Turbulence

The cabin was too quiet for a honeymoon.

Elliot sat with one hand on the armrest and one knee bouncing against the leather. Across from him, Camille had not touched her champagne. Her diamond caught the dim cabin lights each time the jet shifted.

He had stopped looking at the screen hours ago. Gate C12 kept replaying in his head instead: the little girl on Naomi’s hip, duckling pajamas, a plastic fork in a sticky fist, and that stuffed elephant tucked under her arm.

“Who was she?” Camille asked.

Elliot didn’t answer fast enough.

Her chin lifted a fraction. “The child at the airport.”

“She was a child.”

“You know what I mean.”

He stared at the dark window. Atlantic black, no horizon, only his reflection and the faint blur of his own jaw locked tight. “I saw her for ten seconds.”

“You looked like you’d been struck.”

He gave a short breath. “She looked like me.”

Camille’s mouth flattened. “That is not a sentence you say on a honeymoon.”

“No,” he said. “It’s a sentence I say when I’m trying not to lose my mind.”

She set her glass down with care. “You are not going back to Boston for a woman who made herself unavailable. We made an arrangement. Your mother approved it. My father approved it. The board approved it.”

“An arrangement,” he repeated.

Her eyes stayed on him. “A marriage. A merger. Call it what you like.”

The word merger sat in the cabin between them.

Elliot shut his eyes, and the airport came back in pieces. Naomi near the gate, one hand on a mug. The little girl reaching for the elephant and laughing when it squeaked. “Ellie,” the child had babbled, patting the toy’s head.

Ellie.

His own private nickname from college. One that almost no one used now.

His eyes opened.

The child had not said elephant. She had said Ellie.

His hand came up to his mouth, then dropped away. On the black glass, he saw his own face go still. The girl’s eyes, wide and dark, had been his eyes.

Camille watched him. “What is it?”

He reached for his phone with shaking fingers. The screen lit his palm. “I need Naomi Keller.”

Camille’s laugh had no heat in it. “At two in the morning?”

“Now.”

The line rang once. Twice.

Jet engines hummed under the silence.

Then Naomi answered, and her voice came small and worn through the speaker. “Elliot?”

He stood before he knew he was standing. “Is she mine?”

A pause.

Not a word. Not a breath.

Only the miles between Boston and Florence, and Naomi holding the truth long enough to make it hurt.

The Gulfstream cut through black water and thin cloud.

Inside, the cabin stayed bright and still. Elliot sat in one seat with his tie loose, jaw locked so hard it ached. Camille sat across from him, perfect posture, hands folded over her lap like the flight itself was a photograph.

Neither had spoken since takeoff.

Then she said, “You left your own reception for a child at an airport.”

Elliot looked up. “I saw a little girl who looked like me.”

“Looks are not evidence.”

“It wasn’t just her face.”

Camille’s mouth tightened. “You were supposed to be on a honeymoon in Florence. Instead, you’re chasing shadows in Boston.”

He dragged a hand over his mouth. His fingers shook once before he hid them in his lap.

“At Gate C12,” he said. “She had a stuffed elephant. Naomi used to call me Ellie.”

Camille’s eyes narrowed. “That nickname was private?”

“Between Naomi and me.”

“Then perhaps she was sentimental. People are when they want attention.”

He gave her a flat look. “Bella called the elephant Ellie.”

Silence.

The engines pressed on. A flight attendant paused outside the cabin curtain, then kept moving.

Camille leaned forward a fraction. “If you go back for her, you understand what that does to this marriage.”

“This marriage,” he said, “wasn’t for love.”

The words landed cleanly. Her face did not change, but the skin at her jaw pulled tight.

“It was for your family’s board seat,” he went on. “For the Rhodes alliance. For headlines that made both sides look stable.”

“And now?” she asked.

“Now I saw a child who might be mine.”

He took out his phone again. The airport image was still there, the little girl in duckling pajamas with syrup on one cheek, a plastic fork in her fist, reaching for a stuffed elephant.

Ellie.

His throat closed around the nickname.

The cabin door opened. “Sir, we’re beginning descent into Peretola.”

Elliot stood before the jet leveled. “Change it.”

The attendant blinked. “Change—”

“Back to Boston.”

Camille laughed once, without warmth. “You can’t be serious.”

He was already dialing. His hands were steady now, because there was no room left for hesitation.

“Naomi,” he said when the call connected, and his voice came out rough. “I need the truth. Is Bella mine?”

Wind crackled through the line. There was a breath on the other end, then another.

Not a word.

Just silence, stretched thin as wire, waiting for him to break it first.