Catherine’s POV
I sat frozen while the plane taxied down the runway, my mind racing to build a version of this where I wasn’t an idiot.
Maybe it was just a coincidence.
Maybe he’d figured out who Isabella really was—the pampered Vitale daughter—and he was pursuing her to gain access to my family, to me, to some future for us that he believed needed connections.
I clung to that theory like a life raft.
It was pathetic.
But it was better than the truth sitting three inches to my left.
Isabella’s phone buzzed.
She glanced at it and let out a soft, satisfied little hum.
An hour into the flight, once the seatbelt sign clicked off, a flight attendant appeared beside us carrying a slim velvet box on a tray, the kind of box that made my stomach drop before it even opened.
“Miss Vitale,” she said, turning to Isabella.
“A gentleman in economy asked me to deliver this.
With his apologies.”
Isabella cracked the box open like she’d been expecting it.
Inside, a bracelet caught the cabin lights and threw them back, diamonds set in a line of white gold that probably had more zeros behind it than I made in a year.
Three million, easy.
“He also asked,” the attendant continued, “whether he might be permitted to return to business class for the remainder of the flight.”
Isabella tilted her head, pretending to think about it.
Then she gave a slow, gracious nod, like a queen granting a pardon.
The attendant turned to me next, and her voice dropped into something apologetic.
“Ma’am, since the cabin is full, the gentleman has offered a courtesy of fifty thousand dollars to exchange your seat for the rest of the trip.
You’d be relocated to—”
Fifty thousand dollars.
I almost laughed.
Not because it was funny.
Because it was so much money, and it was Marco’s money, money he supposedly didn’t have, being thrown around like loose change to buy me out of a chair so he could sit next to my sister.
“Sure,” I said, and my voice came out steady, which surprised me.
“Tell him he can come up.”
Isabella glanced at me, a flicker of surprise.
“That easy?
Fifty grand and you don’t even negotiate?”
She shook her head, pitying.
“See, this is your problem, Catherine.
You never ask for more.”
You have no idea what I’m about to ask for.
The attendant went to fetch him.
I sat very still and watched the curtain at the front of the cabin, my heart slamming against my ribs so hard I could feel it in my throat.
Then it parted, and Marco stepped through.
He looked good.
That was the thing that gutted me first.
New watch.
A jacket I’d never seen, cut close, expensive.
He’d gotten a haircut.
He looked like a man whose life was going extremely well.
He was already smiling toward Isabella’s seat, already reaching to loosen his collar, playing the part of the sheepish, forgiven boyfriend.
Then he saw me.
I watched the smile die on his face.
Watched the color drain out of it.
Watched his feet stop dead in the aisle like the floor had dropped away beneath him.
“Catherine.” He breathed.
“What— what are you doing here?”
I stood.
My hand found the glass of red wine on my tray table, still full, and before I could think about it, I threw it.
The wine hit him square, splashing across that pristine shirt, dripping off his jaw, soaking into his collar.
“Surprise,” I said.
“Happy early birthday.”
The cabin went dead quiet.
A woman two rows up peered over her seat.
“You son of a bitch.” My chest was heaving, heat crawling up my spine and into my face.
“You’d already made it—so why the hell did you keep playing broke with me?!
You watched me sit there doing the math in five different apps just to save a few lousy bucks.
Didn’t that make you feel anything?”
For one second, I let myself hope.
Hope that he’d fall apart.
Beg.
Explain.
Give me anything that looked like remorse.
He wiped the wine from his eyes with the back of his hand.
And when he looked at me, the first thing out of his mouth wasn’t sorry.
“Catherine, calm down.”
I blinked.
“You’re making a scene.” His voice dropped low, urgent, mortified—not for me, I realized, but for himself.
“We’re on a plane.
People are watching.
Don’t do this here.” His eyes flicked sideways.
“And don’t embarrass Isabella.”
The whole cabin seemed to go silent.
Don’t embarrass Isabella.
I stood there with an empty glass in my hand and stared at him, and for the first time in six years, I did not recognize the man in front of me.
This stranger with wine dripping off his jaw, more worried about my sister’s comfort than the fact that I’d caught him in the middle of destroying everything we’d built.
I thought about all the nights I’d fallen asleep on the couch waiting for him to come home from the office.
All the meals I’d stretched to cover two people on one salary.
The ring I’d been quietly, stupidly convincing myself he was saving up for.
I’d loved this.
Him.
This.
I’d handed six years of my life to a piece of garbage.
Isabella, meanwhile, had finally caught up.
Her eyes darted between us, wide and calculating, the bracelet still clutched in her fist.
“Wait.” She looked at Marco, then at me, and her mouth fell open.
“You two—she’s the girlfriend?
Catherine is the girlfriend?”
Something twisted in my chest.
Because underneath the fury, there was still a piece of me that wanted to protect her.
She was my sister.
She might not have known.
“Isabella.” I made myself say it clearly.
“He’s my boyfriend.
Marco is the man I’ve been with for six years.
The one I told you about ten minutes ago.
He’d been seeing both of us.”
I waited for the shock.
The apology.
The sisterly outrage on my behalf.
Instead, Isabella looked at me, and then she sighed, like I was being tiresome.
Like I’d forgotten a rule everyone else already knew.
“Well,” she said, smoothing the bracelet box shut in her lap.
“Then you’ll step back.
Obviously.”
The floor dropped out from under me.
“Excuse me?”
“Come on, Catherine.
Don’t make it dramatic.” She examined her manicure.
“It’s not like this is new.
Whatever you have, whatever you want—it comes to me.
That’s how it’s always been.
The clothes, the attention, Mom and Dad.” She shrugged one bare shoulder.
“This is no different.
He picked me.
You just hold on too tight, like always.”
I couldn’t breathe.
This was the sister I’d protected.
The one I’d covered for, apologized for, handed things to my whole life without ever being asked, because I thought that was what love looked like in a house that was never really mine.
And she was sitting there, in her three-million-dollar consolation prize, telling me to step aside like it was the most natural thing in the world.
Betrayal has a taste—bitter, burning at the back of my throat.
The plane hadn’t even started its descent.
But I’d already made up my mind.
This relationship, this man, this pathetic performance of a family loyalty that had only ever run one direction—
I was done.
All of it.
I didn’t want any of it back.