Chapter 7

"Your daughter?""Lily. She's six. Sleeps surrounded by model planes and asks me every night when I'm going to fly again." His jaw tightened. "I tell her someday, but someday is a lie. I can't risk it. Can't risk her losing me the way I lost everything else."Vivian found herself thinking about the little girl who waited at home for a father too afraid of his own past to reach for his future. She thought about herself, running a company she'd never wanted, living a life built on preventing the vulnerability that came with actually caring."I've spent three years staying above everything," she said. "Emotion is turbulence. I always tell myself: stay above it and you're safe." She looked at Elias. "But maybe we're not meant to stay above it. Maybe we're supposed to fly through it."Something shifted in his expression: a crack in the armor, just like the one forming in hers.Over the following weeks, something unexpected happened. Vivian found herself working late more often, taking paths through the facility that happened to pass through Hangar Three. Their conversations began as brief exchanges—professional assessments of aircraft maintenance needs—but they evolved into something else, something real.She learned that Elias read poetry to Lily before bed; that his wife had died of cancer eighteen months after his discharge, leaving him alone with a four-year-old and medical bills that had consumed every penny of his savings; that he'd chosen night maintenance specifically so he could walk Lily to school each morning and be there when she woke from nightmares.He learned that Vivian had never wanted to run Archer Dynamics; that she'd studied music in college before her brother's death had pulled her into the family business; that she kept a piano in her penthouse, but hadn't played it in four years; that control wasn't strength—it was fear wearing an expensive suit.One night, Vivian arrived at the hangar to find it wasn't just Elias there. A small girl sat in the corner surrounded by colored pencils and paper, drawing elaborate pictures of jets flying through rainbow clouds."You must be Lily," Vivian said, crouching down to the child's eye level.Lily looked up with eyes exactly like her father's, curious and calm. "Are you Daddy's boss?""I suppose I am.""Are you nice to him?" The question was direct, unfiltered by adult politeness.Vivian glanced at Elias, who was watching this interaction with barely concealed concern. "I'm trying to be better," she said. "Honestly."

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