Her lips curve into something that might once have been a smile. Before. When she was still the woman who loved Omar, and not yet the one grief remade.
"That is what balance looks like, Avery. That is what he owes."
The words slice into me. I’ve had it all wrong. The world I thought I understood five seconds ago—where I was a hostage, where I was leverage, where my survival might possibly be bargained for—that world is gone now.
Because it never existed. It was a story I told myself because the truth was too enormous to see.
I am not a hostage.
I am not a bargaining chip.
I am not leverage to be traded for cooperation or money or remorse.
I am the wound Nadiyah wants to deliver to Nick.
The one that never heals. The loss that will hollow him out from the inside—slowly, relentlessly, completely—until there's nothing left but grief and guilt and the memory of what he couldn't save.
She's been studying us. Watching us at the atelier. Learning the shape of what we are to each other—the way he looks at me, the way I lean into his touch, the way our bodies gravitate toward each other whenever we’re together. She saw what we have, and she found the softest place to drive the blade. The place where a blade would inflict the most damage on him.
Me.
I think about the distance to the rooftop door. Fifteen feet, maybe twenty. About whether I could reach it before Nadiyah pulled the trigger, and what the odds are that I'd make it even if I ran.
I think about my child.
The tiny life growing inside me—seven weeks, barely the size of a peanut—that Nadiyah has no idea exists. The heartbeat I can feel in every fiber of my being, rapid and strong. Nick's face when he looked at the ultrasound image, the way his whole body went still with wonder. This child who will never meet my mom, its grandmother, whose sacrifice gave me a chance at survival.
This innocent child who deserves to be born. To grow. To know how fiercely they were wanted before they even existed.
The urge to tell Nadiyah nearly overwhelms me.I'm pregnant. There's a baby. Please.
Surely a mother will recoil at the thought of killing another mother's child. Surely that shared experience of carrying life inside your body will break through where everything else has failed.
But I force the words back down.
If I'm wrong, it could make everything worse. She might decide the baby is just another piece of Nick's future that needs to be erased. Another way to carve the wound deeper.
I can't risk it. Not yet. Not until I know there's a better chance of it helping than hurting.
My child deserves more than a gamble. My child deserves me thinking clearly, waiting for the right moment, finding the angle that actually works instead of throwing out my last piece of hope in a panic.
So I hold the secret inside me where it's safe, and I wait.
Nick will come. I know this with a certainty that goes deeper than thought, deeper than hope. He will find me because that's who he is. Because I have seen what this man does when someone he loves is in danger. Nothing in this world has ever been strong enough to stop him.
And when he arrives, all we need to do is find our way through this nightmare together. Somehow.
God, please, let us find our way through to the other side of this.
Nadiyah gestures with the gun. "Move back now. Slowly."
My body goes rigid. I glance over my shoulder, where the rooftop ledge is maybe ten feet behind me. Beyond it, nothing. Empty air and a six-story plunge, where cars pass and pedestrians walk and the world continues without any idea what's happening up here.
I take a step backward. Then another. The gravel crunches under my shoes, each small stone announcing my movement.The wind gusts harder, slicing through my clothes, pulling tears from my eyes.
Nadiyah stands motionless, the weapon level and steady on me.
"Now we wait."
