“Rick!” Eleanor shouted.
Marcus moved after him.
“Stay with the kids,” he told Celeste.
She grabbed his sleeve. “Marcus.”
He looked back.
Her eyes were full now. Not fear for herself. Fear of history repeating in a new costume.
“Don’t let him make you become what he thinks you are,” she whispered.
Marcus nodded once.
Then he stepped into the white heat.
The tarmac was bright enough to hurt. Rick was already halfway to the hangar, phone clamped to his ear. Ground staff watched as if the air had turned electric.
Marcus did not run. He walked.
That made it worse.
Eleanor followed, heels sharp against the concrete.
Rick stopped near a fuel truck when two security officers blocked his path.
“I need to leave,” he snapped.
One of them said, “Sir, please remain on site.”
Rick turned, saw Marcus approaching, and his composure cracked.
“You don’t understand,” he said.
Marcus stopped three feet away. “Then explain.”
Rick’s eyes jumped to Eleanor. To the staff. To the phones recording from a careful distance.
“I was told,” Rick said.
Marcus waited.
Rick’s breathing quickened. Sweat gathered at his temples.
“I was told there might be an attempted unauthorized boarding.”
“By whom?”
Rick said nothing.
Eleanor’s voice sharpened. “Captain Cobb, by whom?”
Rick looked at Marcus, and for the first time there was real fear in him.
“Your brother,” he said.
The name landed without being spoken.
Celeste, still in the aircraft doorway with Noah in her arms, heard it anyway.
Her face went bloodless.
Marcus did not move.
“My brother is dead,” he said.
Rick shook his head. “No. Not him.”
Eleanor looked confused.
Marcus wasn’t.
He understood before Rick said the name. He understood because betrayal has a smell, and this one smelled old.
Rick whispered, “Julian.”
Celeste covered her mouth.
Ava stood behind her mother, crying again.
Julian Ellison.
Marcus’s half-brother.
The charming one. The reckless one. The one who always arrived late with perfect apologies. The one who smiled for cameras and privately called Marcus “too sensitive” whenever Marcus challenged the old men in the aviation world who treated him like a guest in rooms he owned.
Julian, who had sold his minority shares two years ago after Marcus discovered money leaking from maintenance contracts.
Julian, who had vanished after the board froze his accounts.
Julian, who had sent Christmas gifts to the children with no return address.
Marcus’s voice lowered. “What did Julian tell you?”
Rick wiped his forehead. “That you were sending decoys.”