I turn to the grandmother. Her eyes are wet, her hands trembling where they rest on the boy's shoulders. She knows something. It’s written in every line of her face.
"Tell me where to find Nadiyah." I keep my voice low. Controlled. It takes more self-restraint than she'll ever know. "I need to find my wife. Has she taken Avery somewhere?"
The woman searches for words. Her English is broken at best, her thoughts clearly outpacing her ability to express them.
"My Nadiyah..." She presses a hand to her chest. "She's not well. Too much pain." Her voice cracks. "Too much anger. For too long."
"Where did they go?"
More tears. "I tell her no. I tell her this is wrong. Terrible ideas. Terrible plans." The grandmother's face crumples. "She does not listen. She never listens anymore."
My phone buzzes in my pocket. Gabe's number on the screen. I ignore it. There's no time to talk. Not with the boy sobbing and the old woman breaking down and Avery still missing.
"Where. The. Fuck. Did. They. Go."
The grandmother flinches. The boy cries harder, pressing his face into her skirt.
I'm getting nothing useful. She knows something is wrong. She knows her daughter is planning something terrible, but she doesn't seem to know the specifics. Or can't articulate them. The language barrier is a wall I don't have time to climb.
My gaze sweeps the apartment, searching for anything that might tell me where Nadiyah took Avery. I stop when I see the small bookcase against the far wall.
Framed photographs. Arranged with care, clustered together in a way that speaks of devotion. Of memory tended like a garden.
I move toward them, my pulse hammering.
The first image that catches my eye is a woman—Nadiyah, years younger, her face transformed by a smile I've never seen on her. Open. Radiant. Incandescent with joy. She's leaning into a man who stands beside her, his arm wrapped around her waist in an intimate, proprietary way.
The man is older. Much older. Silver hair, olive skin, distinguished features, the bearing of wealth and power. A wedding band glints on his left hand.
I know that face.
The name surfaces from eighteen months ago, rising from the depths of memory like something drowned.
Omar al-Hassan.
The hotel acquisition in Dubai. A family legacy, generations old, crumbling under the weight of the patriarch's stubbornness and his grandchildren's greed. Omar was the last holdout—the aging lion who refused to accept that his time had passed, whosummoned me to the rooftop of his high-rise hotel to beg me to reconsider a deal his own family had already signed.
I should have known that day couldn't end well. The desperation in his eyes. The way his hands shook when he gripped the railing. But I was so focused on the acquisition, so certain that business was just business, that I told him there was nothing I could do. The papers were already being finalized. His family wanted out.
And then he stepped off the roof.
I watched him fall. Stood there frozen while his body plummeted dozens of stories and hit the concrete below with a sound I still hear in my nightmares. His blood was still drying on the pavement while lawyers shuffled paperwork in the lobby, and I told myself it wasn't my fault. His pride killed him, not my ambition. My offer was generous. The family wanted out.
But now I'm standing in the apartment of Omar's mistress, staring at photographs of a life I destroyed, and my wife is missing.
The floor drops from under me.
I turn back to the grandmother. My voice is quieter now, but no less urgent.
"Your daughter. Nadiyah. Think, please. Where did they go?"
The woman searches for the words. "I don't know. I hear the door, I come out, they are gone."
I pull out my phone. Check the ping on Avery's location.
The dot hasn't moved. Still in this building. Still here.
My gaze lifts toward the ceiling and a sickening feeling washes over me.
