”

“A trap.”

“Yes.”

“Then why are we still in the air?”

“Because I do not obey panic.”

Elena studied him.

But that was not true.

He had been panicking.

Quietly. Terribly.

Just not where anyone could see.

“What happened to your wife?” Elena asked.

Matteo’s eyes went flat.

“She reached the men she betrayed me for.”

“And?”

“They returned her in pieces.”

Elena’s stomach turned.

Matteo watched her reaction without apology and without pleasure.

“There are monsters outside this jet,” he said. “You should understand that before judging the one inside it.”

“I’m not judging,” Elena said. “I’m listening.”

His eyes flickered.

Perhaps he was not used to the difference.

Sofia released the breast at last and fell into a heavy, milk-drunk sleep.

Elena adjusted her blouse with one hand, then lifted the baby carefully to her shoulder. She patted Sofia’s back in slow circles until a tiny burp escaped.

The sound was so ordinary, so innocent, that Elena nearly smiled.

Then she remembered where she was.

She tried to give the baby back.

Matteo did not take her.

Instead, he stood frozen, staring at Sofia’s sleeping face.

“You can hold her,” Elena said.

“I might wake her.”

“You won’t.”

His hands lifted.

Stopped.

For the first time, Elena realized something strange.

Matteo Volkov, feared by governments and hunted by men who whispered his name, was afraid to hold his own daughter.

Not because he did not love her.

Because he did.

Elena placed Sofia into his arms with deliberate care.

“Support her head.”

“I know.”

“You’re not doing it.”

He glared.

She fixed his hand anyway.

He let her.

Sofia stirred, then settled against him with a sigh.

Matteo looked as if he had been shot.

Elena turned away to give him privacy, though there was nowhere to go. Her gaze caught on the mirror above the cabinet. She saw herself there: hair loose, blouse wrinkled, eyes swollen, a woman who had boarded the plane half-dead and somehow become necessary again.

Behind her, Matteo held his daughter like a man holding the only remaining proof that he had ever been human.

Then the intercom crackled.

The pilot’s voice came through, strained.

“Mr. Volkov.”

Matteo’s expression changed instantly.

The father vanished.

The king returned.

“What?”

“We’ve been instructed to divert to Shannon.”

“By whom?”

A pause.

“Air traffic control says there’s a mechanical advisory and weather routing issue.”

Matteo looked at Elena.

She knew from his face that it was a lie.

“Do not change course,” he said.

Another pause.

“Sir, they are insisting.”

Matteo walked to the cabin phone with Sofia still in his arms.

“Then tell them I insist back.”

The pilot lowered his voice. “Sir, we have two aircraft shadowing us.”

The room turned cold.

Elena stood.

Matteo’s eyes narrowed. “Identification?”

“Transponders dark.”

“Distance?”

“Closing.”

Matteo ended the call.

For a heartbeat nothing happened.

Then the jet changed.

Not physically, not yet, but in atmosphere. The men outside began moving. Drawers opened. Low voices passed commands. The velvet luxury cracked open and showed the war machine underneath.

Elena backed toward the bed.

“What is happening?”

Matteo opened a concealed drawer in the wall panel and removed a pistol.

Elena’s pulse leapt.

“Sofia’s mother did not work alone,” he said.

“You said she was dead.”

“Dead people leave plans behind.”

The plane dipped slightly.

Elena caught the bedpost.

Sofia woke and whimpered.

Matteo glanced down, and in that instant Elena saw the impossible calculation in his eyes.

His empire.

His daughter.

The woman who had just fed his child.

He crossed the room and held Sofia out to Elena.

“Take her.”

She did.

His voice dropped. “No matter what you hear, you keep her quiet.”

“That’s your plan?”

“My plan is to keep us alive.”

The first impact hit like thunder.

Not a crash.

A pressure wave.

Elena fell sideways onto the bed, curling herself around Sofia on instinct. The baby startled, opened her mouth, and Elena pressed her close, whispering nonsense against her warm little head.

The cabin lights flickered.

A shout came from the main cabin.

Then a sound Elena had only heard in movies but recognized immediately.

Gunfire.

Not inside the jet.

Outside.

A sharp, distant ripping through the sky.

Matteo stepped into the doorway and spoke in Russian, fast and lethal. His guards responded. Someone pulled shades down over the windows. Someone else opened a panel in the floor.

Elena could barely breathe.

Private jets were not supposed to have hidden compartments. Not armor plating. Not men loading weapons at forty thousand feet.

But this one did.

Of course this one did.

Matteo turned back to her.

“Stay here.”

Elena laughed once, high and terrified. “Where exactly would I go?”

He paused.

Then, absurdly, he almost smiled.

The plane banked hard.

Elena slid across the bed and slammed against the wall, keeping Sofia pinned safely to her chest. Sofia cried again, but this time the sound was strong. Angry. Alive.

Elena kissed her head.

“That’s right,” she whispered. “Be mad. Mad means breathing.”

The gunfire stopped.

Then the pilot’s voice came through again, louder, panicked now.

“Sir, they’re warning us to land or be forced down.”

Matteo grabbed the phone.

“Who is warning?”

A different voice answered.

Not the pilot.

A woman.

Smooth. Calm. Italian.

“Hello, Matteo.”

Elena felt the blood drain from her face.

Matteo did not move.

But something in him changed so violently the room seemed smaller.

“Impossible,” he said.

The woman laughed softly over the intercom.

“You should know better than anyone. Death is just paperwork when the right men are paid.”

Matteo’s face became white with rage.

Elena held Sofia tighter.

The voice continued.

“Is our daughter hungry? I worried the nurse might be too dead to feed her.”

Elena’s stomach twisted.

Matteo looked at Sofia.

Then at Elena.

And for the first time since she had met him, Elena saw fear win.

Not for himself.

For the child.

His wife was alive.

And she knew exactly where they were.

“You have something of mine,” the woman said. “Land the plane, Matteo. Give me the baby, and I may let your little nursing widow walk away.”

Elena’s skin went cold.

Little nursing widow.

This woman knew who she was.

Matteo spoke softly.

“You come near my daughter, Isabella, and I will burn every country you hide in.”

Isabella sighed.

“You always speak in flames. It becomes boring.”

The line clicked dead.

For one second, only Sofia’s crying filled the room.

Then Matteo turned to Elena.

“We are not landing in Shannon.”

“Good.”

“We are not going to Rome.”

Elena looked at him.

“Then where are we going?”

He did not answer right away.

Instead, he removed a phone from inside his jacket, typed a code, and spoke one sentence into it.

“Wake the island.”

Elena stared.

“What island?”

“A place no one finds unless I invite them.”

“I need to go home,” she said.

The words came out before she understood she meant them.

Home.

Not the apartment. Not the nursery. Not the rooms full of ghosts.

But the right to choose where her grief slept.

Matteo looked at her with an expression she could not read.

Then he said the words that sealed the air around her.

“You cannot go home.”

Elena’s mouth parted.

For a moment she thought she had misheard.

“No.”

“Yes.”

“No,” she repeated, louder. Sofia cried harder. Elena lowered her voice with effort. “You don’t get to say that to me.”

“I just did.”

“You needed help. I helped your daughter. That does not make me yours.”

His eyes flashed.

“Nothing on this plane is simple anymore.”

“It is simple. When we land, I leave.”

“If you leave, Isabella finds you.”

“I don’t even know that woman.”

“She knows you. She arranged for you to be on this aircraft. She selected you because you were useful and disposable.”

The word hit.

Disposable.

Elena’s throat closed.

Matteo stepped closer.

“Your ticket. Your grief. Your milk. None of it was chance. She needed Sofia alive long enough to use as leverage, but weak enough to force my hand. She put you here as a temporary solution.”

Elena shook her head.

“No. That’s insane.”

“Yes.”

“Why me?”

“Because you had no husband to ask questions. No children to protect. No one waiting at home who could raise an alarm quickly enough.”

Elena felt the sentence like a slap.

No one waiting.

Matteo seemed to realize the cruelty only after saying it.

His jaw tightened.

“Elena—”

“Don’t.”

Sofia’s cries softened as Elena rocked her, but Elena’s own anger grew sharper with every breath.

“I lost them,” she said. “That does not mean I stopped belonging to myself.”

Matteo looked at her for a long moment.

Then, quietly, “I know.”

“No, you don’t.”

His voice turned rough.

“I buried two sons too.”

Elena stopped moving.

The plane hummed around them.

Sofia hiccupped against her shoulder.

Matteo’s face shut down almost instantly, as if the truth had escaped without permission.

But it was too late.

Elena had heard it.

“What?”

“Before Sofia,” he said. “Before Isabella. Another life.”

His gaze drifted to the darkened window.

“Twin boys.”

Elena could not breathe.

Matteo’s eyes returned to hers.

“They were five.”

The coincidence was too cruel to feel real.

“What happened?”

“My enemies sent a car bomb meant for me. My first wife took them to church that morning. I was delayed by a meeting.” His mouth hardened. “I arrived in time to hear the bells.”

Elena sat down slowly on the edge of the bed.

Sofia slept again, exhausted by crying and fed enough to surrender.

For several seconds, Elena and Matteo looked at each other across the small room, both carrying the same impossible shape of loss.

Not the same story.

Not the same guilt.

But the same empty arms.

“That’s why you were afraid to hold her,” Elena whispered.

His face darkened.

“I am not afraid.”

“Yes,” she said. “You are.”

He should have hated her for saying it.

Maybe he did.

But he did not deny it.

The plane banked again, gentler this time.

The pilot came over the intercom.

“Course adjusted. Forty minutes.”

Matteo pressed the button. “Status?”

“They’re still behind us, but losing distance.”

“Good.”

He released the intercom and turned back.

“Elena, listen to me carefully. When we land, every camera connected to your life will be watched. Your apartment. Your hospital. Your bank. Your mother’s grave, if Isabella is thorough.”

“She is thorough,” Elena said, because she already knew.

“Yes.”

“So I’m a prisoner.”

“You are alive.”

“That is not the same thing.”

“No,” Matteo said. “It is the condition required for all other things.”

Elena looked down at Sofia.

The baby slept with her mouth slightly open, milk still damp on her lips.

She should have handed her back.

She did not.

“You said she arranged for me to be here,” Elena said. “How did she know I still had milk?”

Matteo’s silence answered before he did.

Elena’s blood turned cold.

“How?”

“She had access to medical records.”

“My medical records?”

“Yes.”

The room seemed to recede.

“From the hospital?”

“Yes.”

“That is not possible.”

“With enough money, many impossible things become boring.”

Elena’s hand moved protectively over Sofia’s back.

“She knew about my sons.”

Matteo did not answer.

“She chose me because my babies died.”

His silence became unbearable.

Elena stood too fast, dizzy with rage.

“She used my dead children to feed hers.”

Matteo stepped forward, but she moved away.

“Do not touch me.”

He stopped.

The command hung between them.

And he obeyed.

That frightened her almost as much as everything else.

A knock sounded at the open door.

Nikolai stood outside, face grim.

“Boss. We intercepted a transmission.”

Matteo turned.

“Play it.”

Nikolai held up a device.

Static crackled.

Then Isabella’s voice filled the room again, softer now, amused.

“Tell Matteo the widow is not just a nurse. Tell him to ask her what her husband carried in the trunk the night he died.”

Elena went still.

Every drop of air left the room.

Matteo turned his head slowly.

Nikolai looked at Elena with sudden suspicion.

Elena felt the world narrow around her.

“What is she talking about?” Matteo asked.

Elena’s lips parted.

“I don’t know.”

But even as she said it, memory rose.

A rainy night.

Her husband Daniel standing in the hallway, soaked through, holding his keys so tightly his knuckles were white.

“I have to make one stop before your mother’s,” he had said.

“What stop?”

“Nothing. Just paperwork for the firm.”

He had kissed her forehead too quickly.

He had not met her eyes.

Then he had left with their sons sleeping in the back seat.

And two hours later, the police came.

Elena sat down again because her knees failed.

Matteo saw the truth enter her face.

“You remember something.”

“No.”

“Elena.”

“No,” she said, but weaker now.

The baby stirred.

Elena looked down at Sofia as if the child could anchor her.

“My husband was an accountant,” she whispered. “He worked with shipping companies. Small clients. Nothing dangerous.”

Matteo’s expression sharpened.

“What firm?”

“Bellucci and Crane.”

Nikolai cursed.

Matteo’s eyes turned lethal.

Elena looked between them.

“What? What is that?”

Matteo came closer, slow enough not to frighten Sofia.

“Bellucci and Crane laundered money for the Moretti family.”

Elena shook her head.

“No.”

“They also moved funds for Isabella.”

“No.”

“Your husband may have had something that belonged to her.”

The floor seemed to vanish beneath Elena.

“My husband died because of a drunk driver.”

Matteo did not answer.

“My babies died because of a drunk driver,” she said, voice breaking.

Still, he said nothing.

And in that silence, the official story began to rot.

The car crossing the center line.

The guardrail.

The river.

The driver found burned beyond recognition in the other vehicle.

The closed investigation.

The insurance payout.

The polite condolences from Daniel’s firm.

The partner who had stood at the funeral and told her Daniel was a good man, a loyal man, a man who had taken secrets to the grave.

Elena had thought he meant grief.

Now she understood he had meant something else.

Nikolai spoke quietly.

“There was no drunk driver, was there?”

Matteo’s gaze stayed on Elena.

“I do not know yet.”

But Elena heard what he did not say.

He suspected.

The plane began to descend.

A soft chime sounded.

Outside the shaded windows, darkness pressed close.

Elena felt Sofia breathing against her chest.

A child not hers.

A child who had pulled her into the center of a war that may have killed her family long before she ever knew its name.

Matteo reached for the baby.

This time Elena handed her over.

Their hands brushed.

Only for a second.

But something passed between them that was neither trust nor affection.

It was recognition.

Two ruined parents standing over the edge of the same abyss.

Matteo held Sofia close and looked at Elena.

“When we land,” he said, “you stay beside me.”

“I thought you said I could never go home.”

“You cannot.”

Her eyes burned.

“Then where do I go?”

The jet dropped through cloud.

Far below, lights appeared in the black ocean.

Not a city.

Not an airport.

An island.

A fortress of stone and fire rising from the sea.

Matteo looked out the window, then back at her.

“With me,” he said.

Before Elena could answer, Nikolai’s device crackled one final time.

This time the voice was not Isabella’s.

It was male.

Familiar.

Impossible.

Soft with static, but unmistakable.

“Elena,” the voice said. “If you are hearing this, do not trust Matteo Volkov.”

Elena stopped breathing.

Because the voice belonged to her dead husband.

…If you want to know what happened next, please type “YES” and like for more.