Chapter 1 - The Weight of a Broken Silence
The hum of the jet engines seemed to reverberate directly inside Beckett’s chest.
“How do you know?” Eli asked again, his small gray eyes searching Beckett’s face with a devastating, innocent intensity.
Beckett forced himself to swallow the knot of grief clogging his throat. He reached down and smoothed out a crease in Eli’s small jacket, his hand trembling so visibly that he had to quickly withdraw it into his lap.
“Because,” Beckett said, his voice a strained, raspy whisper, “if a man had a son like you, Eli... he would have to be out of his mind to ever forget you.”
Eli looked down at his little stuffed astronaut, running his thumb over the blue thread where its arm had been sewn back together. “Mom sewed that for me,” Eli offered quietly. “When I was three, I dropped Astro into a puddle. A big dog grabbed it, but Mom ran right into the mud and pulled it out. She’s very brave. She says when you love someone, you don't let them stay broken.”
The innocent phrase struck Beckett like a physical blow.
When you love someone, you don't let them stay broken.
Callie had tried to fix him. Six years ago, when his cybersecurity firm was going public, Beckett had retreated into a cold, obsessed shell. He worked eighteen-hour days, paranoia gnawing at his mind that his rivals or his abusive, scheming father, Arthur Langston, would find a weakness in his armor. Callie had stood in the center of his glass-and-steel penthouse, her green eyes filled with tears, begging him to see that in his quest to secure his empire, he was locking out the only life worth living.
And when she walked away, he had let her go. He had deleted that final voicemail. He had convinced himself he was protecting her from his own toxic world.
Now, thirty thousand feet above the earth, the universe had handed him the ultimate reckoning.
“Does your mom live in Portland now?” Beckett asked, trying to keep his tone light, though his heart was hammering like a trapped bird.
“No,” Eli said, opening his tray table to arrange his small pack of colored pencils. “We live in Denver. But Mom had to go on a big, secret story in New York. She said she couldn't take me because it was dangerous, so she put me on this plane to go stay with Grandma Hart in Oregon for two weeks.”
Beckett’s posture went rigid. The air in his lungs suddenly felt like ice.
“A story in New York?” Beckett asked, his cybersecurity instincts instantly taking over his grief. “Eli... what kind of story?”
“A story about bad men who steal secrets,” Eli said casually, picking up a blue crayon. “Mom was working late on her laptop every night. She had a big map on her wall with pictures of a mean old man with white hair and sharp glasses. She told Grandma on the phone that she found something huge... something that could stop the bad man forever.”
Beckett’s breath caught in his throat.
A mean old man with white hair and sharp glasses.
There was only one man in New York who fit that exact description in Callie’s investigative network—Arthur Langston. Beckett’s estranged, ruthless father.
Arthur was the chairman of Apex Global Security, a defense contractor and rival tech giant. For years, Arthur had been trying to infiltrate Beckett’s company, Langston Cyber, seeking to steal the source code for Beckett's flagship encryption platform, Aegis.
If Callie was in Manhattan investigating Arthur Langston... she wasn't just working on an article. She was walking into a snake's nest.
Suddenly, the leak of Beckett’s penthouse photos that morning—the viral public humiliation that had driven him out of Manhattan—began to take on a far more sinister meaning. It hadn't been a random paparazzi breach. It had been a distraction. Someone wanted Beckett out of New York. Someone wanted him on a plane, isolated, off his secure grid, while something else went down in Manhattan.
Beckett pulled out his phone. The in-flight Wi-Fi icon was blinking red—disabled.
“Excuse me,” Beckett called out sharply to a passing flight attendant.
“Yes, Mr. Langston?” the attendant asked with a polite smile.
“I need you to reset the satellite internet router immediately. It’s an emergency.”
“I’m sorry, sir,” she replied, looking at her tablet. “We’ve just entered an area of high atmospheric interference. The system will be offline for the next two hours until we begin our descent into Portland.”
Beckett’s jaw tightened until his teeth ached. He was trapped at thirty thousand feet, helpless, while the mother of his child was in New York, hunting a tiger that ate people alive.
Eli looked up from his coloring book, noticing the sudden darkness in Beckett’s face. He reached out and gently tapped Beckett’s arm with his blue crayon.
“Are you scared now?” Eli asked softly.
Beckett looked down at his son. He saw the storm-gray eyes, the tiny dimple, the trust radiating from the small boy sitting in seat 12B.
“Yes, Eli,” Beckett confessed, his voice thick with a sudden, powerful resolve he hadn't felt in six years. “I am scared. But my tummy is done being confused.”
“What are you going to do?”
May you like
Beckett reached over, gently taking Eli’s small hand in his own, wrapping his fingers securely around his son’s.
“I’m going to protect your mom,” Beckett said. “And then I’m going to ask her if I can come home.”
