Her face contorts, pain and rage and grief warring behind her eyes. The words have penetrated the haze of her fury. I can see they have. But the gun is still pressed to Avery's temple, and Nadiyah's arm is still locked around my wife's body. We're all still standing on the edge of catastrophe.
Then Avery speaks.
"Please, Nadiyah. Think back to when you were carrying Sami. You had all the same hopes I have now. I know you did. You wanted to give him everything—safety, love, a future without fear or pain."
I hold my breath as I listen to the woman I love plead for her life and that of our unborn child. Nadiyah's listening too. All of the chaos of the city seems to fade as Avery speaks softly, almost intimately, to the woman who can destroy us both if and when she chooses.
Nadiyah's stance shifts, barely perceptible. Her weight settles back half an inch from the balls of her feet, the rigid line of her shoulders losing a fraction of its tripwire tension. She's leaning into the words instead of bracing against them.
"I dream about my baby all the time, Nadiyah. I dream about holding my child for the first time. Feeling that tiny weight in my arms. Counting fingers and toes and being amazed that Nick and I could make something so perfect."
Avery's tear-filled gaze roots on me as she speaks, and my chest cracks open.
She's describing us. Our future. The one I've been too terrified to fully imagine, too aware of how easily it could be ripped away. Yet in all of my worst scenarios, I never pictured something as soul-shredding as the crisis we're facing now.
All because of me.
Nadiyah's chin dips. A small motion, involuntary, the way a person's body responds to something that reaches past their defenses before their mind can intervene. Her eyes are wet, unfocused, fixed somewhere in the middle distance as though she's recalling, moved by what she’s hearing.
Avery pulls in a trembling breath. "I think about what it will be like to watch my husband hold our child for the first time." A faint tremor enters her voice, but she doesn't stop. "This man who spent so many years believing he didn't deserve to be loved—I want to watch him fall in love with our baby the way he fell in love with me. Completely. Irrevocably. I want to see him become the father he never had."
Ah, Christ. The words hit me like a physical blow.
My chest tightens with emotion. Not fear—something colder. Grief for a future that might not happen anymore. The hollow weight of everything I might never get to have, pressing down so hard I can't draw a full breath.
"I want to give our baby a better life than Nick or I ever had. That's all either of us want for our child." Avery's voice strengthens, that quiet steel beneath the softness. "I want this baby to grow up knowing they're safe. Knowing they're loved. Knowing that their parents would move heaven and earth to protect them. That's all I want, Nadiyah. I know that's the same thing you want for Sami."
My fists flex uselessly at my sides, tendons straining, old scar tissue burning. Every instinct screams at me to move. To act. To dosomething.
But I know—Iknow—that the best thing I can do right now is let Avery keep talking. She's reaching Nadiyah in a way I never could. I can see the evidence accumulating with each word Avery speaks. The subtle forward tilt of Nadiyah's head, the way her jaw has unclenched, the fact that her gaze keeps drifting to Sami and staying there a beat longer each time before she drags it back.
"Look at Sami now, Nadiyah. That sweet little boy… he doesn't understand what's happening. He just knows he wants his mother."
Sami's wails have faded to hitched, gasping breaths. He’s cried himself past the point of tears now, hiccupping against his grandmother’s thigh, his face red and blotchy, eyes swollen.
Avery keeps talking, quietly, but unwaveringly. "He just wants you to hold him, Nadiyah. He just wants you to tell him everything's going to be okay."
Behind me, the grandmother's broken voice rises. "Please, Nadiyah, please. Your boy. Sami—he needs you."
Nadiyah blinks rapidly as she glances at her family. The gun slackens against Avery's temple. Her grip has loosened. Not enough for Avery to break free, but it’s a start.
The ice is cracking.
"Don't let this be the story he carries away from this moment, Nadiyah."
Avery practically whispers the words, but the weight of them cuts through the wind and the distant sirens and the sound of Sami's halting breaths.
"Don't let him grow up remembering this kind of terror and pain. Don't let him believe that his mother would choose revenge over her love for him."
The city itself seems to slow to a standstill. I can’t find breath in my lungs. My chest is so tight it hurts, like a fist closing around my heart. Every muscle coiled, ready to move the instant I see an opening.
Then, it happens.
Nadiyah's face crumples. The rage that's propelled her—the festering hatred that's kept her functioning through grief, through the move to New York, through months of planning—finally gives way.
A sob chokes out of her. Then deep, wracking sobs that tear through her entire body. The sound of a woman whose fury has burned down to ash, leaving nothing to hold her upright.
The gun lowers from Avery's temple.
