Chapter 20 - The Open Horizon
The private jet climbed steadily into the bruised-purple twilight sky, leaving the glittering grid of Chicago behind us as we banked east over Lake Michigan, cutting through the clouds toward the Atlantic.
Inside the cabin, the lighting was soft and warm. There were no stacks of deposition briefs, no frantic conference calls, and no red-labeled legal folders waiting on a desk. Just the quiet hum of the engines, two glasses of vintage champagne, and the vast, open horizon stretching out endlessly before us.
I sat by the window, watching the distant lights of the city shrink into glittering pinpricks of gold against the dark earth below.
Dante sat beside me, his arm draped comfortably over the back of my seat, his fingers gently brushing against my shoulder.
“You know,” Dante said quietly, swirling the champagne in his crystal glass, “everyone back in the city thinks we’re insane. They think we threw away a billion-dollar empire, a society dynasty, and a guaranteed legacy for a gamble.”
I turned my head to look at him, raising my glass in a silent toast. “Let them think what they want. They were building an empire on sand. We built ours on truth.”
Dante smiled, clinking his glass against mine with a clear, resonant chime. “To truth.”
“To truth,” I echoed softly.
We fell into a comfortable silence, watching the stars emerge across the vast, infinite expanse of the night sky above the ocean.
May you like
My phone rested on the small table between us, face down, silent, and entirely ignored. For the first time in five years, my calendar was clear, my future was unwritten, and the choices we made were entirely our own.
As the plane soared higher into the dark, limitless night, carrying us toward a new world and an uncharted beginning, I couldn't help wondering what new challenges, what unexpected adventures, and what hidden storms might be waiting for us on the other side of the Atlantic—and whether we were truly ready for the life we had finally fought so hard to claim.
