Chapter 5: Gold-Embossed Lies

CHAPTER 5

Faiyaz had his jacket folded over one arm and his phone in his hand, and he did not look like a man who had been waiting only a few minutes. He put the phone away as she crossed the reception area, and his attention stayed on her a little longer than usual. Zoya was still dressed for work, with her hair neat and her blazer in place, but the lack of sleep had started to show around her eyes no matter how hard she tried to hide it.

"Hey, beautiful," he said, and he didn't move toward her.

"When did you get here?" Zoya asked flatly, already checking the time.

Faiyaz raised a brow. "Mm. Good to see you too. I'm doing great, by the way. Thanks for asking," he added with mock offense, spreading his hands.

Zoya rolled her eyes and reached for her bag. "I have a doctor's appointment."

"Dr. Ziegler?" He took a step closer. "I'll take you."

She glanced toward the window, already thinking of twenty minutes alone in the car with her own head and a lens the size of a seed that she couldn't stop seeing. Faiyaz noticed, and when she reached for her bag, he reached for it too, and his hand closed over hers on the handle. "Zoya," he said, quieter now. "Let me take you."

She looked at him, then pulled her hand free, because arguing would take more energy than she had. "Fine."

Dr. Sheryl Ziegler, her psychiatrist, kept an office that smelled faintly of white tea and was always a little too quiet. Zoya sat in the chair that didn't require her to be Lead Counsel, where she didn't have to hold her shoulders a certain way and only had to exist.

"Having those nightmares again?" Dr. Ziegler asked, her pen hovering over a notepad.

"Worse." Zoya watched a bird on the windowsill, her fingers curling into the fabric of her trousers. "Since the trial date was confirmed. Every night."

"Tell me," Dr. Ziegler said.

"It's the same. Running. Darkness, shadows. Losing them." Zoya stopped there, and her fingers tightened.

Dr. Ziegler glanced at her hands. "And him?"

Zoya pressed her thumbnail into her palm. "He's in the dream. He's always in the dream."

"What does he do?" Dr. Ziegler asked gently.

"He looks at me like I'm the one who did it." Her mouth hardened. "Like I'm the one who should be sorry. He's never loud in the dream. I'd almost prefer it if he were."

She looked at the windowsill again, her voice cool and level. "He's here, in LA. I've been preparing for months, and I'm not afraid of him, Dr. Ziegler. I'm tired of giving a man who doesn't deserve it that much room in my head."

"Anger is allowed, Zoya," Dr. Ziegler said.

"I'm not angry," Zoya said.

Dr. Ziegler glanced at her hands, which had curled into fists on her knees. "Has anything changed at home?"

For one second Zoya saw the planter, the leaves, and the small black glint among the stems. "No," she said.

Dr. Ziegler looked at her for a long moment, and then she wrote something down. "I see it," she said, and it was not clear which part she meant. "What would you like to talk about?"

"The dosage." Zoya unclenched her hand and rubbed her thumb against her palm. "Increase it. I have a trial in two days, and I can't afford to be someone who flinches."

Dr. Ziegler asked about her sleep, her nightmares, and the tremor in her hands, and only then did she reach for the prescription pad.

When Zoya came out, Faiyaz was leaning against the car with his phone in his hand, not pretending he hadn't been watching the door. He took one look at her face and, for once, didn't say anything.

They were halfway up into the hills when her phone buzzed with a UAE number, one of the investigators Joseph had kept on Edinburgh, and she listened for ninety seconds without interrupting. They finally had a name, the first one in three years of Joseph's best investigators that meant anything. It belonged to a man connected to the car used in Edinburgh, and it still didn't tell her who had sent him.

She ended the call and stared out of the window at the eucalyptus trees sliding past. The road had begun to climb and narrow, with a stone wall on one side and a drop on the other, and Faiyaz had gone quiet in the way he did when he was driving carefully.

"Don't look," he said suddenly. "But the black SUV behind us. That's the third turn it's taken where we've turned."

"It's a canyon road," Zoya said. "There are only so many turns."

"It doesn't have a front plate," he said.

She looked then, in the side mirror. A black SUV sat two cars back with tinted windows, rolling at the same speed as they were, and when Faiyaz took the next bend a little faster, the SUV took it just as fast. "Faiyaz," she said.

"I know." His hands tightened on the wheel. The other car had come up close behind them, so close that the black grille filled the rear window, and then it swung out into the oncoming lane and drew level with them, matching their speed along the stone wall with its dark windows only a foot from hers. She could see herself reflected in the glass, and nothing behind it, and then the SUV drifted a few inches toward them.

The canyon was gone. It was dark and raining, with headlights in the mirror that would not fall back, and the shriek of metal, and the smell of gasoline, and her own hand flying to her stomach to protect something that was no longer there. She heard herself make a sound she hadn't made in almost three years.

Faiyaz stood on the brake. The tires shrieked and the car slewed sideways, and the passenger mirror hit the wall with a bang that snapped it back against the glass. Zoya's bag hit the dashboard and her shoulder hit the door, and for one second all she could hear was her own breath. The SUV was already gone around the bend, its engine fading up the hill.

They sat there with the engine ticking, and a bird started to sing somewhere in the trees as if nothing had happened.

"Are you hurt?" Faiyaz's voice was rough. He had turned to her, one hand still on the wheel and the other hovering near her arm. "Zoya. Look at me. Are you hurt?"

"No," Zoya said.

"That wasn't a bad driver," Faiyaz said. "That was on purpose."

"It was a bad driver," she said, looking straight ahead.

"Zoya—" he began.

"I said it was a bad driver." Her hands were shaking in her lap, and she pushed them under her bag. It wasn't only fear. Somebody had decided she could be run off a road, and she was so angry that she could taste it. "Please don't make this into something."

He stared at her. "I'm calling someone."

"No," she said.

"I'm not asking, I'm—" he started.

"Faiyaz." She turned to him then, and whatever he saw in her face made him stop. "Please."

He sat back in his seat, looking hurt. "You do this. You decide that you're fine, and I'm supposed to stand next to you and pretend I believe it."

She didn't answer. She picked up her phone, and when Amy answered on the second ring, she kept her voice level. "Pack Riyana's things. Bring her to Grandpa's, and bring Jack. Leave in the next ten minutes, and don't stop for anything."

"Is everything all right?" Amy asked, her voice tight with worry.

"It's only until after the trial," Zoya said, and she ended the call and sat looking at the road. "Riyana's staying at Grandpa's for a while," she told Faiyaz.

"Why now?" Faiyaz asked.

"Because I want her there," Zoya said.

He was watching her hands. "Okay," he said after a moment, and he started the engine.

Joseph's manor stood behind high stone walls and a gate that opened only when the guard had seen her face. It was in Bel Air, on a quiet road where the neighbors were senators and old studio families, and where no car passed twice without being noticed. Everything with her name on it listed this address, her license, her bar records, and the firm's files, while the villa in the Pacific Palisades belonged to her alone, and almost nobody knew it was there.

Joseph's security never announced itself. A private patrol walked the wall on a schedule nobody outside the household knew, deliveries went through a service drive at the back, and every member of staff had been vetted twice and had worked there for years. Cameras covered every stretch of the grounds, and the guard at the gate wrote down every car, including hers.

Elle was waiting at the foot of the steps, the way she did whenever Riyana was brought here, and her eyes went over the garden before they went to Zoya. Whoever had left that camera in the leaves had chosen Zoya's house. They had not chosen this one, and Zoya meant to keep it that way, and she had never been so glad to see a gate close behind her.

Amy's car pulled in twenty minutes later through the service entrance, and the door flew open before it had fully stopped. Riyana launched herself out, and Faiyaz caught her mid-air and spun her once before settling her against his shoulder. "Hi, princess! Did you miss me?"

"Yesh!" Riyana grabbed his face with both hands. "I missed you. I have a cat."

"I know." He tapped her nose. "I've met Brownie."

"Mommy said you're busyyyy," Riyana said with a pout.

"I'm back now," Faiyaz said.

"She's MY cat." Riyana wriggled until he put her down. "And a dog. Can you play with him? Jack is Mommy's dog, but Mommy is scared of him."

Zoya stood in the doorway with her bag over her shoulder. "I am not scared of Jack."

Riyana looked at her with great patience. "Mommy. He licked your hand and you jumped and screamed."

"He came out of nowhere," Zoya said.

"He was walking," Riyana said.

"Exactly." Zoya pointed at her, entirely serious. "Unexpectedly."

"It was a scared noise," Riyana said.

Faiyaz bit his lip, and his shoulders started shaking.

"Don't," Zoya warned.

"I'm not doing anything," he said, with suspicious steadiness. "Mommy is brave. Just not with animals."

"Yeah!" Riyana laughed, delighted.

Zoya glared at him, then at her daughter, and found that the knot in her chest had loosened by a very small degree. "Thank you, baby," she said. "That's very helpful."

Later, Zoya moved easily around Joseph's kitchen with Melissa, sleeves rolled up, stirring the pot and reaching for spices without asking. Melissa had been with Joseph long enough to move through the house as if it were partly hers, and she watched Zoya for a moment before she put the chopping knife down. "Your father's been calling Joseph," she said.

The spoon shook once in Zoya's hand before she tightened her fingers around it.

"He's called me too," Melissa went on. "And the house."

Zoya lowered the heat under the pot, taking more care with the knob than it needed. "That's not new. He calls."

"Not like this," Melissa said.

"What does he want?" Zoya asked, not turning around.

"He hasn't said," Melissa said.

"Then there's nothing to talk about." Zoya put the jar back and returned to the pot.

"Zoya," Melissa said softly.

"Not today, Melissa." Her voice stayed calm, but she kept both hands around the spoon. "Please."

Melissa's expression softened, and she didn't push again.

The air in Zayed's study smelled of old leather and the cologne he had worn for forty years. Raiyan hadn't set foot in this room in almost three years, and nothing in it had moved, not the amber lamp, not the heavy oak desk, not the silence that had always belonged to Zayed.

"So you finally came." Zayed didn't look up from the file in front of him. "After all this time. For the family? For the case? Or for her?"

Raiyan's hand had been resting on the arm of the chair, and it closed around the leather hard enough to crease it. He made it open again slowly, one finger at a time, and laid it flat, and his eyes went to the photograph in the corner of the desk instead. It was Liyana at eighteen months with dark curls everywhere and eyes so much like her mother's that he never let himself look at them for long. "My home is in London," he said. "With Liyana. I'm only here for the case."

Zayed studied his face for a while, and Raiyan let him, keeping his hand flat on the chair.

"She has caused enough damage," Raiyan went on. "I won't let her ruin what you've built. Not this time."

"Where is she staying?" Zayed asked.

"With her grandfather. Bel Air." Raiyan's voice was low and even. "I've told Armaan to keep his people off that gate."

"A man who keeps his people away from the woman he's fighting." Zayed turned a page. "How considerate."

"It isn't consideration." Raiyan stood, buttoning his jacket. "I don't need to go near the door to know exactly who comes and goes."

"Good," Zayed said, and he closed the file. If there was anything under the word, Raiyan didn't look for it.

He had already spent longer in the room than he wanted to, and Liyana's photograph was still looking at him from the corner of the desk, and he needed to see her.

That night, after dinner, Zoya went into Joseph's study to look for the Henderson brief, and she found something else instead. It was half under a file on the corner of the desk, a cream card that had clearly been handled more than once but carefully preserved, and she almost missed it until the names caught her eye. Mr. Raiyan Al Mansoor and Ms. Zoya Al Fayez, on their wedding invitation.

The card was still perfect. The marriage had barely lasted two years, and somehow the card had outlasted all of it, and she had half a mind to tear it in two. She set it down instead, carefully, the way she set down anything she wanted to throw.

Joseph found her standing by the bookshelf without reading anything. "You kept it," she said.

"I couldn't throw it away," he replied, looking at the card.

She didn't ask why, because she already knew. "I'm going to win this case," she said, because she needed at least one thing in her life to feel under control.

"I know. The case is against his family's company, not against him, Zoya," Joseph said.

"To me, it's the same thing, Grandpa," she said, and looked away.

Joseph's expression shifted for a second, but he didn't argue.

"Goodnight, Grandpa," she said.

He watched her leave, and he left the card exactly where she had put it down.

She stopped in the hallway in front of the wall of photographs. Her Call to the Bar photo hung first, Middle Temple, wig and gown, with a pride in her own eyes that she barely recognized anymore, and the wall went on from there, years of her, from school to Edinburgh to Oxford, because Joseph had never missed a single milestone. Then came Riyana's photographs, and Zoya looked back at the Call to the Bar before she could stay on those too long.

Five years earlier she had stood in the Great Hall at Middle Temple in that same wig and gown, prouder than she had ever been, and nobody had handed her any of it. Joseph was in the gallery. She found him before she found anyone else, sitting very straight, the way he always did, looking so proud that she smiled the second she saw him, and she mouthed Thank you, and he mouthed back Your mother would be proud. Zoya looked away before anyone could see how much it had meant.

Her phone had buzzed in her hand a few minutes later with an unknown number.

Congratulations, Barrister.

She had frowned at the screen, and another message came almost immediately.

Raiyan. Before you start asking who this is.

A laugh had escaped her before she could stop it, and for some stupid reason she was still smiling when the next notification came. It was from Mei. MY BARRISTER!!! We're waiting for you. All of us. Dinner. No excuses. And yes, I'm already emotional, so don't make it weird. I love you.

For a few minutes that night everything had felt simple. Joseph was proud of her, Mei and the others were waiting, and Raiyan had remembered, and she had thought she was finally building a life that belonged to her.

The memory faded, and the hallway came back, quiet under the lamp over the frames. She had been grateful, once, that he remembered, but what she felt now was closer to rage at how little it had cost him to make her feel that way, and how long the feeling had lasted. She didn't miss him. She wanted to put his name through a wall. She had thought she had gotten over Raiyan Al Mansoor, and maybe she had, but it was the part of herself she lost with him that had never come back.

Her phone buzzed, pulling her back to the present.

You looked tired outside the courthouse, Ms. Reyes.

Zoya read it twice. She had stood on that pavement days ago, and the photograph in her bag proved it, and whoever this was didn't need to see her tonight. They only needed her to wonder.

She looked down the hall anyway, at the small red light of the camera over the stairs and the tall window at the end, where the garden lay black under the trees and the only thing looking back at her was her own pale reflection. Her pulse was going hard, but when she spoke, her voice didn't shake at all. "If you want me to be afraid," she said to the empty hall, "you'll have to come closer."