Chapter 2 - Crossing the Atlantic
The Boeing 777 leveled off at thirty-six thousand feet, cutting cleanly through the twilight above the North Atlantic. Below, the clouds formed an endless expanse of bruised purple and slate gray, swallowing the memory of Chicago in a shroud of freezing mist.
I rested my forehead against the cool double pane of the oval window, my breath fogging the glass. My hand felt shockingly light. For five years, the heavy platinum band encrusted with flawless emerald-cut diamonds had weighed down my ring finger. It had been Adrian’s signature mark—a branding iron disguised as an heirloom, reminding anyone who dared look at me that I belonged to the ruthless heir of the Moretti empire.
Now, the skin beneath was pale and unblemished, carrying only the faint imprint of a cage I had finally dismantled.
Closing my eyes, the scene at Terminal 5 replayed behind my eyelids like a recurring nightmare. Adrian, the untouchable titan who made senators tremble and syndicate bosses fold their hands, had looked completely unhinged. The perfectly tailored charcoal suit he wore like armor was rumpled. His tie was loosened, his dark hair falling across his forehead in frantic disarray as he slammed his palms against the reinforced security glass.
I had read the silent fury and panicked disbelief on his lips: *Claire! Don’t do this!*
He had truly believed I would freeze. He thought that because I had endured five years of calculated emotional neglect, five years of being pushed aside whenever Sophia Bennett shed a single decorative tear, I was incapable of walking away. He thought I was permanently anchored to his gravity.
He was wrong.
Meanwhile, seven miles behind me and three hours in the past, Adrian Moretti stood in the middle of O’Hare International Airport, surrounded by six armed security operatives who looked terrified to breathe.
"Find the flight manifest," Adrian snarled, his voice a low, vibrating growl that cleared a ten-foot perimeter of terrified travelers. "Call TSA. Call the Port Authority. Ground that bird."
"Boss," his chief of security, Frank, stammered, holding a vibrating phone with trembling fingers. "The plane just pushed back from the gate. It’s FAA jurisdiction. You can’t legally ground a commercial transatlantic airliner without a federal warrant or a credible bomb threat."
Adrian turned on him, his amber eyes blazing with an icy, feral madness that made the veteran bodyguard instinctively take a step back. "Do I look like a man who gives a single fuck about federal jurisdiction? That is my wife on that plane! Call the tower! Tell them there is a technical anomaly. Tell them whatever you have to tell them, or I swear to God I will dismantle your entire family’s pension by sunrise!"
"Sir, it’s already on the runway," Frank whispered, visibly sweating. "She’s gone."
Adrian’s chest heaved. He stared at the empty boarding gate, the realization hitting him like a blunt-force trauma to the ribs. Claire had walked away without looking back. She hadn’t cried. She hadn’t screamed at him for leaving her behind to escort Sophia onto a chartered Gulfstream. She had simply looked at him through the glass, her hazel eyes utterly devoid of love, of hatred, of anything at all.
Indifference. The one weapon he had no defense against.
His phone buzzed violently against his ribs. He yanked it from his pocket, praying it was her.
It was Sophia.
"Adrian? Baby, where are you?" Sophia’s breathy, delicate voice drifted through the speaker, laced with practiced vulnerability. "The driver dropped me off at the penthouse, but the locks aren’t working on the elevator. My ankle is throbbing so badly, and the doctor said I shouldn't be alone..."
Adrian didn't speak. He listened to the voice that had dictated the rhythm of his marriage for half a decade. For the first time in his life, the honeyed tone didn't trigger his instinct to protect. It felt like sulfuric acid poured directly into an open wound.
"Adrian? Are you there?"
"Did you know?" Adrian asked, his voice dead, devoid of inflection.
"Know what, sweetheart?"
"Claire left."
A beat of hesitation lingered on the line—too brief for anyone else to catch, but Adrian’s life depended on reading the micro-expressions of killers and liars. He heard the faint, smothered satisfaction in her silence.
"Oh... Adrian, no," Sophia whispered, feigning shock. "She left you? After everything you provided for her? That’s... that’s ungrateful. But maybe it’s for the best. She never understood the pressures of your world. Come home to the penthouse. I’ll make you a drink."
"Shut up," Adrian whispered.
"What?"
"Pack your bags, Sophia."
"Adrian, what are you saying? I can't walk on this ankle—"
"Pack your bags and get out of my building," Adrian said, his tone chillingly level, cold enough to freeze water in midair. "If you are still inside my penthouse when I arrive, my men will throw your luggage into the Chicago River. And you will follow it."
He hung up, smashing the custom encrypted phone against the terrazzo floor of the terminal. The device shattered into a dozen fragments of plastic and glass.
May you like
Adrian looked toward the dark runway through the floor-to-ceiling windows, watching the red beacon lights of a distant aircraft climbing steeply into the clouds.
"Prepare the Gulfstream," he ordered Frank, his voice hollowed out by a creeping, suffocating dread. "We’re going to London."
