I fed the billionaire’s hungry daughter on his plane, but when I wanted to return home, his guard turned pale

In the front part of the airplane, that man was holding the daughter of the man whose name made all of Europe lower its voice, while I could not bear the broken cry of his child from hunger.

We were flying over the Atlantic. The night lay beyond the windows as a bottomless black space, while inside the cabin stood the smell of expensive leather, coffee, and fear. The baby’s crying had already been shaking the walls for forty minutes.

At first she screamed loudly. Then her voice became thin.

I knew this change.

Three months earlier I had lost my husband and my twin boys. After the funeral I locked the door of the children’s room in my apartment and repeated to myself that motherhood was over. But the body did not care about my decision. I still had milk, and such pain pressed in my breasts, as if grief too had its own body.

In the front row sat Mateo Volkov. Tall, broad-shouldered, in a dark suit and with tattoos scattered over his hands. Three guards stood beside him. All of them were armed, but in front of the child they looked completely helpless.

Mateo once again put the bottle to the girl’s lips.

“Lucia, please,” he whispered. “Just one sip.”

The child shook her head and let out a weak cry.

The flight attendant stood pale.

“We are already calling the doctor, Mr. Volkov.”

“The doctor will be with us in ten minutes,” he answered, and for the first time I noticed that his fingers were trembling. “My child does not have ten minutes.”

The milk in my breasts came even more strongly. I lowered my eyes. A small silver moon-shaped brooch hung on my bag, which my husband had given me on the first anniversary of our marriage. Its sharp edge had stuck into the fabric of the bag.

“This is a little moon of your path,” he had told me then.

Now that moon trembled in my hand.

“This child is weakening from hunger,” I said at last.

Every sound in the cabin disappeared.

Mateo slowly raised his head.

“Are you a doctor?”

“No. I am a mother.”

One of his guards’ hands slipped under his jacket.

“Step back, ma’am,” he said.

“If I step back, your daughter may no longer regain consciousness.”

Mateo looked at the guard.

“Take your hand away from the weapon.”

“Sir, we do not know who she is.”

“Now I know that she can help my daughter.”

There was a threat in his voice, but I saw something else in his eyes. Desperation. He looked at the child the way I looked at the empty beds of my boys.

“I have breast milk,” I said quietly. “If you allow me, I will feed her.”

The flight attendant opened her mouth.

Mateo did not move for a long time.

“If this is a trick…”

“Then your people will shoot me. But if we do nothing, in five minutes you will not be able to change anything.”

He carefully handed Lucia to me. The child was so light that in my hands she felt like an empty blanket. When her lips touched my body, the crying stopped at once.

Everyone exhaled at the same time.

But I closed my eyes and felt how the part of me that I thought I had killed forever returned inside me.

Mateo was kneeling in front of me. His face looked more tired up close than frightening.

“What is your name?” he asked.

“Elena.”

“Elena, I cannot take you home.”

The child drank peacefully, but his words stuck into my heart like a knife.

“I am not going to your house. The airplane will land and I will get off.”

Mateo’s gaze hardened.

“You will not get off.”

“That is my choice.”

“No,” he said. “From this moment, it is no longer your choice.”

The guard in the rear of the cabin ran to the window and removed his earpiece.

“Sir, we received a message from the airport. Someone already knows that this airplane is flying with you.”

Mateo looked at Lucia, then at me.

“Elena, those people are mentioning your name too.”

“Why?”

He did not answer. He only looked toward my bag, where the silver moon brooch shone strangely.

Then he placed his hand on the black folder lying on his knee and slowly opened it…

The first sheet in the folder was a photograph taken from an airport camera. In the picture, two men stood in front of my house.

“When is this?” I asked.

“This morning,” Mateo said.

“But my house is locked. No one lives there anymore.”

“That is exactly why they are there.”

He turned over the second photograph. My husband’s car was visible in the frame, the car that the police had returned to me after the funeral.

“I was told he died in an accident,” I said.

“That is what they told you.”

Mateo’s voice broke. He carefully took the child from me and held her to his chest.

“Your husband worked for me. The day before his death he found something. Something because of which they are now looking for you too.”

“And you hid this from me until now?”

“Because if you learned the truth, they would kill you immediately.”

The airplane landed, but the door did not open. Flashing cars stood outside, while inside Mateo answered the phone.

“Speak,” he ordered.

Several words sounded on the other side. Mateo’s face changed.

“Do not touch the house until I come.”

He ended the call and turned toward me.

“Someone has already entered your apartment.”

At that same moment a new message appeared on his phone. He read it, fell silent, and turned the screen toward me.

Only one sentence was written there: “If the woman is alive, the child will not survive either…”

Mateo’s phone fell from his hand. The screen landed on the carpet, but the message was still glowing.

“What does ‘if the woman is alive’ mean?” I asked.

“I do not know,” he said.

“It is a lie.”

“Elena, now is not the time to argue.”

“For three months they have been telling me that my husband and children died in an accident. Now you tell me that my husband worked for you and someone wants to kill me. What else do I not know?”

Mateo was silent for several seconds. Then he took a small voice recorder from the folder.

“Marko sent this to me one hour before his death.”

He pressed the button.

My husband’s tense voice sounded in the recording.

“Mateo, if you are hearing this, they have already found us. The accident was not an accident. The children were not in the car either. I sent them to Lucia’s nanny while I hid the documents. But on the way back, the car was empty. My boys disappeared.”

My body froze.

“What is he saying?” I barely said.

The recording continued.

“Do not tell Elena anything. If you tell her the truth, Viktor will use her. The documents are in the thing she never takes off. The moon-shaped brooch. Inside it is a small memory plate.”

My hand immediately reached toward the bag.

I had worn the brooch every day for three months.

Mateo lowered his eyes.

“You knew?” I asked.

“I suspected. But I could not open it without damaging it. So I took your bag on the airplane while you were helping Lucia.”

“You searched my things?”

“I saved your life.”

“No. You took my life.”

He carefully opened the brooch. Inside there really was a small black plate hidden.

The flight attendant held her breath.

Mateo inserted the plate into a device. Viktor Volkov’s face appeared on the screen. He was speaking calmly with a man whose face could not be seen.

“The woman must die,” Viktor said. “And the children must not return from the city. Mateo must never learn that Marko recorded everything.”

The recording ended.

I sat down on the seat. My husband’s “the children were not in the car either” kept circling in my head.

“Are my children alive?” I asked.

Mateo could not answer.

At that moment the hidden phone in the folder rang. An unknown number was on the screen.

Mateo picked it up.

“I am listening.”

A child’s voice sounded on the other side.

“Mom?..”

My knees gave way.

It was the voice of one of my boys. Exactly as I had heard it in my dreams three months earlier, on the day of the funeral.

Then the man said:

“If you want to see the boys alive, Mateo must come alone to the old station. He must leave Elena at home. Otherwise, there will be no next voice…”