Avery's lips tremble, but she doesn't speak. Doesn't move. She's watching me with everything she has, trusting me to find a way through this, and the weight of that trust presses down on my shoulders until my knees want to buckle.
I take a measured breath. Keep my hands visible.
"I know what this is about, Nadiyah."
She tilts her head slightly. Curious. Waiting.
"Omar al-Hassan. I saw the photographs in your apartment. I know you loved him." Gravel crunches under my shoe as I shift my weight—barely perceptible, testing whether she'll react. "This is about what happened in Dubai."
Nadiyah's jaw tightens. Something behind her eyes contracts. Pain, maybe, or the remains of whoever she was before grief stripped her down to irrational, lethal purpose.
"But Avery wasn't part of that." I keep my voice steady. Reasonable. "She had nothing to do with what happened to Omar. Whatever you want from me—whatever you need me to answer for—she's not the one who owes you. I am."
Nadiyah doesn't argue. Doesn't contradict.
"You're right." Her voice is quiet. Almost conversational. "She's not the one who killed Omar."
The accusation hangs in the air. Part of me wants to argue. I want to point out that I didn't kill him either, that Omar made his own choice, that the recklessness of his decisions made his hotel ripe for acquisition. If not me, it would have been someone else. Sebastian Roth was circling the same deal. Omar leaped from that roof out of shame, not because I pushed him.
But none of that matters right now. The truth won't take away this woman's grief. And nothing I say is worth the risk of escalating her fury while she has a gun pressed to Avery's head.
Nadiyah's grip on Avery doesn't loosen.
"You were there." Her gaze locks onto mine, steady and unblinking. "You stood on that roof with him. You let him jump."
I can't argue with the truth. No more than I can change what happened that day.
"It was your fault." The hatred in her voice is a palpable force across the distance. "Did you push him?"
"God, no." The denial is immediate, instinctive. "Nadiyah, please. Let Avery go and we can talk about this."
She releases a bitter laugh. "I know you'd like that. But you're not in control now." Her jaw tightens. "Eighteen months. Eighteen months since my Omar died, and you've gone on with your life as if his death meant nothing. As if he meant nothing."
I don't respond. There's nothing to say. My arms are starting to ache from holding them raised, the muscles in my shoulders burning, but I don't lower them. Fifteen feet of open rooftop between me and Avery. Might as well be a mile.
"I grieved for over a year. Alone." Her voice doesn't waver. "Raising a child who will never know his father, who's been denied his birthright. I had nothing—no justice, no acknowledgment, no one to hear me. Just pain. Every day. Pain that never stopped."
Avery's hair whips across her face, but she doesn't move. Her eyes stay locked on mine.
Nadiyah continues, her voice steady with the terrible calm of someone who has rehearsed this moment a thousand times.
"And then, one day, I saw an article. One of those gossip websites—the kind that tracks people like you. 'Dominic Baine's fiancée chooses rising star designer House of Delaire for her wedding gown.'"
Her grip on the gun shifts—a minute adjustment, her fingers resettling. My stomach drops.
"I have worked in couture embroidery for twenty-three years. Paris. Milan. Dubai. I am one of the best in the world at what I do. When I applied to House of Delaire, Serena Delaire hired me within a week."
She pauses, a wistful smile curving her lips.
"I told myself it was providence. A sign. That God himself had opened a door—had placed me in your fiancée's path so that I could finally..."
She trails off. Her eyes drift toward the ledge, and something in her expression goes distant, unreachable.
The pieces fall into place with sickening clarity.
The society article. The interview. The job. Six months of working on Avery's veil, touching the fabric of her wedding day, watching her prepare for a future that Nadiyah intended to destroy.
It wasn't chance. It wasn't coincidence. It was a woman with nothing left to lose, following the thread of her grief until it led her here.
