“We don’t need your baby, Emma,” my mother said softly. Her tone wasn’t angry. It was transactional. It was the tone of someone discarding a piece of junk mail. “She is a constant, embarrassing reminder of your failures.”
The cabin, already small, suddenly felt like a coffin. I stared toward the cockpit, waiting for the punchline. Waiting for my father to bark out a laugh and tell me it was a sick, twisted joke to teach me a lesson about loyalty.
He didn’t laugh.
Through the gap in the front seats, I watched his hands. His knuckles were bone-white as they gripped the yoke. Then, with a terrifying, deliberate calmness, his right hand left the throttle.
It moved down, slow and certain, reaching toward the heavy metal latch of the cabin door.
“Dad,” I whispered, my voice breaking. “Dad, what are you doing?”
Click.
Chapter 3: The Velocity of Betrayal
The sound of the heavy latch disengaging was the loudest thing I have ever heard.
The cabin door cracked open, and the sky violently invaded the plane. A hurricane of freezing, deafening wind exploded inside the cramped space, ripping the air from my lungs and whipping my hair across my eyes in blinding sheets. Loose papers from Jessica’s folder instantly materialized into a chaotic blizzard, swirling and vanishing out into the void.
Lily woke instantly. She didn’t just cry; she released a terrified, high-pitched shriek that was immediately swallowed by the roar of the slipstream.
Adrenaline, pure and liquid, injected directly into my heart. I pressed both arms over Lily, curling my shoulders forward to shield her from the brutal wind, and tried to twist my body away from the open door.
But Jessica was faster. She lunged across the small seat, her manicured hands transforming into claws. She grabbed the fabric of my sweater at the shoulder, her nails digging viciously into my skin, pinning me against the vibrating fuselage.
I looked up, wildly searching for salvation. My mother was kneeling on her seat, looking back at me over the headrest. Amidst the chaos of the wind and the screaming engine, her face possessed a demonic, chilling calm.
“You found our records,” Patricia yelled over the gale, her hair whipping around her face like Medusa’s snakes. “You were going to betray your own blood.”
“I asked for advice!” I screamed back, my throat tearing with the effort, fighting against Jessica’s grip. “I didn’t call the police! I didn’t report anything!”
“You were planning to,” Jessica sneered in my ear, her grip tightening like a vise. “You’ve always been a self-righteous little bitch.”
Then, the ultimate nightmare unfolded.
My father released the flight controls entirely. The plane immediately dipped, the horizon tilting sickeningly. Richard stood up in the cramped space, his massive frame blocking the windshield.
Seeing the pilot abandon the yoke froze the blood in my veins. The rules of reality were disintegrating.
“She’s a baby!” I screamed, a guttural, animal sound tearing from my chest. I kicked out wildly, my boot connecting with the back of the pilot’s seat. “Stop! Please, God, stop!”
My mother’s eyes flicked to Lily. The disgust in her gaze was absolute. “As long as she exists,” Patricia said, the words cutting through the wind like shards of glass, “you will always be a problem. We are simply eliminating the problem.”
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