Chapter 2 - The Sabotaged Flight
The gold silk dress hissed against the marble stairs as Victoria descended, her red-painted lips curved in a subtle, dangerous smile. She moved with the slow, deliberate grace of a predator who believed she had already won.
"You're standing on my imported runner, Julian," Victoria said softly, adjusting her oversized dark sunglasses. "And you're ruining your custom suit holding that filthy child."
"What did you do to her?" My voice wasn't just angry; it was vibrating with a lethal, cold fury that made my hands shake against Isabella’s small, shivering back.
Isabella buried her face into the crook of my neck. Her body was burning with fever, her small fingers clutching the lapel of my jacket as if holding onto a ledge above a canyon. The rags tied around her arms were stained with dried blood and mud.
"She was doing chores," Victoria replied smoothly, stopping three steps above me so she could look down at us. "Children need discipline, Julian. You indulge her far too much. Since you were going to be out of the country for two weeks in Miami and Orlando, I decided it was time your daughter learned the value of hard work."
"She is seven years old!" I roared, the sound echoing off the vaulted ceilings of the foyer. "She is bleeding! She is carrying fifty-pound trash bags across the lawn!"
Victoria didn't flinch. She simply tilted her head, her sunglasses reflecting my enraged face. "You shouldn't shout. It’s unrefined. Besides... why are you here?" Her voice dropped, losing its playful edge, becoming sharp as a razor. "Your private jet took off from O’Hare three hours ago. You had a 2:00 PM conference with the investment group in Tampa. You shouldn't be back until the fifteenth."
My mind raced back to what had happened four hours earlier.
My private jet had been scheduled for 10:00 AM. But when I arrived at the executive hangar, the head of my personal security team—a man named David whom Victoria had personally recommended six months ago—insisted that the plane required an urgent hydraulic check. He urged me to wait in the VIP lounge while he handled it.
Something about David’s eyes had troubled me. He was nervous, sweating despite the air conditioning. When he walked away to talk to the chief pilot, I noticed him hand the pilot a sealed black envelope. Feeling a deep, instinctual knot of suspicion in my gut, I made an excuse, walked out of the terminal, caught a commercial cab, and ordered my driver to take me back to my estate while instructing my private pilot to delay takeoff.
Victoria hadn't expected me to walk through the front door. She had expected me to be airborne over the Gulf of Mexico.
"The flight was delayed," I lied cold-bloodedly, keeping my tone clipped. "And it’s a good thing it was."
Victoria’s smirk wavered for a fraction of a second. She reached into her pocket and pulled out her phone, her thumb sliding across the screen—likely checking for a message from David. When she saw whatever was on her screen, her expression hardened into ice.
"Call Dr. Miller," I demanded, stepping past her toward the elevator. "Now. If my daughter has an infection from these wounds, I will throw you out of this house myself."
Victoria turned around on the stairs, watching me carry Isabella away. Her voice followed me into the wood-paneled elevator cab.
"Careful how you talk to me in my own home, Julian," she said quietly. "You might find that the foundation beneath your feet isn't nearly as solid as you think."
The elevator doors slid shut. In the privacy of the small space, Isabella let out a tiny, broken sob.
"Daddy," she whimpered, her voice raspy from dehydration. "She took the picture of Mommy. She burned it in the fireplace."
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My blood ran completely cold. "What picture, sweetie?"
"The one under my mattress," Isabella whispered, tears cutting clean streaks through the dirt on her pale face. "The one with the lady with the blue eyes. She said Mommy was dead, and that I was going to be gone soon too."
