The one I had taken from seat 28E, pointed at my son’s shining face, that had kept recording through everything.

It showed Leo’s joy, and then it showed Leo’s joy dying, and in the background it captured every word Luca said over the PA, clean and timestamped and undeniable.

Within two weeks, Luca was formally suspended for conduct unbecoming of a captain and misuse of company equipment.

And the grand romance he had broadcast to first class began, almost immediately, to come apart, because it turned out that Chloe Ruiz had fallen in love with a senior captain, a corporate salary, a four-bedroom house and a certain shine — and when the shine came off, when the suspension hit and the status collapsed, she discovered that the actual man underneath it was not what she had signed up for.

When Luca finally called me, weeks later, from a cheap hotel room in Chicago, weeping, begging for a second chance now that Chloe had left him and his life had caved in — I did not scream, and I did not gloat, and I did not, in the end, even speak to him.