جميع فصول : الفصل -الفصل 10

“Evening, Donna. The Don got back about half an hour ago.”The gate guard nodded as he swiped the access card. I nodded back, silent.The front door swung open before I could turn the handle. Donovan stood in the doorway.“You’re back,” he said, surprise in his voice.“Yep.”“What time did you land?”“Three-forty.”His brow lifted. “I thought you were coming tomorrow.”I held his gaze, slow and steady. “I sent you the flight details.”“Did you?” He frowned slightly. “Things have been crazy. Must’ve missed it.”“Crazy with what?”“Sera’s Vegas book got hit with a fine. She was upset. I stayed to smooth things over.”He took my carry-on and set it against the wall, then turned back toward the living room. “I would’ve picked you up if I’d known.”“You were busy picking up Seraphina.”“That’s different.” He took a sip of bourbon, his tone easy. “Sera’s young. Doesn’t know how to handle pressure from rival crews. You’re experienced, Vi. You always make it home.”Ironic. Seraphina alone wa

“Evening, Donna.”Seraphina stood in the doorway, a grocery bag in her hand. Donovan walked in right behind her, moving through the foyer as if they both belonged there.“Sera’s cooking tonight,” he said, glancing at me. “Just sit back. Relax.”I stayed on the living room sofa, watching her walk into my kitchen like it was hers. She opened the pantry without hesitation.She knew every shelf, every spice, every pan. It was the muscle memory of someone who’d done this countless times.“Did you rearrange things, Donna?” she called out, half amused. “Everything’s in a different spot.”“I tidied up last week.”“Oh, okay...Wait, there it is. Donovan, can you grab the stockpot for me? It’s too high.”He was already beside her before she finished speaking. They moved around each other in the close space like a couple who’d shared a kitchen for years, while I sat like a guest in my own home.Seraphina leaned out, a gentle smile on her face. “Donovan mentioned your neck’s been hurting. Is it

Thirty missed calls. All from Donovan.WhatsApp notifications stacked up, unread, his name burning a hole in the screen.His texts swung from disbelief to rage, demands, threats, until the final, hollow message pinged as my plane landed: “You left. You’re actually gone.”I locked the phone and slipped it into my pocket. For the first time in four years, the air didn’t smell like gunpowder and bourbon and regret.My phone rang again before I made it to the car Marshall had sent. It was Luna."Vi," her voice was tight, "he’s losing his mind." "Who is it?""Donovan. He tore the house apart, then showed up at the family downtown office and your company screaming for your whereabouts. Marshall told him you’d finalized the permanent Dubai transfer, and he about put a bullet through the wall. He’s called me eight times in the last two hours."Funny, that he was this panicked now.112 transoceanic flights, every single one of them alone. A herniated disc in my neck that could leave me part

"Donna, are you okay? Donovan’s a mess. I’m so worried about him."Four days in Dubai, and the message came through from Seraphina.Of course she was worried about him.The only thing she cared about was that her precious Don was falling apart, and that it was inconveniencing her.I typed back, my tone flat. “I’m fine. Thank you for asking.”She replied instantly.“Donna, is there some kind of misunderstanding between you two? He hasn’t picked me up from a single flight this week. He barely answers my calls.”Ah. There it was.The problem wasn’t that our marriage was over. It wasn’t that I’d left, that Donovan was broken. It was that he’d stopped dropping everything to cater to her.“He’s been a little busy lately,” I replied.“Donna, I know I shouldn’t say this,” she sent a long paragraph, “he cares about you so much. He’s just too soft-hearted, he can’t say no to anyone. You can’t leave him just because he’s been kind to me. We’re just colleagues. It’s not worth throwing your marr

"He really sat there for a week?"I got back to the Dubai crew base after a week of back-to-back international flights.My colleague stood in my office doorway, eyes wide. "Security said he sat in the lobby every day for almost a week, from opening until closing time."But today he was gone.At noon, my colleague dropped a thick envelope on my desk. The top page was a handwritten note, his handwriting tight, shaky.I put this together over the last two days. You need to see it.Beneath it was a stack of printed paper. A table, hand-drawn, titled: Viola’s Flight Log.Every single one of my 112 flights. Date, flight number, departure time, landing time, all pulled from the airline records he’d strong-armed out of the company.And in the last column, every single time, what he’d been doing while I was in the air.Fifty of them, he was picking Seraphina up from the airport. The other sixty-two, he was at her apartment, handling her problems, sleeping, anything but waiting for his wife