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

The private hangar at Midway Airport was shrouded in driving rain and thick fog.

A twin-engine private jet stood on the runway, its turbines whining as they began to spool up. Four heavily armed mercenaries in tactical gear stood guard near the boarding stairs, their rifles scanning the perimeter.

Inside the hangar office, tied to a chair, was Julian Sterling’s security guard, unconscious and bleeding.

In the center of the concrete floor sat little Leo. He wasn't crying. Despite his age, the Moretti blood in his veins showed: he sat upright, his gray eyes watching the men with quiet, fierce defiance, hugging his small velvet bear tightly against his chest.

Suddenly, the massive corrugated steel doors of the hangar were violently blown inward.

*BOOM!*

A customized armored SUV crashed through the doors at eighty miles per hour, sending metal shards and debris flying across the concrete.

Before the mercenaries could raise their rifles, the side doors of the SUV kicked open.

Marco and six Moretti enforcers poured out, laying down a devastating hail of suppressed gunfire. The mercenaries dropped within seconds, their bodies hitting the concrete before they could even squeeze their triggers.

Then, the driver’s door opened.

Anna stepped out.

She wasn't wearing an evening gown. She wore black combat trousers, a leather jacket, and held a semi-automatic tactical shotgun. Her eyes were blazing with the primal, terrifying fury of a mother whose child had been touched.

"Leo!" she screamed.

"Mommy!" the boy cried out, jumping up from the floor and running toward her.

Anna dropped the weapon, falling to her knees, scooping Leo into her arms, pressing his face into her neck, sobbing uncontrollably. "I have you. I have you, my baby. You're safe."

"Touching reunion," a raspy, broken voice echoed from the shadowed entrance of the private jet.

Anna snapped her head up.

Sophia Carter stood at the top of the boarding stairs. She looked like a demon dragged out of a grave. Her dress was torn, her neck covered in dark purple bruises, her hair wild. In her trembling right hand, she held a military-grade detonator.

"Don't move, Anna!" Sophia shrieked hysterically over the roar of the jet engines. "The entire fuel reservoir beneath this hangar floor is wired with C4! Take one step toward the exit, and I blow us all to hell!"

Anna stood up slowly, pushing Leo behind her back, shielding him with her entire body. "Let the boy go, Sophia. Your fight is with me."

"My fight was with you three years ago!" Sophia laughed maniacally, her eyes rolling in her head. "I should have made sure you burned to a crisp! You took Vincent from me! You took my status! You took everything!"

"She didn't take anything from you," a low, thunderous voice reverberated from the shadows behind the jet.

Vincent walked out into the harsh runway lights.

He was bleeding from a gunshot wound on his shoulder, his shirt shredded, but he walked with the steady, unstoppable momentum of an executioner. He had driven the secondary chase vehicle, cutting off Sophia’s escape route from the tarmac.

Sophia swung the detonator toward him. "Vincent! Stay back! I’ll press it! I swear to God I’ll press it!"

Vincent didn't stop. He walked directly toward the boarding stairs, his eyes locked on Sophia with absolute disgust.

"Press it," Vincent said calmly.

Sophia’s hand trembled. "What?"

"Press it," Vincent repeated, taking another step up the metal stairs. "You think death scares me? I’ve been living in hell for three years because I chose you over my family. Every breath I took next to you was poison. If dying here wipes your existence from this earth and lets my wife and son live, then press the damn button."

"Vincent, don't!" Anna shouted from the floor.

Vincent paused on the fifth step of the stairs. Without turning around, he looked back over his shoulder.

He looked at Anna. Then he looked at Leo, who was peering out from behind his mother’s legs, his stormy gray eyes wide.

For the first time in three years, Vincent smiled. It wasn't the arrogant smirk of a Chicago kingpin. It was the soft, devoted smile of the man who had stood beside Anna at the altar in Lake Como.

"This time, Anna," Vincent whispered softly, his voice carrying clearly over the roar of the engines. "I'm choosing you."

In a split second of pure, explosive violence, Vincent lunged forward.

Sophia shrieked and slammed her thumb down on the detonator.

*Click.*

Nothing happened.

Marco, standing by the power junction box on the far wall, held up the severed primary detonation cable, his tactical knife gleaming with hydraulic fluid.

Sophia’s eyes dilated with sheer terror.

Vincent tackled her onto the metal gangway. With a brutal, merciless twist of his wrist, he shattered Sophia’s arm, sending the useless detonator clattering down to the concrete below.

Sophia screamed in agony as Vincent pinned her to the deck, his gun pressed firmly against the center of her forehead.

"Please, Vincent!" Sophia sobbed, choking on her own blood. "I loved you! I did it for us!"

"You did it for yourself," Vincent said coldly.

He didn't pull the trigger.

Instead, he grabbed her by the collar, dragged her down the boarding stairs, and threw her like a bag of garbage onto the wet concrete at Anna’s feet.

"She is yours," Vincent said, panting heavily, his hand pressed against his bleeding shoulder as he looked at Anna. "Her life belongs to you. Do whatever you want with her."

Anna looked down at Sophia Carter, who was groveling on the wet floor, clutching her broken arm, weeping like a pathetic child.

Anna reached down, picked up the tactical shotgun from the floor, and racked the slide.

Sophia squeezed her eyes shut, screaming, "Don't shoot! Please, Anna, don't shoot!"

Anna stared at her for five long, agonizing seconds.

Then, Anna slowly lowered the barrel.

"Shooting you would be an act of mercy," Anna said, her voice dripping with royal disdain. "Death is too easy, Sophia."

Anna turned to Marco. "Hand her over to the federal authorities alongside the unedited cockpit logs, the tarmac video, and the wire fraud documents Julian prepared. Let her spend the next forty years in a federal penitentiary for attempted murder, conspiracy, and aviation terrorism. Let her watch her youth, her beauty, and her name rot away in a six-by-eight concrete box."