Chapter 8 - The ashes of an empireThe private jet tore through the dark, churning clouds above the Atlantic, its cabin bathed in the soft, warm amber glow of reading lights.
Beneath them, the lights of North America had long since faded into a vast, unbroken ocean of blackness. Ahead lay Geneva, and a safehouse that didn't appear on any government map or syndicate ledger.
Inside the spacious cabin, the silence was different from the cold, suffocating quiet of the Hail Tower penthouse. It was soft. Exhausted. Real.
Mave sat in the cream-leather reclining seat by the window, watching the distant stars drift past the wing. Posie was curled up asleep across her lap, her small, even breathing the only sound in the cabin. The heavy, frayed wool coat was gone, replaced by a soft cashmere sweater, and the dark circles under Mave’s eyes seemed slightly less bruised now that the adrenaline of the past twenty-four hours had finally begun to wear off.
Garrett sat across the aisle. His white dress shirt was ruined, stained with soot and dried blood, his sleeves rolled up to reveal the heavy scars wrapping around his forearms. He wasn't looking at a tablet, a weapon, or a financial report.
He was watching the rise and fall of little Posie’s chest.
"She has your stubbornness," Mave said softly, her voice barely audible over the hum of the jet engines. She didn't look at him, her gaze still fixed on the window. "And she has your habit of biting her lower lip when she's trying to solve a puzzle."
Garrett shifted his weight, wincing slightly as a bullet graze on his ribs pulled against the makeshift bandage Mateo had taped on back in Teterboro.
"I'm sorry, Mave," he said. The words didn't sound like a confession from a ruthless mafia boss; they sounded like a man laying down a heavy burden he had carried across a desert. "For the cage. For the danger. For making you run."
Mave finally turned her head, her winter-gray eyes meeting his. There was no anger left in them—only a deep, weary understanding that had taken three years of isolation to forge.
"I knew who you were when I married you, Garrett," she said quietly. "I thought I could live in your world without letting it touch me. But the moment I realized what kind of life we were building... I couldn't risk her. I couldn't let her grow up waiting for a bomb to go off under our car, or wondering if daddy was coming home from a meeting."
She reached down, gently brushing a dark curl away from the sleeping toddler's forehead.
"And now?" Garrett asked, his voice dropping to a low, raw register. "What happens when we land in Geneva?"
Mave looked back at him, a faint, ghost of a smile touching the corners of her lips—the same smile that had made him fall in love with her in a crowded campus library eight years ago.
"Now," she whispered, "we find out if the most feared man in New York knows how to change a diaper."
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Garrett let out a low, genuine laugh—the first real laugh he had expelled in three years.
"I've dismantled syndicates, outmaneuvered federal prosecutors, and survived three assassination attempts," he said, a spark of amusement dancing in his gray eyes. "I think I can handle a baby."
