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"Fly This Jet and I'll Marry You," Billionaire CEO Mocked Single Dad Janitor — His Secret Shocked Her

"Fly This Jet and I'll Marry You," Billionaire CEO Mocked Single Dad Janitor — His Secret Shocked Her

Chapter 4

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Once they reached cruising altitude, she unbuckled and moved to the cockpit doorway. Elias sat surrounded by glowing displays, the autopilot engaged, his hands resting lightly on his thighs. He glanced back at her, and for the first time, she saw something that might have been amusement in his eyes."Where did you learn to handle a Gulfstream like that?" she asked."Let's just say it's been a while since I've crashed," he replied quietly.There was something behind those words—pain, maybe; history, definitely. But before she could press further, he returned his attention to the instruments, and she recognized the gesture for what it was: a door politely but firmly closed.The flight to Boston took 93 minutes. They landed at Logan International with the kind of precision that made the tower controller compliment them over the radio. Vivian's car was waiting. She made her meeting with seven minutes to spare. The pitch went perfectly. The investors signed; two billion dollars secured.But when she returned to the aircraft three hours later, flushed with victory and ready to thank the mysterious janitor who'd somehow saved her company's biggest deal of the year, he was gone.The cockpit was empty, the co-pilot seat perfectly adjusted back to neutral. No note, no explanation, just gone, as if he'd been a figment of her imagination. Vivian stood in the empty aircraft, surrounded by luxury and success, feeling something she hadn't felt in years: genuine confusion, and underneath that, something even more unsettling—curiosity.That night, back in her Manhattan penthouse, she couldn't stop thinking about him. She'd called Marcus from the car, demanding Elias Grant's full employment file. What arrived was disappointing in its mundaneness: hired eight months ago, night maintenance crew, no prior employment listed, no references, just a Social Security number and an address in Queens."No prior experience listed," she murmured to herself, staring at the file on her tablet. "Then how?"She had resources, connections—a godfather who'd served as a three-star general in the Air Force before retiring to consult for defense contractors. One phone call, that's all it would take to find out who Elias Grant really was. But something stopped her: some instinct that told her if she went digging, she'd find something that would make her feel even more ashamed of her cruel joke about marriage, of the way she'd mocked him, of the way she'd treated him like an amusing curiosity rather than a human being.She made the call anyway.Across the city, in a small apartment in Queens, Elias Grant sat on a worn couch watching his six-year-old daughter sleep. Lily was curled up in her favorite spot, surrounded by model airplanes she'd arranged in careful formations. Her dark curls fell across her face, and even in sleep, she smiled slightly, dreaming whatever beautiful dreams children dream.The apartment was clean but sparse: secondhand furniture, no television, books lining makeshift shelves made from cinder blocks and planks. On one wall hung a photograph of a woman with kind eyes and a bright smile, frozen forever in a moment of joy: Rachel, his wife, gone three years now, taken by cancer that had burned through her as fast and merciless as an afterburner.Beside that photo hung another, this one showing a younger Elias in a flight suit standing in front of an F/A-18 Super Hornet, his helmet tucked under one arm—the same calm confidence in his eyes, but something lighter in his expression, something that hadn't survived the years since.
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"Fly This Jet and I'll Marry You," Billionaire CEO Mocked Single Dad Janitor — His Secret Shocked Her

18 Part