He Chose His Ex In A Burning Plane And Left His Pregnant Wife To Die—Three Years Later, She Walked Back In With His Heir

"VINCENT!"

Anna shoved Leo behind the safety of the iron fuselage and sprinted across the slick, oil-stained floor. Her knees hit the concrete beside him, sliding into the puddle of red-tinted water.

"Vincent! Look at me! Stay with me!" she cried, her hands frantically pressing against his chest, trying to stem the terrifying flow of blood pouring from his slashed torso.

His skin was freezing. The kerosene and ice-cold water had dropped his body temperature into profound hypothermia, while the deep lacerations across his ribs and the massive trauma to his chest were draining his life by the second.

Marcus burst through the shattered hangar doors, his assault rifle raised, accompanied by four armed perimeter guards. "Clear! Room is clear!" Marcus yelled, his eyes widening as he saw his employer motionless on the floor. "Paramedics! NOW! GET THE RIG IN HERE!"

Vincent’s eyelids fluttered open, heavy and glassy. His trembling, blood-caked right hand weakly searched the floor until it found Anna’s fingers.

"Anna..." he whispered, his chest hitching with a shallow, rattling gasp.

"Don't speak. Save your strength," Anna pleaded, tears streaming freely down her face, splashing onto his pale, graying cheeks. "The ambulance is here. Vincent, you survived the mountain. You survived Aspen. You don't get to die on me now! Do you hear me? You don't get to leave me again!"

A faint, broken whisper left his lips. "I kept... my promise. Leo... he has... his mother."

"He needs his father!" Anna screamed into his face, her voice cracking with an agonizing grief she thought she had buried three years ago. "I need you! Damn you, Vincent, look at me! You owe me a lifetime! You don't get to pay your debt in thirty minutes and leave us behind!"

Vincent’s grip on her fingers tightened for one brief, miraculous second. His lips formed the faintest shadow of a smile—a smile of pure, unadulterated peace.

Then, his fingers went completely limp.

His head rolled to the side, his stormy blue eyes rolling back into darkness.

"Vincent! VINCENT!" Anna threw herself over his chest, frantically beginning CPR, her hands pressing down against his torn ribs, pumping with hysterical, relentless fury. "Breathe! Come on, Vincent, breathe!"

Two paramedics in yellow reflective jackets swarmed the scene, shoving medical gear onto the wet floor.

"Ma'am, step back! Let us work!"

"He’s in cardiac arrest! V-fib!" the lead paramedic shouted, ripping open Vincent’s soaked shirt and slapping two defibrillator pads onto his bare, scarred chest. "Charging to two hundred! Clear!"

*THUMP!*

Vincent’s entire body arched off the freezing concrete as the electric current surged through his heart.

The portable monitor shrieked a high, unbroken, flatline tone:

*EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE—*

"No pulse! Charge again! Three hundred! Clear!"

*THUMP!*

Anna stood frozen, clutching four-year-old Leo against her hip, pressing the boy’s face into her shoulder so he wouldn't see the paramedics shocking his father's lifeless corpse. Her entire world, once governed by vengeance and cold calculation, had narrowed to that solitary green line on the monitor.

"Come on, Vincent..." she begged under her breath, her fingernails digging into Leo's jacket. "Fight. Please, fight."

*EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE—*