Chapter 6

Joseph's manor.

Riyana saw Faiyaz before he was fully through the door.

"Faiyaaaz—"

She launched herself at him from approximately four feet away with the complete confidence of someone who had never once not been caught.

He caught her.

Spun her.

She shrieked with delight.

"She's been asking about you since this morning," Melissa said, from the kitchen doorway.

"See at least someone was waiting for me," Faiyaz said.

Riyana grabbed his face with both hands. "yes. Meee! I missed you.”

“And I have a cat."

"I know. I've met Brownie."

"She's MY cat."

"She is absolutely your cat."

"And a dog."

"Jack."

"Jack is Mommy's dog but Mommy is 'cared of him."

Zoya, from the doorway: "I am not scared of Jack."

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

"That was… that was, I have borderlineOCD, and he came to lick my shoes."

"It was a scared noise."

Faiyaz pressed his lips together.

"Don't," Zoya said.

He held back his laughter.

His shoulders moved slightly.

"Faiyaz."

"What! I'm not doing anything," he said. His voice was completely steady. His eyes were not.

Riyana patted his face. "It's okay. Mommy is brave. Just Not with animals."

Zoya looked at her daughter.

"Thank you baby," she said. "That's very helpful."

She went to help Melissa with lunch.

The kitchen.

Melissa moved around it with the ease of someone in her own element. Zoya beside her, sleeves rolled, doing what she always did in kitchens — moving efficiently, finding things without asking where they were, the specific competence of someone who had been cooking since she was old enough to reach the stove.

"You look thin," Melissa said.

"I look exactly the same."

"You look thin and tired and like you have been sleep deprived."

Zoya stirred the pot. "I'm fine."

"I know you're fine." Melissa handed her a spoon. "I'm not asking if you're fine. I'm telling you that you look like you need someone to tell you it's almost over."

Zoya stirred.

"Is it?" she said.

"Six days," Melissa said. "Whatever happens in that courtroom — six days and the waiting is done."

Zoya looked at the pot.

She thought: the waiting is never done. There is always the next thing. The next file. The next motion. The next morning with the nightmare and the ceiling and Riyana's arms around her neck.

"Yes," she said. "Six days."

Next morning,

“Ma’am Mr. Zayed Al Mansoor is here, he wants to see you.”

That was the first thing — the specific arrogance of a man who had never needed one.

Zayed Al Mansoor simply appeared in the reception of Reeves and Associates at nine forty-seven on a Tuesday morning, with one assistant and no lawyers.

Her junior associate came to her office door.

"There's a—"

"I know who it is," Zoya said. She didn't look up from the file. "Tell him five minutes."

She made him wait eight.

Then she walked out to the small conference room where they'd put him and closed the door behind her and looked at him across the table.

Zayed Al Mansoor.

Seventies. Silver-haired. The kind of face that had been powerful for so long it had simply become the face of power — you stopped seeing the man and saw only the accumulation of what he'd built and taken over fifty years.

He looked at her the way he looked at everything.

Like he was assessing the return on investment.

She looked back at him the way she'd practised looking at things that scared her. Like they didn't.

"Zoya," he said. Warm. The warmth of a man who had learned that warmth was more effective than threat in most situations.

"Mr. Al Mansoor." She sat. She did not offer coffee. "You have ten minutes."

Something moved in his eyes. Amusement. He had expected resistance and found it interesting.

He registered the name without reacting to it.

"I'll be direct," he said.

"Please."

"Drop the case." He placed his hands flat on the table. The gesture of a man laying out something reasonable. "The affected communities receive full compensation — above what any court would award. We fund an independent environmental remediation programme across all affected regions. No admission of liability. Everyone gets what they actually need."

She looked at him.

"No," she said.

He blinked. Just once.

"Zoya—"

"No," she said again. Same voice. Same face. "The communities I represent want accountability. Compensation without accountability is just a number. They want the number and the truth." She looked at him steadily. "I intend to give them both."

He shifted. Barely. The recalibration of a man who had expected negotiation and found a wall.

"This case will take years," he said. "The resources it will cost your firm—"

"Are my firm's concern."

"The toll on you personally—"

"Also mine."

He tried a different angle. The patient voice. The reasonable voice. The voice of a man offering wisdom to someone too young to have acquired it themselves.

"Your mother," he said. "Sophia was a principled woman. She understood the cost of idealism—"

"Don't." Zoya's voice didn't change temperature. Didn't rise. "Don't use her name in this room. Don't reference her as if you knew her or as if what happened to her is something you have standing to speak about." A pause. "Keep this professional."

Zayed looked at her.

He looked at her for a long time.

The warmth was still there. But underneath it something else had surfaced — the specific quality of a man encountering an obstacle he had underestimated and was now recalculating.

He tried three more approaches.

The legal precedent — she knew it better than he did and said so without looking at her notes.

The timeline — she welcomed a long trial. She had built for a long trial.

The personal — she had a daughter. A career. She should think carefully about the enemies she was making.

"Is that a threat?" she said.

"Advice," he said.

"I don't need your advice."

He was quiet.

The room was very quiet.

And then — the specific moment when a powerful man's patience runs out and something older and less managed takes its place — his composure cracked. Not dramatically. Just enough.

He leaned forward.

"My grandson," he said, "made the right decision."

She waited.

"Liyana is where she belongs. With her father. With her family." His voice was certain. The absolute certainty of a man who believed he had won something years ago and simply needed to remind the room of it. "A woman who married into this family for revenge was never fit to be her mother. Raiyan understood that. He protected his daughter."

He stood.

He straightened his jacket.

He walked out.

⸻

The room was very quiet.

Zoya sat completely still.

Liyana.

The name arrived and kept arriving. One word. Said like a settled thing. Like a child who existed. A child with a name and a father and a family and a place where she belonged.

Liyana.

She did the mathematics in the space of one breath.

The accident. The coma. Waking in the wrong country. Loujain's voice — calm, certain, the voice of a woman delivering facts. One twin didn't survive. You have Riyana. Raiyan knows. He doesn't want to see you.

One.

One twin didn't survive.

But Zayed had just said—

A name.

A child with a name who was with Raiyan.

Who was alive.

The room tilted slightly.

She pressed both hands flat on the table.

She breathed.

In. Slow. Out.

She did not break. She would not break here — not in this building, not in this room, not in any space that was not entirely hers.

The door opened.

Faiyaz.

He had been downstairs. He must have seen Zayed leave. He had come up immediately, the way he always came when something was wrong — not waiting to be called, just appearing, the specific loyalty of someone who paid attention.

He looked at her face.

His own face changed.

"What did he say?" Faiyaz said.

She looked at him.

At the man who had been there the night of the accident. Who had been in Dubai when she woke up. Who had sat across dinner tables and driven her to appointments and held Riyana and been present for every significant moment of the last two years.

Who could not quite meet her eyes sometimes.

Who had something behind his that she had filed and not yet opened.

"He said a name," she said. Her voice was completely level. "A name I didn't know."

Faiyaz went very still.

She watched him go still.

"Faiyaz."

He looked at the floor.

"Look at me."

He looked at her.

And she saw it.

Not surprise. Not confusion.

Recognition.

The specific expression of a man who has been waiting for a moment he dreaded and has just watched it arrive.

"You knew," she said.

He didn't answer.

Which was the answer.

"How long," she said.

The room was very quiet.

She looked at the door Zayed had walked through.

She looked back at Faiyaz.

"Tell me everything," she said. Quiet. Final. The voice she used when the conversation had no exit. "Right now. All of it."

He looked at her.

he didn’t know how to survive the sentence that was coming.

He finally opened his mouth,