“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.
