CHAPTER 1: Everything Except You

PROLOGUE

The same headlights had been behind Zoya for eleven miles, and when she checked the rearview mirror again they were still there. Rain blurred the road toward Edinburgh, and the wipers could barely keep up with it. At seven and a half months, the steering wheel sat uncomfortably close against her stomach, and she had stopped being able to find any way of sitting that didn’t ache. Her grip had gone painfully tight around the wheel, and when she loosened one hand she realized it was shaking.

The headlights moved closer.

Her phone lay on the seat beside her. She picked it up and found Raiyan’s name, her thumb hovering over the call button.

Once, she would have called him without a second thought.

Now she stared at his name for three seconds, unable to make herself press it.

The headlights filled more of the mirror, and she was still holding the phone when it buzzed in her hand. It was Daniel, her mother’s security chief, and she answered before the second ring.

“Daniel, I’m being followed. I’m almost—”

“Zoya, get out of the car. Right now.” His breathing was uneven and the words rushed together, as if he hadn’t stopped running to say them. “They found you. He’s—”

A gunshot tore through the phone, and Zoya’s whole body jerked against the seatbelt.

“Daniel?” Her voice cracked as she gripped the phone tighter. “Daniel!”

There was no answer. The line stayed open, and all she could hear was the rain hissing through the speaker.

She looked up, and the truck was still there, closer now, and then it surged forward. It slammed into the back of her car hard enough to rip the wheel sideways beneath her hands, and the car shot across the muddy shoulder, rolled once, and came down hard enough to knock the air from her lungs.

For a long second she couldn’t move. The engine ticked somewhere ahead of her and the rain drummed against the shattered windshield, and when she looked down she saw that the seatbelt had cut across the swell of her stomach. Both hands flew there before she even realized she was crying.

The driver’s door groaned as it shifted, and the faint smell of gasoline threaded through the wreck.

Someone was walking toward the car.

She lifted her head just as the man stepped out of the rain, stopped beside her window, and raised the gun.

Zoya wrapped both arms around her stomach and whispered, “Please,” her voice breaking.

“Don’t hurt them.”

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 1

Three years later.

The study door opened without a sound, and Nelson stopped as soon as he saw them. Raiyan looked up from the desk, where Liyana was still asleep against his chest with one small hand tangled in his shirt.

"She refused everyone last night," Nelson said, careful to keep his voice under the sound of her breathing. "Kept asking for you."

Raiyan glanced down at his daughter, his fingers moving slowly through her hair. "I know."

"I'll take her upstairs when you're ready." Nelson reached for the light switch out of old habit, then stopped himself before he touched it.

Raiyan's gaze went to the files spread across the desk and then back to Liyana, and his hand never left her hair. "Not yet."

Nelson nodded and stepped further into the room. "Miriam will be here before noon. I'll bring Liyana straight to the manor."

"Good. Don't let Miriam leave her side," Raiyan said, keeping his eyes on his daughter.

"She won't," Nelson said simply.

Neither of them spoke for a moment, and then Raiyan said without looking up, "If she cries when I leave."

Nelson weighed how honest to be before he answered. "She probably will."

Raiyan gave a short nod and looked down at Liyana again. "I'll tell her what I always do."

"Daddy always comes back," Nelson finished quietly.

Raiyan looked at him then, and his face eased for the first time all morning. "Thank you," he said, quieter than anything else he had said that day.

Nelson inclined his head. "She knows you'll come back, sir." He slipped out and closed the door behind him.

Raiyan's thumb kept moving through Liyana's hair long after the door had clicked shut, and he didn't reach for the files for a long time. When he finally did, he read the first paragraph, reached the bottom of the page, and realized he hadn't understood a single sentence of it.

Geneva was already awake beyond the terminal glass. Raiyan walked through arrivals the way he always did, unhurried, as if the airport were moving to accommodate him rather than the other way around.

Michael caught up before they reached the car. "Sir."

"What changed?" Raiyan asked without slowing his pace.

"The plaintiffs filed a substitution of lead counsel out of their Los Angeles office. It was approved this morning." Michael kept pace beside him with his eyes on his tablet. "Harrison wants ten minutes with you before the next hearing, and the Zurich investors are asking for reassurance—"

"Harrison can have ten. Zurich gets the usual line. We don't discuss active litigation." Raiyan didn't look at the tablet. "Who took over?"

Michael cleared his throat, a tell Raiyan had already learned to read. "Ms. Al Fayez. Zoya Al Fayez."

The name should have been just a name.

It wasn't.

Michael made it another step before he realized Raiyan was no longer beside him, and he stopped and looked back. Raiyan was standing in the middle of the arrivals hall with people flowing around him and one hand resting on the strap of his bag, and to anyone who didn't know him he looked like a man waiting for a delayed flight.

"From what I found," Michael said carefully, "she's taken on three major corporate defendants over the last two years. She won all three."

A dry chuckle left Raiyan as he started walking again. "Good for her. Harrison handles the case. That's what he's paid for. I don't read their motions in an airport."

"Understood," Michael said, falling back in beside him.

His phone rang before they reached the car. Raiyan pulled it from his jacket, and the screen lit up with a little girl caught mid-laugh, dark wavy hair going in every direction, one sock missing, hazel eyes bright with a happiness that belonged only to her. He answered before the second ring. "Hey, baby girl."

"DADDYYYYYYY!" Liyana shrieked so loudly that Raiyan pulled the phone away from his ear, and Michael quietly fell back a step.

"Hey. I'm here." Raiyan's voice had already changed. "Tell me what happened."

"You went AWAY." She sounded like she'd been saving it up for hours. "I waked up and I looked and I looked and you weren't ANYWHERE."

"I know, baby." His voice dropped into the register he kept for no one else.

"I don't LIKE work, Daddy," Liyana said, and then her voice wobbled. "I just misshh you."

A loud sniff came down the line, and Raiyan closed his eyes for a second.

"She hasn't eaten," Miriam said from somewhere behind her.

"Lily, did you eat your eggs?" Raiyan asked, and the corner of his mouth was already starting to move.

"…One. But Daddy, it was a big one." She said it with total confidence, and he caught his smile before it could go any further. "And the toast was dirty."

"Then just listen." He leaned against the terminal glass. "When have I ever not come back?"

There was a long, serious silence, the kind only someone not quite three could manage over a question this size. "…Never," Liyana said at last.

"Right. So what does that mean?" he asked.

"You're coming back?" Her voice had gone small.

"I'm coming back," Raiyan said.

"Pinky promise?" she asked, and he could hear her holding her breath.

"Pinky promise," he said, as solemnly as if he were signing a contract. "Two sleeps."

"That's SO many," Liyana said, outraged. "And nobody sings the song right, Daddy. They do the slow part fast."

Raiyan let the quiet stretch. He was standing in a private terminal in Geneva with a legal case building across two continents, and he was losing a debate about song tempo to someone who weighed twelve kilograms. "Two sleeps," he said. "And I'll sing it so slow you'll fall asleep before the second verse."

She sniffed again and went quiet for a moment while she considered it. "…Okay," she said, small and real now. "I love you the most in the whole world."

He said it back, and he meant it more than she would ever know.

"You love me the most, Daddy," Liyana corrected, gently but firmly, and then she added in a smaller voice, "Come back quick."

"Quick as I can," Raiyan said.

He waited until she hung up first, then stood there for three full seconds before he slipped the phone into his pocket. When he turned to Michael his face was the one everyone else knew. "Is Harrison making the call today?"

"This afternoon. Twenty-five million, confidential, no admission of—" Michael began.

"I know the terms." Raiyan adjusted his cuff. "She won't take it."

Michael hesitated. "Sir, if she's as good as her record, she'll know it's a strong—"

"She'll know exactly what it is, and she'll say no." Taking it would be the sensible thing to do, and Zoya had never once done the sensible thing when it was handed to her. "Make the offer anyway."

"If she refuses, we lose the—" Michael tried again, frowning at his tablet.

"I want to hear her say no." Raiyan said it lightly, which somehow made it worse, and Michael closed his mouth.

They walked a few steps in silence, and when Raiyan spoke again it was to the glass doors ahead of him and not to Michael. "Send her file to the hotel."

"The case file, sir?" Michael asked.

"The case is Harrison's." Raiyan's eyes stayed on the doors. "The file is mine."

In Los Angeles, Zoya was halfway through a motion to compel the remaining internal reports when Alan appeared at her office door. "Harrison Cole," he said.

Zoya didn't look up. "Tell him opposing counsel knows how to use email."

"He said you'd say that," Alan said.

That made her pen stop moving. "Of course he did."

"He says it's about settlement," Alan added.

"How generous." She reached for the phone and picked it up with her eyes still on the page. "Harrison."

His voice arrived smooth and patient, as though politeness made him harder to dislike. "Ms. Al Fayez."

"If this is another attempt to explain civil procedure to me," she said, turning back to the document in front of her, "I'm charging you by the minute."

He laughed softly. "I heard you were difficult."

"You called during my filing deadline. You're meeting the better version of me," Zoya said, and went on reading.

"I'll remember that." There was a short pause, and his tone shifted. "Mansoor Corporation is prepared to discuss settlement before this goes any further."

That got her attention, and she put the pen down. "How prepared?"

"Twenty-five million." He let the silence stretch before he went on. "Confidential settlement. No admission of liability. Your clients are compensated immediately, and this ends before trial."

Zoya's eyes moved to the file beside her. "And the internal reports?"

"They remain confidential," Harrison said.

"The remaining production?" she asked.

"Ends with the case," he said.

She looked down at the open file, where a six-year-old's blood test sat on top with the elevated lead result highlighted beside pages of medical reports and photographs she knew almost by heart. Beneath them were the names of children whose parents had trusted her with something more important than winning. "My clients have already instructed me," she said, and her voice didn't rise. "No confidential settlement."

"Even at twenty-five million?" A trace of disbelief crept into his voice.

"Even at twenty-five million," Zoya said, and she didn't blink.

"Zoya, we're talking about twenty-five million dollars," Harrison said, as if she might have misheard him the first time.

"I heard the number," Zoya said flatly.

"And you're sure that's still their position?" he asked.

"I'm sure." She sat forward in her chair. "The families aren't doing this for the money. They signed on because they want to make sure this never happens to anyone else's kids. A confidential settlement keeps the rest of it buried, and I'm not letting your client bury it."

Harrison was quiet for a moment. "You know, most people would call twenty-five million a win."

"Most people aren't representing my clients," Zoya said.

"No." His tone shifted, a little less smooth than before. "I suppose for you this was never only about the clients."

Zoya's eyes lifted from the file, and her voice went cold. "Be careful."

"I'm only saying personal history has a way of making professional judgment expensive," Harrison said.

"Then it's fortunate my judgment isn't the one under investigation," Zoya said.

The pause on his end ran long enough that she almost checked whether the call had dropped. "He knows you're lead counsel now," Harrison said at last, and whatever ease had been in his voice earlier was gone.

Her fingers stopped against the edge of the file. "I assumed he would," she said evenly, though her pulse had jumped at that one small word, he, and she hated that some part of her wanted Harrison to keep talking.

"He's not going to make this easy on you," Harrison said.

"I never expected him to," Zoya said.

She should have ended the call there. Instead she heard herself ask, "Will he be in the courtroom?"

"I expect so," Harrison said.

"Good." She hung up before Harrison could ask why.

Alan hadn't moved from the doorway. She reopened the discovery motion, and neither of them spoke until she had read the same line twice.

"We're filing," Zoya said, without lifting her eyes from the screen.

"Twenty-five million?" Alan asked, still standing there.

"Still filing," Zoya said.

Alan stayed where he was a second longer than he needed to, and Zoya finally looked up. "What?"

He hesitated. "You just turned down twenty-five million and somehow look more annoyed than impressed."

"Because Harrison talks too much," Zoya said, and picked up her pen.

Alan's eyes stayed on her a moment longer than the comment warranted, and she let him look. "Close the door," she said.

He did, without another word.

When the office was quiet again, she stared at the same paragraph for a few seconds before she forced herself back into it. Raiyan knew, and she had known this moment would come, and knowing hadn't made it any easier. Her thumb found the pale line along the inside of her wrist before she could stop it, and she took it away and went back to work.

Back in Geneva, Raiyan was crossing the terminal when a woman near the seating area laughed at something her companion said and moved her coffee too quickly. A little spilled over the rim, nothing more, but Raiyan stopped anyway.

Michael glanced back. "Sir?" he asked, and Raiyan didn't answer.

The woman was already wiping at the cup with a napkin, still laughing, completely unaware that he was watching her. Six years earlier, Zoya Al Fayez had walked straight into him with a cup of coffee in her hand, and back then he hadn't even known her name.

My eyes are on vacation.