Chapter 1 - Row Two
Roman DeLuca boarded Flight 409 angry enough to frighten strangers without saying a word.
His private jet had been grounded by a Christmas Eve storm, one of his lieutenants was fighting for his life in a Colorado hospital, and three calls from Chicago had already told him that men were waiting for permission to retaliate.
Roman had spent his entire adult life making sure other people waited on him.
Tonight, weather had made him wait.
He hated it.
Snow battered the windows of JFK Terminal 4. Deicing trucks crawled like exhausted insects across the runways. Families slept on luggage. Children cried beside charging stations. Every departure board seemed to flash the same ugly word: DELAYED.
“Commercial,” Roman had told Carlo after the third update.
Carlo had stared at him as if his boss had announced he would swim to Denver.
“You want to fly commercial?”
“I want to be in Colorado before midnight.”
“The terminals are chaos.”
“Then buy me chaos with a seat number.”
Twenty minutes later, a terrified businessman accepted five thousand dollars for a first-class boarding pass.
Roman left his men behind.
For once, he would travel alone.
He entered the aircraft in a dark green suit beneath a black overcoat, carrying only a leather duffel and the resentment of a man forced into circumstances he had not chosen.
Row two.
Seat A.
He shoved the bag into the overhead compartment, sat down, and closed his eyes.
He needed quiet.
He needed whiskey.
He needed to authorize a response to the men who had put Luca Marino in the hospital.
Then he heard a voice across the aisle.
“Excuse me. I’m sorry. I just need to get past.”
Roman’s eyes opened.
The voice was softer than he remembered, more tired, but the rhythm of it went through him like a blade.
He turned slowly.
Across the narrow aisle stood Norah DeLuca.
His former wife.
The woman who had disappeared one year earlier without a note, without an address, without a single message that survived long enough for Roman’s people to trace it.
Her chestnut hair was tied in a careless knot. She wore a red sweater that looked warm but inexpensive. A gray blanket was gathered around her knees, and a battered diaper bag hung from one shoulder.
For twelve months Roman had paid investigators, informants, private security firms, and men who specialized in finding people who did not want to be found.
Nothing.
Now Norah was standing ten feet away because a storm had grounded his airplane.
Roman gripped the armrest.
Every question he had rehearsed for a year crowded behind his teeth.
Where did you go?
Why did you leave?
Who helped you?
Why did you make me think you were dead?
Then Norah turned sideways.
A baby was strapped to her chest.
Roman stopped breathing.
The infant slept against her in a gray carrier, one tiny fist curled under a round cheek.
Before Roman could process that, Norah bent toward a portable car seat and lifted a second child wrapped in a yellow knitted blanket.
Same small nose.
Same dark hair.
Same age.
Twins.
Roman stared.
The dates arranged themselves instantly.
Norah had disappeared twelve months ago.
The babies looked no older than three months.
She had been pregnant when she left him.
Norah sat down and finally looked across the aisle.
Her face emptied of color.
For several seconds, neither spoke.
Passengers continued boarding around them.
The cabin filled with holiday noise, overhead-bin arguments, muffled apologies, and the sharp scent of winter coats drying in warm air.
Roman heard none of it.
Norah pulled the baby in the yellow blanket closer.
Not casually.
Protectively.
As if Roman were the danger.
That hurt more than he expected.
A large man in a holiday sweater stopped beside Roman.
“Sir, I think that’s my seat.”
Roman did not look at him.
“What?”
“Two B. You’re in two A, but I need to get in.”
Roman removed a money clip from his jacket, peeled away ten hundred-dollar bills, and held them out.
“Merry Christmas.”
The man stared at the money.
Roman looked at him.
“Walk away.”
The man walked away.
Roman stood.
Norah pressed herself against the window.
“Don’t.”
Her voice cracked.
“Roman, please. Not here.”
He crossed the aisle, moved the empty infant seat to his row, and lowered himself into the chair beside her.
The space became too small immediately.
He could smell baby powder, cheap detergent, and the faint vanilla shampoo Norah had always used.
“Look at me.”
She shook her head.
“Norah.”
Her eyes lifted.
They were exhausted.
Dark circles sat beneath them. Her cheeks were thinner. The woman who had once lived in a Lake Shore Drive penthouse and complained about Roman buying her shoes she had not asked for now looked as if sleep had become a luxury.
Roman looked at the baby against her chest.
A girl.
Then the baby in her lap.
A boy.
His son.
His daughter.
He had spent three months not knowing they existed.
“Mine,” he said.
Norah’s jaw tightened.
“Mine.”
His voice dropped.
“Do not do that.”
“Do what?”
“Turn this into a word game because you’re afraid.”
Her eyes flashed.
“You think fear is a game?”
Roman leaned closer.
“You disappeared carrying my children.”
“I had to.”
A tear escaped. She wiped it away angrily.
“You know why.”
“No. I know I spent half a million dollars looking for you. I know I questioned every friend you ever had. I know I thought someone had taken you to punish me.”
“Someone was going to.”
Roman went still.
Norah looked away.
The baby on her lap shifted, and she immediately softened, resting one hand over the blanket.
Roman noticed that too.
“What does that mean?”
Norah said nothing.
“Who?”
“I can’t.”
“Can’t or won’t?”
Her head snapped toward him.
“You think this is about punishing you?”
“I don’t know what it’s about.”
“It’s about staying alive.”
The words were barely above a whisper.
Roman studied her.
“I never hurt you.”
“No.”
Her answer came quickly.
“You didn’t.”
Something in her tone stopped him from taking comfort in it.
“You brought the danger home anyway.”
Roman’s jaw tightened.
“The night I left,” she continued, “you came into the penthouse after midnight with blood on your cuff. I was in the bathroom holding a positive pregnancy test.”
He remembered.
A lower-level man had stolen from the pension fund used to support widows of dead soldiers.
Roman had handled it personally.
Messily.
Norah had seen him at the sink afterward.
“I was terrified,” she said. “Not because I thought you would hurt me. Because I suddenly understood what our children would grow up around.”
Roman looked at the twins.
“Then you should have told me.”
“I was going to.”
“What changed?”
Norah’s eyes moved toward the front of the cabin.
A flight attendant closed an overhead bin.
No threat.
Still, Norah’s fingers tightened.
“The next morning I found an envelope under our door.”
Roman’s face hardened.
“What envelope?”
“There was a photograph of me leaving my obstetrician’s office.”
His blood went cold.
“And a note.”
“What did it say?”
Norah swallowed.
“It said, ‘If Roman learns about the babies, he loses them before they are born.’”
Roman became very still.
“Why didn’t you bring it to me?”
“Because the note included a detail only someone inside your house could know.”
“What detail?”
Norah looked at him.
“The name we had chosen for a daughter.”
Roman’s chest tightened.
They had discussed that name once, years earlier.
Isabella.
Only in their bedroom.
Only with two people present.
Unless someone had been listening.
Or unless someone close enough to Roman had access to everything.
“Who helped you leave?” he asked.
Norah stared at the dark window.
“A woman named Miriam Hale.”
Roman knew the name.
His father’s former accountant.
A woman who had vanished from Chicago eleven months ago.
Roman’s phone vibrated.
Carlo.
He ignored it.
It vibrated again.
Then a message appeared.
DO NOT BOARD. WE FOUND WHO SHOT LUCA. IT WASN’T THE IRISH.
Roman read the message twice.
Another followed.
THE ORDER CAME FROM INSIDE.
He lifted his eyes to Norah.
She had seen the change in his face.
“What?”
Roman slipped the phone away.
“Nothing.”
“Roman.”
The engines began to hum beneath them.
The flight attendant instructed passengers to fasten their seat belts.
Roman looked at the twins.
At Norah.
At the storm outside.
Then at the front of the cabin.
For the first time all evening, Denver no longer mattered.
“Who knew you were on this flight?” he asked.
Norah frowned.
“No one.”
“Who booked the ticket?”
“Miriam.”
“When?”
“Two days ago.”
Roman’s pulse slowed in the dangerous way it always did before violence.
“Miriam Hale is dead.”
Norah stared at him.
“What?”
“She died ten months ago.”
Her lips parted.
“That’s impossible. I spoke to her yesterday.”
Roman unfastened his seat belt.
Across the cabin, the door had already closed.
The aircraft began pushing away from the gate.
Norah clutched both babies.
“Roman?”
He looked at the cockpit.
Then down the aisle.
May you like
Somewhere on this plane was either a ghost—
or someone who had spent a year making Norah believe one was still alive.
