Chapter 4: In Your Dream, Zoya

CHAPTER 4 — IN YOUR DREAM, ZOYA

Los Angeles.

Pale morning light filtered through the blinds, cutting across the ceiling. Zoya's heart was still hammering when she opened her eyes, her breathing shallow, her face damp and cold.

Riyana was draped half across her back, both small arms locked around her neck, cheek buried in Zoya's hair. She must have climbed into the big bed sometime during the night, found her mother in the middle of another nightmare and performed the quiet rescue she had somehow taught herself to do before falling asleep again.

Zoya reached up and covered one of those little hands with her own.

Two and a half years, and apparently her subconscious still had arguments it refused to lose.

Outside, Jack barked once from the porch. Somewhere downstairs a door opened, then closed again. The house was waking up around them, but Zoya stayed where she was for another minute.

Riyana did not wake gradually. She never did. One second she was completely asleep and the next she sat upright like someone had flipped a switch.

"Mommy," she said, voice still thick with sleep.

"Good morning, baby." Zoya's own voice came out rougher than she meant it to.

Riyana rubbed one eye with the back of her fist, then looked at Zoya properly. "Mommy. Is Daddy still busy?"

Zoya pulled her into a tight hug before she answered, her chin resting against the top of Riyana's head. "Yes."

Riyana leaned down and pressed a sleepy kiss to her cheek before sitting back. "Are you sad, Mommy?"

"No, baby. I'm okay," Zoya said, holding her gaze so she would not have to lie twice.

"Promise?"

"Promise." Zoya squeezed her little hand.

Riyana watched her for another second, quiet and serious in that way children sometimes were when they noticed more than adults wanted them to. Then she seemed satisfied and leaned forward to give Zoya one firm kiss on the nose.

"Okay."

Ten minutes later, toothpaste was on the mirror, the counter and the front of Riyana's pajama top.

"Oops." Riyana stared down at herself and immediately pouted. "Mommy sorry."

"Clean it up," Zoya said, handing her a small towel. "Come on."

By the time they made it downstairs, Aunty Glenda was already somewhere in the back of the house, opening cupboards and talking to someone about groceries. The familiar sounds made the Reyes property feel less like somewhere Zoya had landed temporarily and more like an actual home.

She was cracking eggs when something warm and furry pressed against her foot, and she looked down to find Brownie staring up at her from a ball of golden-brown fur like she owned the kitchen, the house and possibly Zoya too.

Zoya stepped back so quickly she nearly hit the counter.

"Stop it."

Her voice came out thinner than she intended. She forced herself to breathe and stayed exactly where she was instead of moving farther away.

From the doorway came a giggle.

"Mommy is a scaredy cat?"

Riyana stood there with her blanket wrapped around her shoulders like a cape.

"I was not scared," Zoya said immediately, her voice climbing higher than she wanted. "I was startled. Those are different things."

"You are scared."

"No, I am not."

Riyana crouched and scooped Brownie up with total confidence. "Bwownie. We don't stand on Mommy."

Brownie looked entirely unconcerned by the disciplinary action.

"She keeps doing it," Zoya muttered.

"Mommmyyy." Riyana hugged the kitten against her chest. "She likes you."

"She likes my feet specifically."

Riyana considered this. "Mommy, Brownie needs a mommy too," she said, deploying the pout she'd clearly been saving.

Zoya stared at her daughter. "She has you already. Now go sit down before both of you get banned from my kitchen."

Riyana gasped like the threat was deeply unreasonable, then carried Brownie toward the table anyway.

By seven thirty, Amy had arrived. Riyana was explaining her theory that pancakes tasted better when they were shaped like stars to an audience consisting of Amy and one completely uninterested kitten when Zoya slipped upstairs to change.

Every morning, Zoya ran before she had to become anyone for the day.

No lawyer. No daughter of Omar Al Fayez. No woman people whispered about when they thought she couldn't hear.

Just her feet against pavement, the quiet streets and a city that had not started asking anything from her yet.

Four blocks in, her lungs began to burn, and she let them. She needed that.

The case arrived in her head anyway: the trial, Mansoor Corporation, Raiyan.

She had spent nearly a year teaching herself to hear the Mansoor name without letting it pull something loose inside her. Soon she would have to hear it over and over in a courtroom while standing across from the one person attached to it who still had the ability to make her forget what she had rehearsed.

Zoya pushed harder.

By the time she turned toward the house again, sweat had dampened her hairline and her thoughts had finally gone quieter. Not gone. She had stopped expecting that.

Quiet was enough.

She stopped at the front steps and bent forward, hands on her knees while she caught her breath.

When she straightened, she noticed an envelope by the front gate.

Zoya frowned and walked back toward it. It had been pushed through the bars and left neatly on the inside, her name written across the front in black ink.

No stamp. No address.

She turned it over once, then looked toward the road. Nothing unusual. A delivery van was passing at the far end of the street, and somewhere behind her Jack barked again.

Zoya slipped the envelope under her arm and turned back toward the house.

The scar on her wrist caught the morning light.

It had faded to a thin silver line now, the way old injuries did after everyone else stopped remembering they had ever happened.

Zoya traced it once with her thumb, straightened and went inside.

Upstairs, she showered and dressed for work.

Blazer. Hair. Heels.

She stood in front of the mirror long enough to check that everything was where it should be.

Then she felt his hands. It was not a memory she had asked for, just the warmth of Raiyan's fingers at her collar, fixing it the way he always used to without asking, like somewhere along the way he had decided that particular detail belonged to him. She could almost feel his knuckles brushing the side of her neck for three seconds, maybe less, before she blinked and found nothing in the mirror but herself.

She picked up her bag and went downstairs.

The envelope was still on the entry table. Zoya slipped it into her bag without opening it.

"Mommy."

Riyana was already crossing the room.

"Hi, baby." Zoya put her bag beside the door.

Riyana reached up and touched the lapel of her blazer, looking her over with obvious approval.

"You look soooo pretty."

Zoya crouched in front of her. "Yeah? You'll get your chocolates tonight either way."

"Mommy, thank you." Riyana threw both arms around her neck. "Come back soon?"

"I'll try."

Zoya kissed the top of her head and stood. She put Riyana down before *I'll try* could turn into *I'll stay*, and reached for her bag.

"Mommy."

Zoya turned to find Riyana standing in the middle of the room, the blanket still clutched in one hand and Brownie circling her ankles.

"Pleaseeee. Come back."

It was somehow a command and a plea at the same time.

"Always," Zoya said.

Then she walked out.

***

Forty-first floor.

By the time Zoya stepped out of the elevator, nothing about her suggested she had spent breakfast arguing with a kitten.

Alan caught up before she reached her office.

"Opposing counsel filed a..."

"Motion to continue," Zoya finished. "I saw it last night. The response is already in your inbox."

Alan checked his phone and slowed. Zoya kept walking.

Partners meeting, ten o'clock.

She was three minutes into the evidentiary summary when Katherine Hale interrupted.

Katherine was fifty-two, a senior partner and sharp in the particular way of women who had spent half their careers needing to be sharper than everyone else simply to be allowed into the room.

"Opposing counsel filed a motion to disqualify lead counsel this morning," Katherine said, setting her pen down. "Conflict of interest."

Harrison had offered ninety million yesterday. She'd said no. This morning, his firm wanted her off the case.

Several pens around the table stopped moving.

Zoya finished the sentence she was writing before looking up.

"The motion is without merit," she said. "My personal history was disclosed when the firm took the case. Nothing about that changed when I became lead counsel. They waited until six days before trial."

Katherine watched her carefully, and so did the rest of the table.

Zoya looked around the table, then at Adrian. "I can only continue if..."

"You'll continue," Adrian said, cutting her off before she finished. "The rest is mine."

Zoya looked at him, and so did Katherine.

"Continue," Adrian repeated, quieter this time.

Zoya held his gaze for another second, then turned the page in front of her.

"Fine."

She continued exactly where she had stopped.

After the meeting, she walked back to her office alone and got back to work.

***

That night in Geneva, the Fairmont was too quiet. Not the kind of quiet that soothed anything; it left him alone with thoughts he'd spent two and a half years trying to bury.

A place built for discretion. To Raiyan, tonight, it felt like a cage.

He sat at the desk, his laptop the only light in the room. Outside the floor-to-ceiling glass, the lights of Geneva blurred into the lake, but his gaze remained fixed on the screen.

Six days until trial.

His eyes stopped on Zoya Al Fayez's name on the opposing counsel report.

He opened her personal file again.

Her record over the last two years was immaculate. Case after case, won cleanly, no administrative errors or visible weaknesses anywhere. He went through every page twice, searching for leverage, and found nothing.

That bothered him far more than it should have.

He picked up his phone and dialed.

"Sir," Michael answered on the first ring.

"Update." Raiyan stood up and walked to the window.

"We traced new funding going into the victim coalition." Michael's tone was clipped. "Shell accounts. No name yet."

"And?"

"The victims are real. Whoever's funding this didn't create the case. They're using it."

"Keep digging," Raiyan said, his voice dropping into that dark, uncompromising register. "I want every connection Zoya Al Fayez has. Beyond the case file. Family, funding, anyone backing her."

"Understood."

Raiyan hung up and immediately dialed Armaan.

"Sir," Armaan answered, the engine idling in the background.

"Flight status."

"Ready. Wheels up in forty minutes." Armaan paused. "Miriam and Liyana landed twenty minutes ago."

"I know."

He ended the call, grabbed his coat, and walked out.

The tarmac air was biting cold, but it barely registered.

Onboard the private jet, files stayed open across the table: environmental reports, financial audits, legal filings. He worked through them relentlessly, but the six-day countdown kept ticking at the edge of his thoughts.

*She really thinks she can stand across from him and lecture him about justice after what she did. She took his peace. She took a piece of his life he will never get back. And now she wants to tear down the Mansoor family legacy too?*

"In your dream, Zoya," he murmured into the quiet cabin.

A short, dark laugh escaped him as the plane began to taxi.

He closed the laptop and let the dark take over.

***

The elevator doors opened on the forty-first floor.

Zoya walked out.

And stopped.

She saw him.