Part 2
Elena stopped three feet from Matteo Volkov.
Close enough to see the sleepless ruin beneath his eyes.
Close enough to see that his daughter’s little mouth had gone pale from crying.
Close enough to understand that every person on that private jet had already decided what Elena was doing was either brave, insane, or fatal.
Matteo looked up at her slowly.
His eyes were gray.
Not soft gray. Not storm gray. The kind of gray found in old steel, in gun barrels, in winter rivers where bodies disappeared and never came back.
“Sit down,” he said.
It was not loud.
It did not need to be.
The bodyguard closest to Elena shifted one inch forward. His hand did not reach for a weapon, but it did not have to. The message lived in his posture.
Elena’s mouth went dry.
The baby made another sound.
Not a cry now.
A whimper.
Thin. Broken. Fading.
Elena’s fear cracked down the middle.
“No,” she said.
The cabin became so silent she could hear the engines beneath the floor.
Matteo stared at her.
The flight attendant near the galley stopped breathing. One of the guards muttered something in Russian under his breath.
Elena swallowed and forced herself to keep her hands visible.
“She needs to eat.”
Matteo’s jaw flexed. “I know what my daughter needs.”
“No,” Elena said, softer this time. “You know she needs a bottle. But she doesn’t want the bottle. She is too hungry to keep fighting it, and if she tires out completely, she may not wake enough to feed.”
Something passed through Matteo’s expression.
A fracture.
Only for a second.
Then the stone came back.
“Who are you?”
“Elena Rossi.”
His eyes sharpened at her last name, as if he had opened a drawer in his mind and found a file there.
“Rossi,” he repeated. “From Boston?”
The question touched something cold in Elena’s spine.
She had booked this flight under her maiden name after the funeral. She had told herself she needed distance, needed air, needed an ocean between herself and the apartment where grief had learned the layout of every room.
She had not expected anyone to recognize her.
“Yes,” she said.
Matteo’s gaze dropped for one brief, brutal second to the damp circles spreading across her blouse.
Elena felt heat burn up her neck. Humiliation hit hard, but she did not move. She had been humiliated by worse things than being needed.
His voice lowered.
“You have milk.”
The words were not a question.
Elena forced herself not to flinch.
“Yes.”
The baby twisted weakly against his chest, her tiny fists opening and closing like little pale stars.
Matteo looked down at her.
For the first time, Elena saw his hands for what they were in that moment.
Not weapons.
Not threats.
A father’s hands.
Terrified of being too strong and not strong enough.
“She will not take formula,” he said. “She has refused for hours. Her nurse—”
He stopped.
The silence after those two words was different.
Elena heard it.
So did the guards.
“Her nurse what?” Elena asked.
Matteo’s gaze lifted.
“You ask many questions for a woman on my plane.”
“I ask fewer than I should.”
A corner of his mouth moved, but there was no humor in it.
“My daughter needs to eat,” he said.
“Yes.”
“You are offering?”
Elena’s heart pounded so hard she thought she might faint.
Was she offering?
Her mind screamed at her to step back. To sit down. To remember that men like Matteo Volkov did not accept help like ordinary men. They turned kindness into debt, and debts into chains.
But the baby’s head had fallen back against his sleeve.
Elena had buried two sons who would never cry again.
She could not sit by and listen to a living child fade.
“Yes,” she whispered. “I am offering.”
Matteo did not move immediately.
Then he stood.
Everyone else in the cabin seemed to shrink.
He was taller than she had realized. Taller, broader, overwhelming in the narrow aisle of the jet. His suit smelled faintly of cedar, expensive soap, and smoke.
He carried the baby carefully, but his control was too rigid. Elena knew that kind of control. Men wore it when they thought tenderness might kill them.
“What do you need?” he asked.
The question was simple.
The obedience in it was not.
Elena looked toward the front of the cabin. “Privacy. A clean blanket. Warm water. And everyone stops staring at me.”
Matteo turned his head.
No one had moved, yet the whole plane seemed to recoil.
“Do it,” he said.
The flight attendant almost stumbled in her hurry.
The nearest guard stepped aside so quickly Elena saw fear cross his face before he hid it.
Matteo led her to the bedroom suite at the rear of the aircraft. It was separated by a polished wood door and furnished with impossible luxury: a low bed dressed in ivory linen, a leather armchair, gold fixtures, soft lighting. Everything looked untouched, too perfect, like a hotel room prepared for people who never slept.
Elena hesitated at the threshold.
Matteo noticed.
“Door stays open,” she said.
“No.”
Her pulse kicked.
“Then I don’t do this.”
The baby whimpered again.
Matteo’s face darkened. For one terrible second Elena thought she had made a mistake.
Then he looked over his shoulder.
“Nikolai.”
One guard appeared immediately.
“Stand outside,” Matteo said. “Door open. No one else comes near.”
Nikolai nodded once and took position with his back to the room.
Elena entered.
Matteo followed.
The flight attendant arrived with a folded white blanket, a bottle of water, and a bowl of warm water. Her hands trembled so badly the water rippled.
Elena thanked her.
The woman looked startled, as if gratitude was a foreign language aboard this jet.
When they were alone except for the guard outside, Matteo held the baby toward Elena.
Elena took one step back.
“Sit down,” she said. “You’re too tense. She feels it.”
His eyes narrowed. “You give orders naturally.”
“I had twins.”
The sentence left her before she could stop it.
Had.
Past tense.
The room changed around that little word.
Matteo heard it.
Of course he heard it.
Men like him survived by hearing things people tried to bury.
But he said nothing. He lowered himself into the armchair with the baby against his chest.
Elena washed her hands in the warm water, then dried them on the blanket. Her fingers shook as she unbuttoned her blouse enough to free one breast. Milk leaked at once, hot and aching.
For a moment the world tilted.
She was not on a private jet with a criminal king.
She was in a nursery washed in dawn light, holding two warm little bodies against her, one son nursing while the other slept with milk at the corner of his mouth.
Leo.
Luca.
Her breath broke.
Matteo saw.
“Elena.”
His voice was different now.
Not gentle.
But lower.
She blinked hard.
“Give her to me.”
He rose, slowly this time, and placed the baby in her arms.
The infant was lighter than Elena expected. Too light. Wrapped in a cashmere blanket, wearing a cream onesie with tiny pearl buttons, she looked like an heirloom someone had forgotten could break.
“What is her name?” Elena asked.
Matteo did not answer at first.
Then, quietly, “Sofia.”
Elena looked down.
“Hello, Sofia.”
The baby opened her mouth in a weak, furious protest.
“I know,” Elena whispered. “I know, sweetheart.”
She settled Sofia against her, supporting the small head, angling the body the way she had done a thousand times in another life. Instinct returned with merciless precision. Thumb at the jaw. Nose to nipple. Wait for the mouth to open wide.
At first Sofia turned away.
Elena did not panic.
She stroked the baby’s cheek.
“Come on,” she whispered. “You can do it.”
Sofia rooted once.
Then again.
Then latched.
The pull was immediate.
Sharp.
Painful.
Alive.
Elena bowed over her so fast her hair fell forward, hiding her face.
The sound that escaped her was not quite a sob.
Matteo heard it anyway.
But he was not looking at Elena anymore.
He was staring at his daughter.
Sofia’s body, rigid with hunger, slowly loosened. Her tiny fists unclenched. The frantic crease between her brows softened. She fed like a child returned from the edge of something dark.
Matteo sank back against the wall as if someone had cut invisible strings inside him.
For several minutes, no one spoke.
Only the engines.
