Chapter 4
The hum. It was the only thing that felt real… the low, steady hum of the jet’s Rolls-Royce engines, slicing through the sky at eight hundred kilometers per hour. It was the sound of escape.
The glass felt heavy in my hand. The ice had melted an hour ago, turning the expensive whiskey into a warm, amber liquid. I drank what was left in one gulp. The alcohol went down like water, useless… It couldn’t thaw the knot lodged in my throat, my chest, the very center of me.
I was drunk in such a miserable way that it made the luxurious cabin—cream-colored leather, polished wood, the sterile smell of wealth—seem like a prison cell.
Where was I going? I didn’t know. I’d just walked into Linate Airport, ignored the fifty missed calls from my assistants, and told the pilot:
“Fly east. I don’t care where. Just get me out of here.”
There, somewhere over Austria, at 40,000 feet, reality began to seep through the fog of alcohol.
The images came in flashes, like shards of glass. The financial report… The photo of Bianca laughing, her hand on another man’s chest. Traitor! The medical report. Pregnant by another man…
The humiliation was so intense it was physical. I felt bile rising. I, Marco Valenti, the man who could sniff out a hostile takeover from ten kilometers away, who built a fortune by reading others’ weaknesses, had been read, played, and discarded by a damn Ferraro heiress.
I almost laughed.
That morning’s feverish anticipation of finally having the woman I admired—had turned into this. A hollow, deafening void.
I was in love with her.
Damn it, I was! I loved her mind, her strength, the way she challenged me in a boardroom. I loved the way her armor crumbled that night in my penthouse.
It was all a lie… A performance…
My rage-shaken hand, reached into the inside pocket of the jacket I hadn’t taken off yet. The wedding suit, which now looked like a clown’s costume.
My fingers found the small velvet box. Cartier. Dark blue. I pulled it out. It felt soft and expensive to the touch.
I opened it, and the wedding ring was there, mocking me. An impeccably cut diamond, eight carats, floating on platinum. Cold… just like her.
I chose that stone. It took me weeks. I looked for something unbreakable, clear as water, but with fire inside. Just like her.
“Idiot!” I hissed at the diamond.
What came wasn’t fury, but the pure, searing pain of a broken heart.
I loved her, and she destroyed me.
I stood up, the sudden movement causing the jet to sway slightly.
“Sir?” The flight attendant—a pretty blonde I hadn’t even noticed when I boarded—appeared in the doorway of the main cabin.
“Another bottle,” I growled, throwing the empty glass on the floor. The crystal didn’t shatter on the thick carpet; it just rolled away, pathetically.
She stepped back, startled, and returned seconds later with a new bottle of Macallan.
I took it from her hand, opened it, and drank straight from the bottle. The strong liquid finally burned.
“Get out,” I ordered.
She disappeared.
I was alone again with the wedding ring.
She won’t haunt me. She won’t win, I told myself amid the frustrated thoughts of a confused drunk.
I held the tiny ring between my thumb and index finger. It felt like it weighed a ton.
I stumbled over to the oval window. The world outside was an endless dark blue. Nothing but the sky. The perfect place for nothingness.
“Do you want a logical marriage, Bianca?” I shouted into the pressurized cabin, my voice choked with whiskey and pain. “Do you want a calculation? Here it is!”
I had to get rid of that thing.
I went to the jet’s exit door. I banged on the heavy doorknob. Locked. Pressurized. Of course!
The helplessness made me even more furious. I was trapped at 40,000 feet with her ghost, trapped with this ring.
I returned to my seat, my limbs heavy. The ring still burned in my hand.
With a roar of pure agony, I raised the bottle of whiskey and hurled it at the reinforced window.
The impact was muffled. The jet’s thick glass didn’t even tremble, but the bottle did.
The crystal shattered into a thousand pieces.
Whiskey and shards of glass flew through the cabin, soaking my suit and the cream-colored leather of the seats.
The flight attendant screamed from somewhere.
I didn’t feel a thing. Not even when I looked at my hand and saw a trickle of blood running from a cut on my palm.
I was still clutching that damn wedding ring.
What the hell!
I staggered over to the cockpit door, blood and whiskey dripping onto the carpet.
“Open up!” I pounded on the door.
The co-pilot opened it, looking pale.
“Mr. Valenti, what happened?”
I ignored him. I saw the small side porthole—the window they can open at low altitudes, but which was still an exit.
“Open that window.”
“Sir? We can’t! We’re pressurized…”
“OPEN IT!” My roar was animalistic.
The terrified man turned the safety latch.
The instant the seal broke, the sound of hell flooded the cabin. A deafening howl. The freezing air—minus fifty degrees—exploded inward, knocking the wind out of me, freezing the tears and blood on my face.
The entire cabin screamed in alarm. The wind was a physical force, trying to suck me out.
I clung to the doorframe with one hand. With the other—the hand holding the wedding ring—I raised it toward the sky.
“FUCK YOU, BIANCA!” (Go to hell!)
I opened my fingers.
The wind snatched the diamond from my hand. The wedding ring vanished instantly, swallowed by the infinite blue, falling toward a land I couldn’t see.
I slammed the hatch shut, closing it with force. The latch clicked into place, leaving only the pressurized cabin, the shrill alarm, and the cabin’s shrill alarm and the sound of my own sob.
I fell to my knees on the cockpit floor.
It was done. It was over. I was free of her.
So why did I feel as if I’d just thrown away the only part of me that mattered?