Liam Stone was a man of discipline, precision, and altitude. For nearly two decades, he wore the deep blue uniform of the  Air Force with pride. A master pilot, husband to Lily, and father to a bright-eyed boy named Leo, he was the kind of man who believed in duty, in right and wrong, in systems that worked—until those same systems turned against him.

It began with a seemingly harmless procurement request. A hangar upgrade had been delayed for years. Tired of the red tape, Liam authorized the rerouting of funds for urgent maintenance work. Nothing extravagant. Nothing illegal, he thought. But politics in the military were like quicksand—one misstep and you’d be swallowed whole.

When the audit came, it found “unauthorized allocation of defense funds.” A court-martial followed swiftly. And though the judge acknowledged there was no personal gain, the law was the law. Liam was convicted of misappropriation of funds—a minor crime in the eyes of the public, but a death sentence for a soldier's career.

He lost his rank. His pension. His flight license. His dignity.

Lily didn’t stay. She left with Leo to live with her parents in Onio, offering only a cold farewell: “I can’t raise our son in disgrace.”

What followed was a darkness Liam had never known. He rented a tiny room near an abandoned airstrip in Machakos, barely eating, barely sleeping. He sold his medals for rent and his watch for food. Days passed without meaning, each one blurring into the next.

He tried to end it once.

A bottle of whisky and a jar of sleeping pills. But fate, in its cruel way, spared him. A neighbor found him foaming at the mouth, and he woke up in a sterile hospital ward surrounded by strangers.

“You’re lucky,” said the doctor. “Most don’t make it.”

Liam didn’t feel lucky. He felt hollow. Until a young nurse named Esther walked in one morning and saw the flight patch still stitched on his tattered duffel bag.

“You were a pilot?” she asked.

“I was,” he replied.

“Then fly again.”

He stared at her like she was insane. But the words stuck.

It started small. He took odd jobs near Wilyne Airport—mechanic work, hangar cleaning. Slowly, his name began to circulate again. Some still believed in him. A wealthy Mimali businessman gave him a chance: “Fly my packages to Arbu. You don’t ask what’s in them.”

Liam didn’t.

He used the money to buy a secondhand Cessna 208 Caravan. Registered a company—Stones Aviation. Rehired a few old friends. Painted his logo on the tail: a phoenix rising through clouds.

Word spread. Tourists wanted scenic flights over the Oceans and Deserts. NGOs needed remote medical drops. He flew them all. And as he rebuilt his company, he rebuilt himself.

Three years later, Stones Aviation had four aircraft, seven employees, and a pristine safety record. Lily returned—not with apologies, but with respect. “Leo wants to spend more time with you,” she said.

Leo was seventeen now. Taller, voice deeper, eyes wide with curiosity. Liam gave him the grand tour of the hangar. Taught him to inspect wings, check fuel lines, calibrate instruments. They laughed again. They talked. For a brief time, Liam felt like a father again.

Leo wanted to be a pilot.

“Let me fly co-pilot next time,” he begged.

Liam promised he would.

But that flight never came.

Leo had gone on a school-organized flight to Egly—nothing to do with Liam’s company. But halfway over Lake Asha, the aircraft vanished from radar. Emergency crews found the wreckage the next morning, scattered across the hills of Fres.

No survivors.

The official report said mechanical failure. Weather issues. A tragic accident. But Liam had taught Leo how to check engines. And something about the crash didn’t sit right with him.

Then he got the call.

A former colleague, now working in aviation security, told him the hangar logs had been doctored. Someone had tampered with the aircraft days before it took off. Someone with a grudge.

Liam’s heart broke—and then hardened.

He began investigating. Quietly. Ruthlessly. He paid bribes, pulled favors, followed whispers. All clues led to one man—Wycliffe, Liam’s cousin, a failed mechanic who once worked for Stones Aviation before being dismissed for theft. He’d blamed Liam for his misfortune. Said the business should have been “a family thing.” He’d also been at the same hangar just days before the fatal flight.

Liam confronted him one night, under the cover of darkness, in an empty field outside Muru.

“I lost everything,” Wycliffe hissed. “And you just kept flying.”

Liam pulled the gun without hesitation.

One shot. Clean. Silent.

Wycliffe fell backward into the tall grass

The night after Wycliffe’s death was eerily calm.

No sirens. No investigation. No headlines. Just silence.

Liam drove home, hands shaking. He didn't sleep. He sat in the hangar beneath the wing of his first plane—now stripped for parts—and stared at the faded photograph of Leo taped to his dashboard.

"I killed your killer, my son," he whispered. "But why does it still hurt?"

It wasn’t enough. Wycliffe hadn’t acted alone.

Liam remembered the suspicious phone calls Wycliffe had made, the cryptic messages unearthed from his laptop before Liam destroyed it. There were names—family names. Blood names. The very people who had once celebrated Leo’s birth, clapped at his school plays, and praised Liam’s resilience after the scandal.

It hadn’t just been jealousy. It had been a conspiracy.

They wanted him ruined. Out of the way. Some believed Stones Aviation should’ve belonged to the family, not to “the golden son” who made it out while they scraped coins in the fields. They resented his redemption, feared his return to prominence. And they used the one thing that still gave his life meaning—Leo—to remind him that his bloodline, his legacy, was not safe.

And so Liam made a list.

1. Aunt Tabitha – the matriarch\, whisperer of poison.

2. Kefa – the schemer\, Wycliffe’s brother\, who once tried to forge transfer papers for the hangar land.

3. Naomi – the quiet cousin\, who handled logistics and "accidentally" sent Leo’s flight details to the wrong engineer.

Three names. Three deaths.

He began with Aunt Tabitha. She still lived in the old stone house in Kiambu, where Liam had spent childhood holidays drinking porridge and listening to folktales. He visited her under the guise of reconciliation.

“I miss the old days,” he said over tea. “When family didn’t betray one another.”

Tabitha raised an eyebrow. “You always were dramatic.”

Liam smiled, dropped two crushed Oleander seeds into her tea, and watched her sip.

She died two days later. Heart failure, the doctors said. A peaceful death, they assumed. Liam felt no peace.

Next came Kefa.

He was trickier—paranoid and violent. He ran a matatu business in Eands and had connections to the local police. Liam staged it like a robbery. He waited near the depot late at night, wearing a ski mask and wielding a wrench.

The attack was brutal. The cameras were disabled. No suspects were identified.

Kefa’s death made the papers.

And the whispers started.

Naomi went into hiding.

Liam tracked her to Masa, living under a different name. She’d grown thin, nervous. Her apartment was bare. He found her weeping at her doorstep one night.

“I didn’t want him to die,” she said when she saw him.

“You still helped them,” Liam replied.

She dropped to her knees. “Please… I have children.”

Liam hesitated.

He left that night without saying another word.

But Naomi was found dead in her bed a week later—an overdose. Whether it was guilt or poison, no one ever knew. Not even Liam.

The deaths shattered the family. At first, they believed it was coincidence—fate. But rumors swirled like vultures over a carcass.

“Liam is cursed.”

“He’s a killer.”

“He’s lost everything.”

And it was true.

Stones Aviation collapsed within months. Sponsors pulled out. Clients avoided the scandal. One pilot quit after finding Liam crying in the cockpit, whispering Leo’s name.

Esther, the nurse who once saved him, came to check on him. She found him living inside the hangar, surrounded by beer bottles, Leo’s clothes still folded neatly in a locker.

“I thought flying would save me,” he told her.

Esther’s eyes welled up. “Liam, there’s no one left to fight.”

“There’s me.”

Liam’s health declined fast. Decades of grief, war, alcohol, and isolation wore down the man who once soared above the clouds.

One evening, he wrote a letter addressed “To Whom It May Hurt”:

“I buried my son, then buried myself with him. Every breath since has been punishment. I chased justice and found vengeance. I tried to fly above it all—but even angels fall.

If there is anything left of me, burn it with the planes. Let the sky remember I once lived.”

He took the last remaining aircraft—a weathered Cessna with a cracked windshield—and fueled it for one final flight.

Esther begged him not to go.

“Please,” she cried, gripping his arm. “You’re not alone.”

But Liam was already gone. His eyes stared through her, past her, into the great beyond.

He took off from the old airstrip at dawn. No plan. No passenger. Just him and the sky.

The aircraft circled once, twice.

Then climbed—higher, higher.

Witnesses said they saw it dip sharply, nose down.

It never pulled up.

The wreckage was found scattered in the hills near Leo’s crash site.

Liam’s body was broken, but peaceful. Beside him, investigators found a photo of Leo and a flight log with only one entry: “Final ascent.”

A small, quiet funeral was held weeks later. Esther attended. So did a few loyal workers. No family came.

Esther placed two paper airplanes in the coffin—one for Liam, one for Leo. She whispered:

“You both deserved more time in the sky.”

As the casket was lowered, the wind picked up, swirling dust through the cemetery. And just for a moment, it felt like wings flapping through grief—two souls soaring together, finally beyond reach of pain.

After the crash, after the casket, after the silence—Liam existed, not lived.

He haunted the hangar like a ghost, drifting between aircraft and workbenches, his movements slow, deliberate, and detached. The once buzzing home of Stones Aviation now sounded like an empty church. Engines didn’t roar. Phones didn’t ring. The only noise was the distant echo of his son’s laughter, etched deep into the walls of his memory.

Some nights he would sit on the floor in front of the flight simulator Leo used to practice on. It still worked—barely. Liam would boot it up, load the same flight path Leo had memorized for weeks, and just watch the screen, fingers hovering over the controls but never touching them.

He didn’t need to fly anymore. The flight was inside him. Or what was left of it.

He kept remembering the last time Leo made him laugh.

It had been a Sunday, just a month before the crash. They were flying to Doret for a charity event, with Leo in the co-pilot seat. The boy had insisted on wearing sunglasses, radioing fake air traffic control instructions in a deep voice.

“Captain Leo Stone requesting permission for a snack run, over.”

Liam had chuckled so hard he nearly veered off course.

That memory haunted him the most. Not because of the laughter, but because he never told Leo he was proud of him that day.

He thought he had time.

THE PAST.

Liam started keeping a journal. Not for himself—but for Leo.

He filled it with memories, regrets, promises.

“Your hands were too small for the flight controls, but you held my heart like a pro.”

“I used to fly for honor. I started flying again for you.”

“You were the only reason I survived the scandal. But I didn’t survive losing you.”

He kept the journal hidden in the cockpit of his oldest plane. It was stained with engine grease, a few pages torn, but every word written with the reverence of scripture.

Esther once found him asleep in the cockpit, the book clutched to his chest.

“Why don’t you write about yourself?” she asked gently.

“I’m already written,” Liam murmured without opening his eyes. “In the cracks.”