Chapter 2 - The Altitude of Regret
The flight attendant stood frozen in the aisle for three full seconds, her hand still holding the satellite phone like a live grenade. In her fifteen years of working first-class routes for transcontinental flights, she had undoubtedly dealt with CEOs, politicians, and billionaires. She had probably seen men scream over cold meals or demand emergency landings for missed meetings.
She had almost certainly never seen Damon Prescott refuse a seven-hundred-and-eighty-million-dollar phone call.
"Sir," she whispered, leaning closer so the passengers in row twenty-seven wouldn't overhear. "He emphasized that this is a non-revocable deadline. If the digital signature isn't transmitted before we cross the Colorado state line, the board of Merritt Systems is legally authorized to entertain Calder’s tender offer."
"I heard you," I replied. I didn't look at her. I kept my hand resting gently on Luke’s soft curls. "And you heard me. Please inform captain’s deck that I am offline."
She swallowed hard, gave Cassandra a quick, bewildered glance, and turned back toward the front of the aircraft.
The silence that reclaimed row twenty-eight was heavier now, charged with a strange, static electricity.
Cassandra was staring at me as if I had suddenly transformed into a stranger. "What did you just do?" she asked softly.
"I didn't take the call," I said.
"Damon, that’s your deal. That’s the neonatal platform. The thing you’ve been talking about since... since the day we met."
"I know what it is," I said. I looked down at my right hand. It was trembling slightly against the rough denim of my toddler son's jeans. "I’ve spent nine months chasing that deal because I told myself it was the only way to make Clara’s death mean something. I told myself that if I owned the technology, if I put it in every hospital in North America, I could balance the ledger."
I turned my head to meet her gaze directly.
"But sitting here, looking at you and looking at these two children, I realized something, Cass. I didn't fail Clara because I lacked money or power. I was twelve years old. I failed her because I couldn't stop time. And I’ve been trying to buy time back ever since by burning everything else to the ground."
Cassandra’s lower lip trembled. She pulled Violet closer against her collarbone, her chin resting on the little girl's head. "You were always so dramatic with your metaphors, Damon."
"It's not a metaphor," I murmured. "It's a balance sheet. And for three years, I’ve been operating in absolute insolvency without even knowing it."
Luke stirred against my leg, letting out a small, gurgling sound before settling back to sleep. The plane lurched slightly as we hit a pocket of winter air over the Rockies. Outside the small double-paned window, dark gray clouds swept past, illuminated occasionally by the flashing red strobe on the wingtip.
"Where were you going?" I asked softly. "On Christmas Eve. To Denver?"
Cassandra wiped a stray tear from her cheek with the sleeve of her cardigan. "My mother moved to Boulder two years ago. After... after the twins were born, I couldn't afford the apartment in Seattle anymore. My graphic design freelance work wasn't enough to cover daycare for two infants and rent in the city."
The words felt like physical blows. Couldn't afford the apartment. While she was counting pennies for formula and diapers, I had bought a penthouse overlooking Elliott Bay. I had spent forty thousand dollars on an antique mahogany conference table just because I liked the grain of the wood.
"Why didn't you sue me for child support?" I demanded, a flash of old frustration leaking into my voice. "Even if you hated me, Cass, even if you thought I was a monster—the law would have forced me to pay! You didn't have to suffer!"
"I didn't want your money, Damon!" she hissed back, her eyes flashing with a fierce, protective fire that brought back a flood of memories from our college days. "Do you know what happens when a billionaire pays child support? He buys the right to dictate terms. Your legal team would have demanded visitation schedules built around your travel calendar. They would have insisted on private security, non-disclosure agreements, background checks on my friends, and nanny teams reporting back to your office. You would have turned my children's lives into a corporate subsidiary!"
I opened my mouth to dispute her, to tell her that my legal team wasn't that cold, but the words died in my throat.
Because she was right.
If Marcus Vance had handled a paternity claim three years ago, he would have approached it exactly like a hostile takeover. He would have drawn up ironclad non-disclosure agreements, established a blind trust, assigned round-the-clock security details, and ensured that my corporate image remained unblemished. I would have viewed the twins as a tactical variable to be managed, a responsibility to be funded, rather than two human beings deserving of a father.
"I was terrified," Cassandra whispered, her strength suddenly wavering as she looked out at the dark sky. "Every night for the first six months, I woke up every two hours just to check if they were breathing. Violet had jaundice. Luke had a double ear infection that wouldn't clear up for three weeks. I stood in the pharmacy at two in the morning crying because my debit card was declined over a twenty-dollar prescription, and all I could think was, I could call Damon. But then I pictured you coming into the nursery with your suit and your stoic, icy calm, looking at my messy life like a broken project that needed restructuring. And I couldn't do it. I couldn't let you make them feel like they were a problem to be solved."
I closed my eyes. The roar of the jet engine sounded like a physical weight pressing against my temples.
Every word she spoke was a mirror held up to the man I had become. I had built a fortress of capital and influence, thinking it made me invulnerable, but all it had done was wall me off from the only human truth that mattered.
"Cass," I said, opening my eyes and looking at her with a raw, stripped-down honesty I hadn't felt in fifteen years. "I am sorry. I am so deeply, horribly sorry."
She didn't answer immediately. She just looked at me, watching the way my hand held our sleeping son's shoulder, the way my knuckles were white with tension, the way the confident, unshakeable CEO of Prescott Technologies was sitting in row twenty-eight of an economy cabin, completely broken open.
"The pilot said we're beginning our descent into Denver," she said softly as the seatbelt sign chimed overhead.
May you like
The ding rang through the cabin, signaling the end of our sanctuary in the clouds. Down below, hidden beneath thirty thousand feet of winter storm, Denver International Airport was waiting. Marcus Vance was waiting. A seven-hundred-and-eighty-million-dollar buyout was waiting.
And for the first time in my life, I didn't have a plan.
