Chapter 5 - THE KITCHEN TABLE
Leah hadn't moved. She stood in the middle of the aisle, her hands folded neatly over her dark cardigan, watching the giant men in black suits panic with an eerie, unbothered calm. She looked at the sealed curtain, then at the nervous flight attendants, before bringing her light-gray eyes back to Vincent’s face.
Vincent crouched down.
It was a strange, terrifying sight—a massive, heavily tattooed crime boss, holding his sleeping infant son in one arm, crouching on the cream carpet of a private cabin to bring his dark, lethal eyes level with a child. The black disc remained rested on his flat, open palm between them.
"You," Vincent said softly. His voice had lost its roar, replacing it with a focused, dangerous precision. "How did you know where to look?"
Leah didn't look at Vincent's face. Her eyes were fixed entirely on the tiny black disc resting in his palm.
As she stared at the seamless, brushed metal surface, the color slowly began to drain from her cheeks. The composure she had held since stepping through the velvet curtain started to crumble at the edges, replaced by a deep, dark shadow of memory that made her skin turn sickly pale under the bright cabin lights.
Her small hands clutched tight at the buttons of her gray cardigan.
"I’ve seen one before," Leah whispered.
Vincent went completely still.
Behind him, Marco took a sharp breath, his hand twitching over his jacket button, but Vincent raised a single finger, silencing his men without taking his eyes off the girl.
"Where?" Vincent asked. The word was flat, measured, and utterly lethal.
Leah swallowed hard. Her voice was small, carrying a tragic, fragile weight that filled the enclosed cabin.
"Under our kitchen table," Leah said.
A heavy beat passed. The engine noise thrummed continuously outside, vibrating through the floorboards beneath their feet.
Leah looked up from the black disc, her gray eyes locking onto Vincent’s dark, shadowed gaze.
"My mom disappeared the next morning," she added softly.
Vincent’s expression changed completely.
The suspicion, the lethal anger toward his own men, the cold calculation—all of it vanished, replaced by a sudden, profound shock. His jaw tightened so hard the muscles along his neck stood out like iron cables. He leaned in a fraction of an inch closer, his broad frame creating a protective wall between Leah and the rest of the cabin.
"What did you say?" Vincent asked, his tone no longer that of a mob boss interrogating a suspect, but of a man who had suddenly realized he was standing on the edge of a massive, hidden abyss.
"She was cleaning the floor," Leah said, her words coming faster now, her chest heaving slightly under her cardigan. "Two weeks ago. She found it stuck underneath the wood, right in the corner where nobody looks. She didn't know what it was either. She tried to pry it off with a butter knife, but it was glued tight."
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Leah stopped, her breath catching in her throat as tears finally welled in the corners of her eyes, though she refused to let them fall.
"She told me and Maya not to touch it," Leah continued. "She said we were going to visit our aunt the next day. But when I woke up in the morning... the front door was open. Her coat was still hanging by the hook. Her shoes were there. And she was gone."
