---- Chapter 9 Katarina POV: The air at the private De Luca hangar at JFK was crisp and cool. The scent of jet fuel was the smell of my new life. My flight to Paris was scheduled to depart in thirty minutes. | felt a profound sense of calm, a stillness | hadn't experienced in years. Then | saw him. Alex was striding across the tarmac, barking orders into his phone. He stopped dead when he saw me. A flicker of suspicion crossed his face. "Katarina? What are you doing here?" "I'm seeing off a distant relative," | lied smoothly, gesturing vaguely toward a different jet. "A cousin from my mother's side." He relaxed, accepting the lie. "Good. | have an emergency meeting on the West Coast. The sit-down was moved up." Another lie. We were a pair of expert deceivers, swimming in a sea of our own untruths. ---- "Her flight is delayed," | said, taking a seat on a bench, feigning patience. My presence here, so close to his own jet, made him anxious. He needed to get rid of me. He was on his way to meet Aria, to fly her to their new life in Europe. He glanced at his watch, his agitation growing. "Well, | have to go." He leaned down and gave me a quick, dismissive kiss on the cheek. It felt like being brushed by a snake's skin. "I'll call you when | land." He turned and disappeared into the boarding tunnel of his jet, a sleek Gulfstream G650 aimed for Milan. | waited until he was gone. Then, a calm, female voice came over the hangar's private address system. "Final boarding call for flight 788 to Paris." That was me. My burner phone vibrated. A single, encrypted text from Donato's Consigliere. *Transfer complete. All documents are active. You are clean.* In the eyes of the De Luca family, | had been erased. Another text came through. It was from Alex. *Love you. Be back soon.* The final, pathetic lie. | held my finger over his contact, deleted it, and then wiped the entire phone. | dropped it into a nearby trash receptacle. ---- | walked up the stairs to my own private jet, a smaller, more discreet plane. | didn't look back. There was nothing left for me here. Katarina De Luca was dead. As my plane taxied toward the runway, | glanced out the window. | could see Alex's jet on the opposite side of the airfield. Through his window, | thought | saw his silhouette, a man looking out, his attention caught by the plane across from his. He might have seen a woman with dark hair boarding. He might have felt a flicker of unease, a strange sense of déja vu. But he would have dismissed it. Just a coincidence. He was a man convinced of his own control, flying toward a future built on a lie. | was flying toward the truth. And freedom. Discover our latest featured short drama reel. Watch now and enjoy the story!