I blink. I scan my body. My gold watch is scratched but intact on my left wrist, the second hand sweeping smoothly across the dial in stark contrast to the destruction around me. My lean, defined muscles ache with a deep, throbbing heat, but nothing is broken. I turn my head.
I catch my reflection in the cracked glass of the altimeter gauge hanging loose from the panel. Dark hair heavily laced with stark silver streaks. A sharp salt-and-pepper beard masking the hard set of my face. A cold, calculating stare looks back at me. I look as I did when I boarded this flight. Undamaged.
Then I look at her.
Reese is slumped forward against the control panel. Her safety harness holds her flush against the seat, but her head rests dangerously close to the smashed instruments. Blood drips steadily from her temple, pooling on the cracked console.
My chest tightens. A sharp knot of adrenaline locks behind my ribs.
Two decades ago, the world stopped spinning. My Uncle Carlo was lured to a South Side warehouse meeting. Executed without mercy. Dumped in an alley six blocks away like garbage. Matteo found him in the rain. Identified him at the county morgue the next morning while the rain washed the blood from the streets. I was twenty-one and still too young for that kind of ruin. I sat in a sterile hospital hallway and waited for the news.
Then came the other bodies. My parents, in their car, on a road my mother had driven a thousand times. Two locations. One night. I did not explode. I did not scream. I absorbed the grief in silence and let it hollow me out. I became the patient, silent watcher the Costa family required. Present in every room. Alive in none of them. A dead man occupying my own life.
Until this exact second.
I unclip my harness. The metal buckle clicks loud in the dead quiet. I crawl forward through the twisted debris of the cabin. My knee crushes a rogue piece of navigational equipment. I do not care. The world narrows to the woman bleeding in the pilot seat.
I reach her. I lean over her shoulder. Her breath fogs faintly in the frozen air, fast and thin, but present.
Her scent hits me.
The sharp tang of altitude clings to her skin, mixed with the metallic smell of fresh blood.
Her chest rises and falls. Slowly. Evenly.
She breathes.
She kept us alive. She did not panic. She fought the sky and she won.
She survived.
The realization anchors itself in my mind. I have watched the world happen behind a sheet of bulletproof glass for years. I want this practical, fearless woman to open her eyes.
"Reese," I say. My voice is a flat scrape of sound. Rough and unused to the emotion coating it.
She groans. The sound is low in her chest. Her eyelashes flutter against her pale cheeks. She blinks slowly, staring at the wrecked dashboard in front of her. Instead of screaming, she assesses the damage with a slow turn of her head.
"Status," she croaks, her voice hoarse from the dry, freezing air.
"We crashed," I say calmly, hovering inches from her ear.
She scoffs. A weak, sarcastic sound that drives a spike of raw obsession straight through my spine. "No shit. Are you dead over there, Costa?"
"I am alive."
"Miraculous," she mutters. She tests the movement of her neck. She winces. "Are we burning?"
"Not yet."
"Good. Get the emergency bag from the aft compartment. We’re leaking fuel. I can smell it."
She orders me. She sits in the wreckage of her livelihood, bleeding from the head, and gives me a direct command. I need to get her out of this metal coffin before her adrenaline crashes and the shock sets in.
"I’m getting you out of this seat first," I state.
"I can unbuckle myself," she fires back, her hands reaching for the release latch on her harness. Her fingers slip on the metal. Her fine motor skills are compromised from the shock.
"Hold still," I command.
