“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.
