Chapter 1 - The Descent
The descent into JFK always looked like a glowing circuit board in the dark, but tonight the grid of lights below felt like a trap I had willingly walked into.
Beside me, the cabin was suffocatingly quiet. Lily had finally fallen asleep, her head pillowed against Julie’s shoulder, a single purple crayon still clutched in her small fist. In the dim amber glow of the overhead lights, the resemblance was a physical blow to my chest—the slope of the cheekbone, the precise angle of the jawline, and those unmistakable storm-gray eyes I had spent the last five years convincing myself belonged exclusively to me, a solitary anomaly in a world where everyone else traded in loyalty for leverage.
Julie stared straight ahead, her hands clenched white-knuckled over her lap. She had spent the remainder of the flight avoiding my gaze, shrinking into her seat as if hoping the fuselage would swallow her whole. She knew what a Moretti name meant in this city. She knew the weight my father’s empire carried, the ruthlessness required to keep it, and the absolute destruction that followed anyone who crossed us.
"She doesn't know you're on this flight," Julie whispered, her voice trembling so faintly I barely caught it over the roar of the engines. "She thinks we're staying with my sister in Queens for a week. When she sees you standing outside that terminal..."
"She’ll see the man who has a right to answers," I replied, keeping my voice low enough not to wake the child. "You helped her hide my daughter for four years, Julie. Don't expect me to apologize for wanting what's mine."
"She wasn't hiding from your money, Adrian," Julie hissed, finally snapping her head toward me, tears glistening in her eyes. "She was hiding from you. From the life you lead. The day she found that extra-judicial clearance file in your study—the one with the signatures and the clean-up protocols—she realized the man who bought her street food in Brooklyn and laughed at her terrible jokes didn't exist. You were a ghost playing dress-up in a normal life."
The words cut deeper than any blade. Naomi had left because she was terrified of what I was.
The landing gear locked into place with a heavy, metallic thud that shuddered through the cabin. The seatbelt signs flashed on. Around us, passengers began unbuckling, rustling bags, and shuffling toward the aisles.
Julie gently shook Lily awake. The little girl blinked, rubbing her eyes with the back of her hand, and immediately looked up at me.
"Are we at your house?" she asked sleepily.
"We're in New York, sweetheart," I said, my voice softening in a way it never did for boardrooms or rivals.
As we filed out of the jet bridge and into the chaotic, fluorescent glare of the terminal, my phone buzzed in my pocket. I pulled it out. A text from my head of security, Marcus: Car is waiting at the private bay. Your father’s office called twice. They know you’re back.
I ignored it. I locked the screen, grabbed my coat, and looked at Julie, whose face had gone chalk-white as she scanned the crowd.
May you like
"Lead the way to Naomi," I said.
She swallowed hard, turning toward the baggage claim exits. But as we stepped past the sliding glass doors into the chilly New York night, a black town car idling by the curb flashed its high beams directly at us, and the rear door swung open to reveal my father’s chief enforcer sitting in the back.
