The first indication of my impending execution was not a scream or a struggle, but a vibration—a low-frequency thrum that resonated through my marrow, synchronized with the rhythmic thunder of the helicopter’s rotors. Below us, the Mediterranean was an expanse of impossible sapphire, shifting from turquoise shallows to the dark, bruising depths of the open sea. From the heights of the Santorini coast, the world looked deceptively peaceful, a postcard of whitewashed perfection that masked the rot sitting directly to my right.
I was twenty-four weeks pregnant. My hand, acting on a primal instinct I hadn’t yet named, remained glued to the swell of my stomach. Inside the cabin of the Eurocopter EC130, the air was thin and smelled of high-octane fuel and the crisp, expensive scent of Daniel’s cologne—Oud Wood, a fragrance that now turned my stomach.
This was supposed to be our “babymoon.” A final, luxurious reprieve before our lives were reconfigured around the needs of a child. But as I glanced at my husband, the immaculately tailored architect of my life, I didn’t see a father. I saw a stranger wearing a linen shirt. His jaw was a hard line of tension, and his eyes—those dark, calculating eyes—never once moved to the life I was carrying.
“Is the altitude bothering you, Amelia?” he asked. His voice was steady, too steady, like a predator who had already mapped out the trajectory of the kill.
“I’m fine, Daniel,” I replied, though my heart was hammering a frantic rhythm against my ribs. “Just a bit of turbulence.”
He smiled then. It was a smile I had once found comforting, but now it looked like a surgical incision. He leaned closer, his proximity stifling. He reached over, his fingers brushing the hair away from my ear, a gesture that should have been tender but felt like the tightening of a noose.
