Still no ring on Nadiyah's finger. She was his mistress.
The realization builds piece by piece as I study the photographs. This man—wealthy, distinguished,married—and Nadiyah loved him. She gave birth to his child. Built a life in the margins of his, in the spaces between his real obligations, in the hours he could steal away from whoever wore the ring that matched his.
Where is he now?
The photographs feel like shrines. Preserved moments of a happiness that exists only in the past tense. The frames are spotless, the glass clean. She tends them, polishes them. Probably looks at them every single day and remembers what it felt like to be that woman in the golden light, smiling like the world had finally given her everything she wanted.
The apartment has gone quiet around me. No sound from the kitchen. Just stillness, stretching longer than it should for a woman retrieving a package of pearls. I step back from the photographs, suddenly aware of how deep into Nadiyah's private world I've wandered.
"I had a beautiful life once." Nadiyah's voice floats out from the kitchen, and I turn from the photographs.
Her tone has shifted. Distant now, almost dreamy, as though she's speaking to herself as much as to me. "I had a man who loved me. Omar gave me a good life, a soft life, filled with fine things. And he gave me Sami. It wasn't a perfect life, like yours, but I was happy."
A drawer closes in the kitchen. "Does Dominic Baine ever speak to you about his acquisitions, Avery?"
The question feels inappropriate, unsettling. It's too pointed. And the way she refers to Nick by his full name, the strangedistancing of it, makes the fine hairs at the back of my neck prickle. What's taking Nadiyah so long to retrieve the package of pearls I'm supposed to look at?
"I'm not sure what you mean," I reply, confused, even though my senses sharpen on Nadiyah, attuned to every move and breath I hear coming from the area of the kitchen.
I glance at the apartment door, now easily ten steps across the room from me. There's a part of me that suddenly regrets this detour to Nadiyah's place. Although she's been nothing but polite since I bumped into her at the art center, something about her now—something about this whole situation—feels wrong.
Instinct sends my hand into my purse, searching for my phone. I should let Nick know where I am. For my own peace of mind as much as his. I swipe open the screen. Start typing a text to him.
Nadiyah's voice sounds from within the kitchen again. "Has he ever told you the true cost of all he has amassed for himself… and for you?"
The soft scuff of her footsteps over linoleum spikes my disquiet as she starts to return to the living room.
My pulse kicks against my throat. I hit send on my unfinished text. Drop my phone back into my bag.
At the same moment, Nadiyah steps out of the kitchen. Her eyes are fixed on me. She moves to stand in front of the apartment door—my only way out—and positions herself there with her hands behind her back.
I don’t need to see to know it’s not a package of pearls.
"I wonder," she says quietly, "how much will be enough for Dominic Baine."
My heart hammers, the beat of it high in my temples. "Nadiyah, what's this about?"
"Men like him." She ignores my question, takes a step toward me. The light catches her face, and I see it now—the grief carvedinto the lines around her eyes. It’s hollowed her out and filled her back up with something harder. "They build their fortunes without ever stopping to consider the wreckage they leave behind. Other men's dreams. Other men's lives." Another step. "Do you ever wonder about the people who lost so that he could win?"
"Nick isn't like that." The words come automatically, defensive of the man I love. In the past, maybe he would have fit her unflattering description. But that's not who he is now. I've watched him change. I've held him through the pain of that change. "Whatever you think you know about him—"
She cuts me off with a sharp scoff. "Has he ever mentioned Omar al-Hassan?"
The name is distantly familiar.
I know it from somewhere.
A name Nick mentioned once? Or something I overheard in passing, Nick on the phone with Beck maybe. The Al-Hassan property in Dubai. A family hotel.
Yes, that’s it. The overseas deal Nick closed around the time we first met.
The one that ended in tragedy, with the aging patriarch who threw himself off the roof rather than watch his legacy pass into someone else's hands.
My blood goes cold.
Nadiyah makes a small, satisfied sound. "I see that he has mentioned my Omar before." Her smile is gentle, yet chilling. "He was the man in those photographs. The father of my son. The love of my life." Her voice doesn't break, but something in it splinters. "Dominic Baine destroyed him. He destroyed everything we had."
I shake my head. Not at the accusation, but at what I see in her face now. Anguish so deep it has eaten through everything else. Through reason. Through restraint. Through whatever kepther civil these past months while she stitched those thousands of pearls into my wedding veil.
