Chapter 3 - The Manifest Revelation
“Well?” Linda demanded, crossing her arms over her crisp navy blazer, tapping her high heel impatiently against the gray carpet. “Are you going to admit he belongs in the back, or are we going to stand here all day blocking the aisle while the elite passengers wait to stow their garment bags?”
I slowly raised my head, looking from the heavy cardstock boarding pass in my hand up to Linda’s smug, immovable face. The color had entirely drained from my cheeks.
“Linda,” I said, my voice barely audible over the hum of the auxiliary power unit. “Look at the booking reference. Look at the last name.”
Linda rolled her eyes with theatrical exhaustion. “Oh, please. What is it? Another corporate glitch? Some low-level employee using a buddy pass?”
“It’s Sterling,” I whispered.
For a fraction of a second, Linda’s expression didn't change. She stared at me, processing the syllables. Then, slowly, the smug superiority began to curdle around the edges of her mouth. Her eyes darted from my face down to the gold-embossed cardstock in my hand.
“Sterling?” she echoed, her voice pitching up slightly before she caught herself. “As in… Jonathan Sterling?”
“Jonathan Sterling is the majority shareholder holding our entire carrier’s liquidity line,” I said, stepping back so she could read the VIP corporate designation with her own eyes. “And this is his son. Seated in 2A. Exactly where he was instructed to wait.”
The blood drained from Linda’s face so fast she looked like a corpse under the harsh LED cabin lights. Her jaw dropped an inch, her mouth working soundlessly like a fish out of water.
“N-no,” she stammered, taking an involuntary step backward, nearly tripping over the footrest of seat 1B. “That’s… that’s impossible. Unaccompanied minors don't fly first class alone. Where is his handler? Where is the VIP tarmac escort?”
“The VIP escort was supposed to hand him off at the jet bridge door,” a calm, icy voice interrupted from behind us.
We both spun around.
Standing at the entrance of the first-class galley, holding a leather designer briefcase in one hand and a child’s red superhero backpack in the other, was a tall, sharply dressed man in a charcoal bespoke suit. He looked to be in his late forties, with sharp silver-streaked hair, piercing gray eyes, and an expression so terrifyingly cold it made the cabin air feel twenty degrees colder.
Jonathan Sterling.
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The billionaire who could—and likely would—fire half the executive board before this flight even reached cruising altitude.
And he had just watched a veteran flight attendant try to physically evict his son from the cabin.
