Elena's POV
The world spins violently as the plane lurches sideways. I'm thrown against my seatbelt so hard I can't breathe. Vincent grabs my hand, his grip crushing.
"Hold on!" he shouts over the screaming alarms.
Through the window, I see fire spreading across the left wing. Black smoke pours into the night sky. We're falling—actually falling—the ground rushing up to meet us.
"This is Captain Reynolds," the pilot's voice crackles, barely audible over the chaos. "We've been hit by something—possibly a drone strike. I'm attempting an emergency landing but we've lost hydraulics. Brace for impact!"
A drone strike. Someone actually attacked our plane. Someone wants us dead badly enough to commit murder in the sky.
"Vincent!" I scream as the plane tilts further. My phone flies out of my pocket, papers scatter everywhere, oxygen masks drop from overhead.
Vincent unbuckles and lunges across the aisle to me, covering my body with his as the plane shakes apart around us. "I've got you," he says into my ear. "Whatever happens, I've got you."
The engines scream. The plane drops. And then—
IMPACT.
The world explodes into noise and pain and darkness.
I wake up choking on smoke.
Everything hurts. My head throbs, my ribs ache, there's something wet on my face—blood, probably mine. The plane is tilted at a crazy angle, one wing buried in dirt, the other pointing at the sky.
"Vincent?" My voice comes out as a croak. "Vincent!"
"Here." His voice comes from somewhere behind me, pained but alive. "Are you hurt?"
"I don't know." I try to unbuckle my seatbelt but my hands shake too much. "Where are we?"
"Somewhere in France. Fields. We didn't make it to Paris." Vincent appears beside me, blood running down his forehead, his suit torn. But he's moving, functioning. "We need to get out. Now. The fuel tanks could explode."
He unbuckles me with steady hands despite his injuries. The plane's emergency door hangs open, twisted on broken hinges. Vincent helps me through it and we half-fall, half-jump into a muddy field.
The cold night air hits my lungs like ice. Behind us, the plane smolders, smoke rising into the dark sky. We stagger away from the wreckage, putting distance between us and potential explosion.
"The pilot," I gasp. "Captain Reynolds—"
"I checked. He's..." Vincent's face is grim. "He didn't make it, Elena. The cockpit took the worst of the impact."
A man died getting us here. Tears blur my vision.
"We need to move," Vincent says, pulling me forward. "Whoever shot us down will send people to confirm we're dead. If they find us alive—"
An explosion cuts him off. The plane's fuel tanks ignite, sending a fireball into the night. The heat hits us even from fifty feet away.
We run.
My legs feel like rubber. Every breath hurts. But fear pushes me forward, through the muddy field toward a line of trees in the distance. Behind us, I hear vehicles—engines roaring, getting closer.
"They're coming," Vincent pants. "Faster, Elena. We need to reach those trees."
We crash into the forest just as headlights sweep across the field. I collapse behind a thick tree trunk, gasping for air. Vincent pulls me down, covering us both with fallen leaves and branches.
Through the trees, I see three black SUVs pull up to the burning wreckage. Men in dark clothes get out, carrying weapons. They're not police or emergency responders. These are the people who tried to kill us.
"Check for bodies," one man orders in French. "They can't have survived that, but we need confirmation."
Vincent's hand covers my mouth, his eyes warning me to stay silent. We're twenty feet from armed men who want us dead. One sound, one movement, and we're finished.
The men search the wreckage with flashlights. I can hear them talking, laughing. They think this is over. They think we're dead.
"Boss wants proof," another man says. "Photos of the bodies."
"There won't be much left after that explosion," the first man replies. "But we'll find something. Always do."
They're going to search the area. They're going to find us.
Vincent slowly, carefully pulls out his phone. He types something and shows me the screen: Stay completely still. Marcus knows we crashed. Help is coming.
But help could take hours. We have minutes, maybe less.
One of the men starts walking toward our hiding spot, his flashlight sweeping side to side. "I'll check the tree line. They might have been thrown from the plane during impact."
Vincent's body tenses, ready to fight. But he's injured, unarmed, and there are at least six of them with guns.
The man is ten feet away. Five feet. His flashlight beam inches closer to our hiding spot.
Then—sirens. Distant but getting louder. Real emergency vehicles, responding to the explosion.
"Shit," the man with the flashlight curses. "We need to go. Now."
"But we don't have confirmation—"
"We're not getting caught at a crime scene!" The leader shouts. "Move!"
The men scramble back to their vehicles and peel away just as fire trucks and police cars appear on the horizon.
Vincent and I lie frozen in our hiding spot, not daring to move until the emergency vehicles reach the burning plane and the black SUVs are long gone.
"We need to get to those responders," Vincent whispers. "But carefully. We don't know who we can trust."
We stand on shaking legs and stumble out of the trees, waving our arms at the firefighters. A paramedic spots us and rushes over.
"My God, you survived?" She's young, French, her eyes wide with shock. "How many were on the plane?"
"Three," Vincent says. "Just us and the pilot. He... he didn't make it."
The paramedic guides us to an ambulance. Other emergency workers swarm the wreckage, putting out fires, searching for survivors who aren't there.
"We need to call someone," I tell Vincent quietly. "Your father, Marcus, Rebecca—"
"No phones," Vincent interrupts, his voice low. "They tracked us somehow. Maybe through our phones, maybe the plane's flight path. We can't risk leading them to anyone else."
He's right. Everyone who helps us becomes a target.
The paramedic returns with blankets and medical supplies. "You're very lucky. That crash should have killed you both. Were you wearing your seatbelts?"
"Yes," I say, but I'm barely listening. I'm watching the police officers examining the wreckage, talking into radios, taking photos.
One officer breaks away from the group and walks toward our ambulance. He's older, stern-faced, and something about him makes my skin crawl.
"I need to ask you some questions," he says in French-accented English. He pulls out a notebook. "Starting with your names."
Vincent and I exchange glances. Do we tell the truth? Use fake names? Either choice could get us killed.
"I'm Vincent Rothwell," Vincent says carefully. "This is Elena Castellano. We were flying to Paris when something hit our plane."
The officer's expression doesn't change. "Something hit your plane? Can you be more specific?"
"It looked like a drone," I offer. "The captain said it was a drone strike before—" My voice breaks. "Before we crashed."
The officer writes this down slowly. Too slowly. Like he already knows.
"And why were you flying to Paris?" he asks.
"Business," Vincent says.
"Personal," I say at the same time.
The officer's eyes narrow. "Which is it?"
Vincent's hand finds mine, squeezing a warning. This officer isn't here to help. He's here to confirm we're alive—so someone else can finish the job.
"Both," Vincent says smoothly. "Business and personal. Is there a problem, officer?"
"That depends." The officer leans closer, and I smell cigarettes and something metallic. "You see, I received a very interesting call thirty minutes ago. Someone warned me that a plane would crash in this area. They told me exactly where to find it. They even told me there would be no survivors."
My blood turns to ice.
"Someone knew we would crash before it happened," Vincent says quietly.
The officer smiles, and it's not friendly. "Which means someone wanted you dead badly enough to plan an elaborate murder. And that someone has resources—the kind that can make evidence disappear. The kind that can make inconvenient survivors disappear too."
He straightens up, closing his notebook. "So here's what's going to happen. You're going to come with me to the station for questioning. For your protection, of course. And while you're there, I'll make some calls. See who's so interested in your deaths."
Vincent stands, positioning himself between me and the officer. "We're not going anywhere with you."
"I'm afraid you don't have a choice," the officer says, and his hand moves to the gun at his hip. "This is official police business. You can come quietly, or—"
A gunshot cracks through the night.
The officer drops, blood blooming across his chest. He's dead before he hits the ground.
Chaos erupts. Emergency workers scatter, screaming. More gunshots. The men in black SUVs are back, firing at anyone in their way.
"Run!" Vincent yanks me away from the ambulance as bullets tear through metal.
We run back toward the forest, back toward darkness. Behind us, people scream and die because of us, because we were on that plane, because someone wants us dead badly enough to massacre witnesses.
We're fifty feet into the trees when Vincent suddenly stops, pulling me behind him.
A woman steps out from behind a tree directly in our path.
She's older, maybe sixty, with silver hair and familiar eyes. Eyes I've seen in photographs. Eyes I see in the mirror every morning.
"Hello, Elena," the woman says softly. "I'm sorry it took me so long to come home."
My legs give out. Vincent catches me, holding me up as I stare at the woman who should be dead.
The woman who looks exactly like the mother I buried twenty years ago.
"Mom?" I whisper.
She smiles, tears streaming down her face. "Yes, baby. It's me. I'm alive. And we have so much to talk about."
Behind her, another figure emerges from the shadows. A man with Vincent's eyes and face, just older.
"Hello, son," Vincent's father says. "I see you got my message about the café. Though you're a bit early. And you've made quite a mess."
Vincent's grip on me tightens. "This isn't possible. You're both dead. We buried you—"
"You buried bodies we needed you to think were ours," my mother interrupts. "We've been hiding for twenty years, waiting for the right time to come back. Waiting until our children were strong enough to handle the truth."
"What truth?" I demand, finding my voice. "What could possibly be worth faking your deaths? Worth letting us think we were orphans? Worth all this death and destruction?"
My mother's expression turns grave. "The truth about what we found in Paris. The truth about why we had to disappear. And the truth about who you really are, Elena."
"Who I am?" I stare at her. "I'm your daughter. That's who I am."
"Yes," my mother says. "But you're also the heir to something far more dangerous than money or property. Something people have killed for. Something that makes you one of the most powerful people in the world—if you survive long enough to claim it."
More gunshots echo behind us. The men are getting closer.
"We need to move," Vincent's father says urgently. "There's a safe house ten miles from here. We can explain everything there."
"No," Vincent says, his voice hard. "You don't get to disappear for years, fake your deaths, let us suffer, and then expect us to trust you. Not without answers first. Right here. Right now."
My mother and Vincent's father exchange glances.
"You want the truth?" my mother asks. "Fine. Elena, you're not just my daughter. You're the last living descendant of the Moreau bloodline. The original Moreau family who founded half the banks in Europe. Who controlled governments. Who decided the fate of nations." She pauses. "And on your twenty-eighth birthday, which is in three days, you inherit everything. Billions of dollars. Centuries of power. And enemies who will stop at nothing to prevent that from happening."
The world tilts.
Three days. I have three days until my birthday.
Three days until I become the target of every dangerous person in Europe.
Three days to figure out if I can trust my own mother.
And somewhere in the darkness behind us, assassins hunt us through the French countryside, determined to make sure I never live to see that birthday at all.