Conservatively, we're looking at somewhere between 40 and 60 aircraft that could have that part installed right now. 60 aircraft, Ethan repeated numbly. Some of them flying active missions within the month, Whitfield said quietly. Ethan closed his eyes. He thought of his wife's face laughing healthy 3 days before the accident that took her from him.
He thought of Sophie asleep down the hall with a crayon drawing of a helicopter clutched in her small hand. He thought of every single family out there right now who had no idea that somewhere in their loved ones aircraft set a fracture identical to the one that had already killed once and nearly killed twice. All right, he said finally opening his eyes. I'll help, but I have conditions. Name them, Victoria said immediately.
First, my wife's case gets reopened formally, officially, not buried in some footnote of a bigger investigation. Her death gets acknowledged as what it actually was, not what the paperwork said 17 years ago. Done, Whitfield said without hesitation. I'll personally see to it. Second, Sophie doesn't get dragged into any of this.
No cameras near my daughter, no reporters near her school, nothing. She's 7 years old and she's already had one parent taken from her by exactly the kind of corporate coverup you're describing. I won't let her be collateral damage in the media circus this is about to become. Agreed, Victoria said firmly. I'll have my legal and PR teams build a firewall around your family starting tonight.
Third, Ethan's voice hardened. If we find out anyone at that manufacturer knew about this defect and buried at anyone, I want them held accountable. not fined, not settled quietly, held accountable publicly the way nobody was held accountable for my wife. Victoria held his gaze steadily. I promise you, Ethan, whatever we find, it comes out. All of it.
Even if it's ugly for my own company's supply chain relationships, even if it costs us contracts. Ethan studied her face for a long moment, searching for the performance, the calculation, the same showmanship that had turned a legitimate safety concern into a public humiliation 8 hours earlier. He didn't find it. What he found instead was something rarer, a woman genuinely shaken by how close she'd come that same afternoon to getting somebody killed for the sake of a good investor demo. "Okay," he said finally.
I'm in. The next four days moved in a blur that Ethan would later struggle to fully remember. One event bleeding into the next with the surreal speed of a life turned suddenly irreversibly public. By Tuesday morning, the hangar footage had crossed 8 million views. By Tuesday afternoon, Ethan's name, his full name, his military service record.
Even a grainy photograph of him in his old flight suit standing beside his late wife had been published by three separate news outlets. Despite Victoria's legal team scrambling to get ahead of it, Sophie came home from school that Wednesday in tears, and it took Ethan 20 minutes of gentle coaxing to get the story out of her. A classmate had shown the other kids a video on their tablet during recess. A video of Ethan's face next to the words hero or fraud. The janitor, who claims he flew for the Air Force, and the other kids had started asking Sophie if her dad was famous. if he was rich now, if it was true, he'd almost died.
I didn't know what to say. Sophie had sobbed into his shoulder that night. I didn't know if I was supposed to be proud or scared. Both, Ethan told her quietly, holding her tight. It's okay to feel both, baby.
I feel both, too. Thursday brought the first real break in the investigation and the first real gut punch. Ethan sat in a conference room at Sky Nova's headquarters, a room he'd never have been allowed into. A week earlier, surrounded by Colonel Whitfield, two NTSB investigators, and Victoria Hayes, staring at a spread of documents that had just been pulled from a manufacturer's archived quality control records under federal subpoena. Here, said one of the NTSB investigators, a sharp-eyed woman named Reyes, sliding a folder across the table.