Chapter 2 - The Man in Seat 3A
Marco did not answer Lily immediately.
The plane pushed back from the gate, engines humming beneath the floor, while passengers settled into the familiar rituals of flight—seatbelts clicking, screens glowing, tired parents bargaining with children over snacks.
But Marco heard none of it.
Naomi Ellis.
The name had not been spoken to him in five years.
Not since the night he received the message that said she was gone.
He remembered standing in his penthouse office, one hand resting against the glass wall overlooking Manhattan, reading words that had turned his blood cold.
Naomi died in a car accident. Don’t look for her.
No signature. No explanation.
Just a photograph attached beneath it: a news clipping from Atlanta about a late-night collision on I-85. The driver’s name had been Naomi Ellis.
He had tried to call her.
Her number had been disconnected.
He had contacted hospitals, police departments, private investigators. He had offered rewards through people who knew how to find anyone, anywhere. But every trail ended in the same place.
A closed coffin.
A funeral he was told not to attend.
A grieving family that wanted nothing to do with him.
And then silence.
Now, a four-year-old girl with Naomi’s curls and his eyes sat beside him, drawing purple hearts over the Manhattan skyline.
“Mr. Moretti?”
Julie’s voice pulled him back.
She was staring at him across the aisle, her expression caught between terror and exhaustion.
“You know my mommy?” Lily asked.
Marco looked down at her.
There were a thousand ways to answer. A thousand ways to protect himself. To pretend he had never known Naomi. To say her mother had once worked with his company. To make the moment smaller than it was.
Instead, he said, “Yes.”
Lily paused her drawing.
“Were you friends?”
Marco’s mouth tightened.
“We were.”
Julie leaned toward him, her voice barely above a whisper. “Please don’t.”
He turned to her slowly.
“Please don’t what?”
“Don’t do this here.”
“You put her beside me.”
“I didn’t know you’d be on this flight.”
“No,” Marco said. “But you knew exactly who I was the moment I sat down.”
Julie looked away.
The plane lifted into the dark Seattle sky.
Lily pressed her forehead to the window as city lights became scattered gold beneath the clouds. “Are we flying over Canada?”
“Eventually,” Marco said.
She nodded as though he had passed a test.
Julie’s hands twisted together in her lap. “Marco, this is not the conversation you think it is.”
His eyes sharpened. “Then explain it.”
“You can’t ask questions about Naomi after all these years.”
“I can ask whatever I want.”
Her expression hardened for the first time. “That is exactly the kind of thing Naomi was afraid of.”
The words landed harder than they should have.
Marco lowered his voice. “Afraid of me?”
Julie gave a bitter little laugh. “You really don’t know?”
Before he could respond, Lily tugged gently on his sleeve.
“Can I have apple juice?”
Marco stared at her tiny fingers touching the fabric of his coat.
His guards would have reacted to that touch. His men would have noticed. They would have moved the child away from him with quiet efficiency.
But Marco simply reached for the call button.
“Apple juice,” he told the flight attendant when she appeared. “And whatever snack she wants.”
Lily smiled.
It was small. Innocent.
And it nearly destroyed him.
When the flight attendant left, Lily opened her sketchbook again. This time she turned to a different page.
There was a drawing of three people.
A woman with dark curls.
A little girl with a pink backpack.
And a tall man in a black suit.
The man had silver-gray eyes colored in crayon.
Marco’s chest went tight.
“Who’s that?” he asked.
Lily looked at the picture.
“That’s the man Mommy dreams about.”
Julie closed her eyes.
Marco went still.
“What does she dream?”
Lily shrugged. “Sometimes she wakes up sad. She says she used to know a man who promised to come back.”
The cabin seemed suddenly too narrow.
Too bright.
Too full of people who had no idea Marco Moretti’s entire life had just shifted beneath him.
Julie leaned forward. “Lily, honey, why don’t you watch your movie?”
“But I’m talking.”
“You can talk later.”
Lily looked offended. “Mommy says people who interrupt are rude.”
Marco almost smiled again, but the warmth never reached his face.
He looked at Julie.
“You’re her sister?”
“No.”
“Then who are you?”
“Her best friend.”
“Where is Naomi?”
Julie’s face changed.
Not panic.
Pain.
“She’s alive,” she said quietly.
Marco’s jaw tightened.
For five years, he had mourned a woman who had been alive.
For five years, he had believed he failed to protect someone he loved.
For five years, he had carried a death that had never happened.
“Where is she?” he asked.
Julie’s eyes glistened. “You don’t get to know that.”
His voice became dangerously calm. “You lied about her death.”
“I didn’t lie. I protected her.”
“From what?”
Julie leaned close enough that he could smell her lavender perfume beneath the recycled airplane air.
“From your father.”
Marco did not move.
The name hovered between them like a loaded weapon.
Vittorio Moretti.
Dead now for three years.
But dead men from powerful families had a way of haunting every room they had ever controlled.
“My father is dead,” Marco said.
“Yes,” Julie replied. “But his people aren’t. His deals aren’t. His enemies aren’t. And neither are the things he did to make Naomi disappear.”
Marco felt something dark and violent stir beneath his ribs.
“My father did not make Naomi disappear.”
Julie looked at him with pity.
“You really believed that?”
A flight attendant passed with a cart. A baby cried three rows behind them. The ordinary world continued around them.
Marco’s voice dropped. “Tell me what happened.”
Julie looked toward Lily.
The little girl was sipping apple juice through a red straw, watching an animated movie with the serious concentration of a critic.
Then Julie whispered, “Naomi found out she was pregnant two weeks after she left New York.”
Marco stared at her.
The air left his lungs.
“She called you,” Julie continued. “More than once.”
His hand tightened on the armrest.
“I never got those calls.”
“No, you didn’t. Because someone intercepted them.”
Marco’s eyes went cold.
“My father?”
Julie nodded once.
“Naomi received a call from a man claiming to work for your family. He told her you had made it clear you wanted nothing to do with her. He told her you had arranged for someone to ‘handle the situation’ if she caused trouble.”
Marco’s face became unreadable.
But Julie saw the truth in his eyes.
He had not known.
“He said that?” Marco asked.
“The man who called said worse.”
Marco looked down at Lily.
His daughter.
His daughter.
The phrase moved through him like a blade and a prayer at once.
Lily glanced up. “Why are you looking at me?”
Marco swallowed.
“You remind me of someone.”
“My mommy?”
“Yes.”
She considered this.
“Mommy says I have her hair.”
“You do.”
“And Daddy’s eyes.”
Marco stopped breathing again.
Julie’s gaze snapped toward Lily, but it was too late.
The child had said it casually, without understanding the explosion she had caused.
Marco turned his head toward Julie.
“Who does Naomi say is her father?”
Julie looked trapped.
“Julie,” Marco said.
The warning in his voice was quiet.
Lily looked between them. “Why are you mad?”
“I’m not mad,” Marco said, forcing his expression softer. “I’m just trying to understand something.”
Julie’s lips trembled.
“She never told Lily your name,” she whispered. “She only told her that her father was someone who loved her mother once, but he had to go away.”
Marco stared at the child’s silver-gray eyes.
There was no doubt left.
No need for a test.
No need for proof.
His blood had recognized her before his mind did.
Lily Moretti.
His daughter.
And someone had kept her from him.
The seatbelt sign chimed off.
Marco reached for his phone, but there was no service yet. His instincts screamed at him to call his security chief, to have men waiting in New York, to find Naomi immediately.
Then Lily laid her small hand over his.
“Are you leaving when we land?”
Marco looked at her fingers against his.
For the first time in his life, the feared man of Manhattan had no armor strong enough for a four-year-old’s question.
“No,” he said.
May you like
And this time, he meant it.
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