Chapter 38 NICK #2
I know, in my bones, that using force right now will surely get her killed.
Everything in me wants to charge. To cross this rooftop in three strides and tear Nadiyah apart for daring to touch what's mine.
But the gun is pressed to Avery's temple, and Nadiyah's hand is steady, and one wrong move ends everything.
So I stay still. Keep my voice level. Force myself not to act. Not yet. I need to seem unthreatening now. Despite every instinct screaming for me to seize control, to dominate, I swallow all of it.
"I'm here, angel. I'm not going to let anything happen to you."
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.
And my life—my visibility, my wealth, my decision to step into the spotlight alongside Avery—made it possible.
I painted a target on the woman I love, and now she's paying the price for it.
Both of them are. Avery and the child growing inside her.
Our child. The life I swore I would protect from everything bad in this world.
Yet I'm standing here with my hands in the air, unable to do a goddamn thing.
Nadiyah's voice pulls me back.
"My plan had no shape at first. I watched.
I learned. I saw how closely you protected Avery.
How precious she was to you. I wanted to hate her too, but I couldn't." A ghost of something softer crosses her face.
"I rented an apartment close to the place she spent time away from you. And I waited. I told myself in time I would know what to do. I made mistakes, however. After I called the tabloids to the studio, you wrapped her in security that never left her side.”
I lift my chin, wondering how I hadn’t seen Nadiyah’s animosity—her dangerousness—right away.
“I thought I’d ruined all my plans,” she says, slowly shaking her head. “Then suddenly the security was gone. Yesterday, when I overheard her say she would be at the art center, I knew that was my sign. The time had come to hold you accountable for Omar's death."
Every instinct I have resists what I'm about to say. The arguments line up automatically—Omar's family wanted out, the papers were signed, the offer was fair—and I have to choke each one down. Swallow them like glass. Because Avery's life is worth more than my pride has ever been.
"You're right." I nod in acknowledgment, my voice steady. "I am accountable."
Nadiyah's eyes narrow slightly. She wasn't expecting that.
"I didn't think about what that deal might truly cost. I didn't think about Omar as a person—just an obstacle.
" I swallow against the tightness in my throat.
"And when he jumped... I told myself I wasn't responsible.
I blamed him for what happened on that roof so I wouldn't have to blame myself. But I was wrong."
The hum of an HVAC unit drones somewhere behind me. Avery's eyes glisten, but she doesn't look away from me.
"I took something from you that I can never give back, Nadiyah. And I'm sorry. I'm sorry for Omar. I'm sorry for your son. I'm sorry for the life you lost."
Nadiyah listens. Her expression doesn't soften, but the acknowledgment lands. I can see the moment it registers, see it reach whatever is left of the woman in those photographs downstairs.
"I can't undo it. I wish I could, but I can't. All I can do is stand here and tell you that I know what I did. And I'm not going to pretend otherwise."
I watch for a reason to hope, but Nadiyah’s face gives away nothing. The gun stays where it is, that black barrel pressed to Avery's temple.
But Nadiyah heard me.
She watches me across the distance. For a long moment, she doesn't speak. When she finally does, her voice is different. Quieter. Almost wondering.
"I thought I would feel something when you finally stood in front of me."
Her thumb moves against the grip of the gun. A small, unconscious motion, like a woman worrying a prayer bead.
"I've imagined this so many times. What I would say. How it would feel to finally make you see." She pauses, just looking at me. “But you're just a man. Afraid for someone you love. And Omar is still gone."
The words lack the vitriol from before. This isn't the voice of a woman savoring her revenge. It's the voice of someone who has just discovered that the thing she's been living for doesn't feel the way she thought it would.
That should be an opening. A crack.
But the gun hasn't moved from Avery's temple, and I understand something else too. A woman who has realized her revenge won't save her is a woman with nothing left to lose.
I watch her face. Looking for the fracture. Looking for any weakness I can exploit.
Her logic is airtight inside itself. She's not ranting. She's not unraveling. She's operating from a moral framework that makes perfect sense to her—divine providence, cosmic balance, the necessity of answered wrongs.
But there's something else there too. Something behind the calm.
She's been carrying this for eighteen months. Alone. Raising a child while planning a murder. Going to work every day at House of Delaire, stitching pearls onto a wedding veil, pretending to be someone she's not.
That kind of sustained performance takes a toll. And I can see it now—the edges fraying, the exhaustion beneath the resolve. The way her certainty has hardened into something that can’t bend.
This isn't justice. This is someone who has been in pain for so long that the pain became the only thing she knows. Someone who can't imagine living without it.
Which means reason won't work. Empathy won't work.
I edge forward. One inch, then two. Testing.
"Tell me what you need." I keep my voice level. "Money? I can give you money. Enough for you and your son to start over anywhere in the world. Lawyers? I have lawyers who can make sure Omar's family acknowledges what happened, who can force—"
“You still don’t understand.” She cuts me off with a single shake of her head. Almost pitying. “There is no amount of money that brings him back. There is no lawyer who can restore what you took." Her dark eyes narrow. "You are not negotiating. You cannot buy your way out of this."
She pauses.
"You are here to bear witness."
The words hit me like a speeding train. A door slamming shut in my face.
I'm out of moves. The tools that have defined my entire adult life—money, influence, leverage—they're all useless here. I have nothing to offer that she wants.
She was waiting for me. That's why she hasn't already harmed Avery. None of this is truly about her. It never was.
Avery is the bait. The instrument. The means to an end.
I am the audience.
My arrival isn't rescue. It's completion.
The wind drives harder across the rooftop, sharp with the bite of October. The city roars below, oblivious. Somewhere in the distance, a siren wails—too far, too late.
I run through the options.
Violence. I could rush her. Cover the distance in seconds. But she'd pull the trigger before I got halfway there, and Avery would be dead.
I've tried bargaining. She doesn't want what I have.
Fear of the authorities won’t work, either. Gabe's team is still minutes away. The police even further. By the time anyone else reaches this rooftop, it will be over one way or another.
I have no winning move here. No leverage. No angle.
I have nothing left, no options.
Except one thing.
I lower my hands. Slowly. Deliberately. Not surrendering… offering.
"Then take me instead."
I state it calmly. Steady. I'm not bargaining anymore. I'm not trying to outmaneuver her. She’s won.
"You say you want balance. You want me to feel what you felt—to lose what you lost. I understand that. And you're right. I owe that debt."
I take a step forward. Nadiyah's grip on Avery tightens, and I stop.
"But Avery is innocent. You said it yourself. She had nothing to do with what happened to Omar." My voice doesn't waver. "If someone has to pay the price for what I did, let it be me. Not her."
Nadiyah stares at me, unmoving, unblinking.
"Let her go, Nadiyah. Take me instead. Whatever you need to do to balance the scales, do it to me."
It's not bravado. It's not a play.
It's the only move I have left.
If Nadiyah wants someone to suffer for what I did—if that's the only currency she'll accept—then I will pay it. Gladly. Without hesitation.
Because a world without Avery isn't a world I want to live in anyway.