All Chapters of Everything Except You: Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

CHAPTER 2 Six years earlier. Heathrow Private Terminal. Raiyan had been on his phone the whole walk, three decisions ahead and half already in the next meeting. People stepped out of his way before they knew they were doing it, and it had been that way for so long that he no longer noticed. Evan trailed a careful step behind him, reminding him that they had twenty minutes before they needed to leave for the Axis Tech board meeting, but Raiyan wasn't listening, because he never listened when he was working. Somewhere ahead, around the bend of the corridor, a pair of heels was crossing the marble fast. The clicks were quick and a little uneven, the sound of someone who was late and refused to look it, and he registered them the way he registered everything in an airport, without looking up. "I'm not late," a voice was saying, low and amused, "just strategically behind schedule." The clicks got louder, and his thumb stopped on the screen without his being able to say why. For half a

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 sti

CHAPTER 6 Zoya didn't sleep. She had checked every window in Joseph's manor twice, stood outside Riyana's door for a while, and blocked a number that would only be replaced by another one. By dawn she had built a case against Raiyan, and it kept falling over at the same point: he was capable of watching her, and he had every reason to want her rattled, but that didn't mean he had done it. At nine, her junior associate appeared in the doorway with one hand on the frame. "Ma'am. Mr. Zayed Al Mansoor is here. He wants to see you," he said. "Harrison's office confirmed that Mr. Mansoor requested to speak with you directly," he added. Zoya didn't look up from the file, and her pen kept moving across the page. "Fine. Five minutes." Her junior nodded, but Zoya made Zayed wait twenty minutes anyway. She didn't need twenty minutes. She just wanted him to wait. She capped her pen, set it beside the folder, and stood, and on her way out she paused by her associate's desk and lowered her

CHAPTER 8 Almost three years should have been enough. Standing in the elevator with her hands pressed flat against her thighs, Zoya decided it apparently hadn't been, because her hands were still shaking. She had barely slept. Faiyaz hadn't answered another call, and every time she closed her eyes she heard the name again, Liyana, a little girl with Raiyan, already gone by the time Zoya reached the glass doors. Elias stood beside her, pretending to read his notes. He wasn't reading anything, and she could tell, because he hadn't turned a page in four minutes. He was just standing there being quietly supportive and trying not to make it weird. The elevator opened, and Elias cleared his throat. "You look..." he began, and she glared at him. "Elias," she said warningly. "Terrifying," he finished. "In a good way." The corner of her mouth moved, and she killed it immediately and walked out ahead of him. Raiyan was listening to Harrison when he heard heels coming down the corridor. P

CHAPTER 10 By nine that night, the war room on the forty-first floor smelled like cold coffee and printer toner. Alan had the lab intake scan on one screen and the courier manifest on the other, and the field seal was stamped at 2:05 in the afternoon, while the lab's own record said the sample came through its door at 2:52. "The dispatcher won't pick up until six," Alan said. "The technician who sealed it lands from Denver at 11:40." "Send a car." Zoya didn't look up from her pad, where she had written 47 three times. "And call the lab at five. Be nice about it." "So the opposition. Weight, not admissibility. I can have it filed by midnight," Alan said. "No." She clicked her pen once. "Phillips doesn't need that sample thrown out. He needs the jury to hear forty-seven minutes and wonder what happened in them. If we file, we spend tomorrow arguing about a hole. I'd rather put someone in the box who fills it." "The technician? She's never testified," Alan said. "Then she gets prep