Chapter 4: In Your Dream, Zoya

CHAPTER 4

Los Angeles.

Pale morning light came through the blinds and lay across the ceiling in thin stripes. Riyana was draped half across Zoya's back with both small arms locked around her neck and her cheek buried in Zoya's hair. She must have climbed into the big bed sometime before dawn, found her mother in the middle of another nightmare, and done the only thing she knew how to do, which was to hold on until it stopped.

Zoya reached up and covered one of those little hands with her own. Almost three years had passed, and her subconscious still had arguments it refused to lose.

Riyana did not wake gradually, and she never had. One second she was completely asleep and the next she sat bolt upright, as if someone had flipped a switch. "Mommy," she said, her voice still thick with sleep. "Jack was shouting."

"Was he?" Zoya hadn't heard a thing. "Probably a squirrel."

Riyana nodded as though this was a reasonable answer, and then she looked at Zoya properly. "Mommy. Is Daddy still busy?"

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

"Are you sad, Mommy?" Riyana asked into her shoulder.

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

"Promise?" Riyana asked, studying her face.

"Promise," Zoya said.

Riyana watched her for another second, quiet and serious in the way children are when they notice more than adults want them to. Then she seemed satisfied and gave Zoya one firm kiss on the nose. "Okay."

Ten minutes later there was toothpaste on the mirror, the counter, and the front of Riyana's pajama top. "Oops," Riyana said, looking down at herself with a pout. "Mommy sorry."

"Clean it up." Zoya handed her a towel. "Come on."

Downstairs, Aunty Glenda was already somewhere at the back of the house, opening cupboards and talking to someone about groceries. The sound of it made the villa feel less like somewhere Zoya had landed temporarily and more like a home.

She was cracking eggs when something warm and furry pressed against her foot. She looked down and found Brownie staring up at her like she owned the kitchen, the house, and possibly Zoya too, and Zoya stepped back so fast she nearly hit the counter. "Stop it."

From the doorway came a giggle. Riyana stood there with her blanket around her shoulders like a cape. "Mommy is a scaredy cat?"

"I was not scared. I was startled. Those are different things," Zoya said.

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

Brownie looked entirely unconcerned by the disciplinary action, and Zoya muttered that she only liked her feet. By seven thirty Amy had arrived, and Riyana was explaining to her, and to one uninterested kitten, why pancakes tasted better when they were shaped like stars, so Zoya slipped upstairs to change.

Every morning she ran before she had to become anyone for the day, with just her feet against the pavement and a city that hadn't started asking anything of her yet. Four blocks in, her lungs began to burn, and she let them. The case arrived in her head anyway, the trial, Mansoor Corporation, Raiyan. She had spent nearly a year teaching herself to hear that name without something pulling loose inside her, and in two days she would have to hear it over and over in a courtroom, standing across from the one person attached to it who could still make her forget what she had rehearsed.

She pushed harder, and by the time she turned back toward the house her thoughts had finally gone quieter. They weren't gone, but she had stopped expecting that.

Jack was waiting at the gate, and he wasn't wagging. He was circling the big potted plant beside it with his nose low, giving a thin whine she had never heard from him, and when she said his name he looked at her and went straight back to the leaves.

"What is it?" she asked, slowing, and that was when she saw the envelope sticking out of the mailbox set in the wall. It was cream-colored and heavy, and her name was written across the front in careful, slanting handwriting. Zoya Reyes.

No one used that name anymore. The firm didn't, the courts didn't, and her real mail had gone to the office for years. The earlier envelopes had found her at the office, on her morning walks, and once at the gate of Riyana's preschool, but never at the house. She stood on the pavement with sweat cooling on her neck and the street so quiet she could hear the sprinklers, and then she opened it.

Inside was a single photograph. It was her, taken a few days ago outside the courthouse with her hair pinned up and a briefcase in one hand, caught mid-sentence and completely unaware, and the angle was from across the street and a long way off. She turned it over, and the same hand had written on the back.

You sleep well, Ms. Reyes.

Zoya read it twice. Then she became aware of the dog, still pushing at the plant, and of a small dark shape in the leaves where the stems were too thick. It was a lens, no bigger than a seed, and it was pointed at her front door.

Every instinct she had told her to look away, and instead she looked straight into it, steadily, long enough that whoever was watching would know she had seen. Her heart was going hard enough to hurt.

"Mommy!" The voice came from above, where Riyana was at the upstairs window with Brownie under one arm, waving with the other and her whole face lit up.

Zoya smiled and waved back. It was the best performance she had ever given, and no courtroom had ever required it. She kept it going until the curtain dropped, then crouched as if to retie her shoe, reached into the leaves, and pulled out a small black camera, still warm from the sun.

Her hands began to shake after that. Jack pressed his huge body against her side, and Zoya, who normally kept him at arm's length, put her hand on his head and left it there. Mansoor Corporation had a full security division, and Raiyan had never done anything by halves.

She slid the photograph and the camera into her bag and went inside, and she stopped at the bottom of the stairs, where Amy was refilling a glass of juice. "Nobody opens that gate today," Zoya said. "Not for flowers, not for packages, not for anyone."

Amy frowned. "Is something wrong?"

"Humor me." Zoya smiled at her, and it was not the same smile she had given the window.

Upstairs she showered and dressed for work, putting on her blazer, pinning up her hair, and stepping into her heels. She stood in front of the mirror and reached for her collar, and then she felt his hands. It wasn't a memory she had asked for. It was Raiyan's fingers fixing her collar the way he always used to, without asking, as if somewhere along the way he had decided that particular detail belonged to him, and she could almost feel his knuckles against the side of her neck for three seconds, maybe less. She buttoned it herself, harder than she needed to, and went downstairs.

Riyana was already crossing the room. She touched the lapel of Zoya's blazer and looked her over with obvious approval. "You look soooo pretty."

"Yeah?" Zoya said, smiling down at her. "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 said. She kissed the top of her head and put her down before I'll try could turn into I'll stay, and then she reached for her bag.

"Pleaseeee," Riyana said, catching her sleeve. "Come back."

It was somehow a command and a plea at the same time, and Zoya's throat tightened. "Always," she said, and walked out.

Elias was already in his office when she got there, standing at the window with his jacket off and his sleeves turned back over strong forearms. He was a tall man, dark-haired and dark-eyed, broad through the shoulders, with a composed, handsome face and a stillness that made people lower their voices. He turned when she came in, and on the desk behind him was her coffee, made the way she liked it, with a small paper bag from the bakery downstairs beside it.

"You didn't eat," he said quietly.

"I'm fine." She put the camera down beside the coffee, and then the photograph, face up. "This was left at my gate."

He didn't say anything right away. He picked up the camera and turned it over slowly in his fingers, and then he looked at the photograph for a long time. "Where exactly?" he asked.

"The planter," she said. "The photo was in the mailbox."

"Did Riyana see any of this?" he asked.

"No," Zoya said.

"Good." He set the photograph face down and put the camera in his desk drawer, and then he came around the desk and stopped in front of her, close enough that she could smell soap and clean wool. Her hand was cold, and he took it between both of his without asking, warming it. "You're frightened."

"I'm not," Zoya said.

"I know. That's what worries me." He held on a moment longer than he needed to. "Leave this with me, Zoya. Sit down and eat something before ten. That's all I'm asking."

She drew her hand back politely and picked up the bag. "Thank you."

At ten o'clock she was three minutes into the evidentiary summary when Katherine Hale interrupted. Katherine was fifty-two and a senior partner, sharp in the way of someone who had always needed to be sharper than everyone else in the room.

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

Several pens around the table stopped moving. Harrison had offered twenty-five million yesterday, and she had said no, and now his firm wanted her off the case.

Zoya finished the sentence she was writing before she looked up. "The motion is without merit. My personal history was disclosed when the firm took the case, and nothing about it changed when I became lead counsel. They waited until two days before trial."

Katherine watched her carefully, and so did the rest of the table. "I can only continue if—" Zoya began.

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

Zoya looked at him, and so did Katherine. "Continue," he repeated, quieter this time, and she held his gaze a second longer before she turned the page in front of her.

"Fine," she said.

That night in Geneva, the Fairmont suite was silent, with thick carpet, heavy doors, and not one sound from the corridor, and it was the kind of quiet that didn't soothe anything. It was a place built for discretion, and to Raiyan, tonight, it felt like a cage.

Harrison's voice came through the speaker on the desk. "The motion is solid, Raiyan. Her history with you gives us a credible confidential-information issue. If we press it, there's a real chance Whitmore takes her off the case."

"Who told you to file it?" Raiyan asked.

"Nobody," Harrison said. "I assumed—"

"You assumed." Raiyan said it gently, and the line went very quiet. "Withdraw it by morning."

"With respect, it's our strongest move. If she's compromised—" Harrison tried again.

"I didn't ask for your strongest move. I asked you to try the case." Raiyan stood and walked to the window, where the lake lay black under the lights. "She stays."

"May I ask why?" Harrison said carefully.

"No," Raiyan said, without turning from the window.

Harrison cleared his throat. "Understood."

When the call ended, Raiyan stayed at the window looking at the lake. Harrison had found the one lever that could take her out of the courtroom, and he had pulled it without being asked, and the thought of anyone else deciding where Zoya Al Fayez stood in this fight sat badly with him. He did not examine why. He wanted her across from him, and he wanted to watch her try.

He picked up his coat and walked out into the cold. The jet was waiting, and by the time he was on board the files lay open across the table in front of him, environmental reports, financial audits, legal filings, and he worked through them relentlessly while the two-day countdown kept ticking at the edge of his thoughts. She really thinks she can stand across from me and lecture me about justice after what she did, he thought. Now she wants to tear down the Mansoor family legacy too?

"In your dream, Zoya," he murmured into the quiet cabin, and a dry chuckle left him as the plane began to taxi.

The elevator opened on the forty-first floor, and Alan was already waiting, out of breath. "They withdrew the motion. Twenty minutes ago. No explanation, no reason given."

Zoya stopped walking. "Withdrew it."

"Harrison's office just sent the notice," Alan said. "Katherine thinks they lost their nerve."

For one second she felt something loosen in her chest, the pure relief of not being taken off the case. Then she understood what it meant. Harrison didn't withdraw anything unless somebody told him to, and only one person could tell him, and the relief turned over and became anger so fast that it was almost a comfort. He doesn't get to decide whether I'm allowed in the room, she thought.

"Zoya?" Alan asked.

"Nothing," she said. Across the floor Elias had stopped in his doorway, watching her, and when their eyes met he gave her a small nod before disappearing back into his office.

"Zoya." Alan's voice dropped. "Someone's waiting in reception. He didn't give a name. He said he'd wait as long as it took."

She walked toward reception with her shoulders squared, because there was nothing else to do. A man was sitting in the leather chair by the windows with one ankle crossed over his knee, looking as though he had been there all morning, and he stood when he saw her.