Chapter 28

[ 1,322 words ]

Katia’s POV

The air at forty thousand feet was the only thing that ever felt truly clean.

I sat in the captain’s chair of my Gulfstream G650, my hands resting lightly on the controls, feeling the subtle vibration of the twin engines through the floorboards. To most people, a private jet was a symbol of status, a luxury to be enjoyed from the plush leather seats of the cabin with a glass of vintage Cristal. To me, it was a machine of logic. I didn’t want to be served; I wanted to be the one navigating the trajectory.

Beside me, in the co-pilot’s seat, Aiden sat perched on a customized booster, his own miniature headset adjusted over his dark curls. He wasn’t watching a movie or playing a game. His wide, sapphire eyes were glued to the primary flight display, watching the digital horizon tilt as I made a minor correction to our heading.

“Vector heading two-seven-zero, Mom?” he asked, his voice crisp through the comms.

“Correct, Captain,” I replied, a ghost of a smile touching my lips. “Watch the altimeter. We’re catching a tailwind. We’ll be in Nice twenty minutes ahead of schedule p>

“Logic says more speed equals more time for the beach,” Aiden noted, tapping his chin in that way that always made my heart skip a beat. It was a gesture of pure, unadulterated intelligence, a mind that saw the world in equations.

Behind us, in the main cabin, I knew Sam was likely buried in her laptop. Samantha was the only person who had walked through the fire with me six years ago and come out the other side without a single burn of betrayal. She wasn’t just my assistant or my CFO; she was the sister I chose, the one who had helped me build an empire from the ashes of a scandal. She was probably monitoring the initial server pings for the WEG rollout or perhaps just enjoying the rare silence of a transatlantic flight.

The landing at the private airstrip just outside of Cannes was a textbook greaser. The tires kissed the tarmac with a soft puff of blue smoke, and as the engines wound down into a high-pitched whine, I felt the last of New York’s suffocating humidity fall away.

The vacation wasn’t just a break; it was a reclamation.

The next few days were a blur of high-octane freedom. We stayed at a villa carved into the red rocks of the Estérel, a place where the Mediterranean looked like a sheet of hammered sapphire. There were no assistants besides Sam, no PR teams.

On the second day, I took Aiden and Sam out on a vintage Riva Aquarama. The wooden boat was a masterpiece of 1960s engineering, and I pushed the throttle forward until the bow lifted and the salt spray turned into a fine mist against our faces. Aiden sat in the center, laughing, a sound so pure it could have powered the boat itself. Sam sat at the stern, her hair tied back in a messy bun, finally looking relaxed as her usual professional suit was replaced by a breezy linen cover-up.

“You’re going too fast, Kat!” Sam yelled over the roar of the engine; though she was grinning, her eyes were bright with the same thrill I felt.

“The machine was built to run, Sam!” I shouted back, my hair whipping around my face like a dark flag of surrender. “If we’re not at the limit, we’re just floating p>

That was the theme of the week. Whether it was driving a custom-tuned supercar through the hairpin turns of the Col de Turini at midnight, the scent of hot rubber and pine needles filling the cabin—or sitting in a secluded observatory in the hills of Provence while I explained the mechanics of a black hole to Aiden, I was fully present.

I was a pilot; I was a racer, a mother. I was a woman who had built a world so fortified that no “debt” could ever touch it.

By the fifth day, as the sun began to dip behind the horizon, painting the sky in strokes of violent violet and burnt orange, I found myself sitting on the stone terrace of the villa. Aiden was exhausted, his head resting against my thigh as he drifted off to sleep, his small hand tucked firmly into mine.

I looked down at our joined hands. My own hand was elegant but strong. His hand was small, soft, and perfect—the future of everything I had built.

I pulled out my phone.

I hadn’t opened my personal Instagram account in exactly six years. The last post was a photo of me at a gala in New York, dressed in a gown that cost more than a car, looking like a beautiful, hollow doll for the Kensington brand. I looked at that girl now and didn’t recognize her.

I opened the app. My follower count was still in the millions, a testament to the “Phantom Model” mystery that the fashion world still obsessed over. They thought I was hiding in shame. They thought I had been broken.

I decided to correct the record.

I selected a carousel of three photos.

The first was a shot from the cockpit during the flight over, the endless curve of the earth meeting the deep blue of the Atlantic, the wing of the Gulfstream cutting through the clouds like a silver blade.

The second was a blurred, high-speed capture of the vintage Riva’s wake, the water churning into white foam, symbolizing the speed at which I moved away from anything that tried to hold me back.

The third was the blow.

It was a high-contrast, black-and-white photo of my hand holding Aiden’s, just the sight of a powerful woman’s hand anchored by the tiny, trusting grip of a child. It was an image of absolute protection and absolute secrecy.

I didn’t need a long caption. I didn’t need to explain where I had been or who I had become. The “Savage” didn’t explain; she simply existed.

I typed, “Six years of silence. A lifetime of winning. The view is better from the captain’s seat p>

I hit share.

I didn’t stay to watch the notifications. I knew what would happen. Within seconds, the “Like” count would move faster than a racing tachometer. The modeling agencies would be calling. The New York socialites would be whispering into their phones. My mother would probably drop her champagne glass, and my father would realize that the “defective” daughter he discarded had turned into a queen in exile.

I tossed the phone onto the wicker table and picked up Aiden, his small body warm and heavy against my chest. Sam walked out onto the terrace, holding two glasses of lemonade. She saw the phone glowing on the table and then looked at me, a knowing smirk on her face.

“You did it, didn’t you?” she asked, sitting down and stretching her legs out.

“I decided the world needed a reminder,” I said, looking out at the Mediterranean.

“The public is going to lose their minds, Kat,” Sam said, her eyes on the skyrocketing engagement. “The world has been speculating about you for six years. Now they see a pilot, a CEO, and—” she paused, looking at the photo of the tiny hand. “Now they know there’s an heir. They’re realizing the woman who vanished has become someone completely untouchable p>

“Let them look,” I said, my voice as calm as the sea below. “They can see the hand, Sam. But they’ll never see the face. He’s mine. This life is mine. They will see the face when I want them to; for now, let them wonder p>

As the stars began to poke through the purple haze of the French night, I felt a sense of finality. I was Katia. And for the first time in six years, the world finally knew that I wasn’t just surviving.

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