Chapter 40 NICK
NICK
Nadiyah's words hang in the air between us, each one as sharp and unforgiving as a blade.
I can't stop now. It's too late.
The composure Avery's held through all of this finally fractures. Tears she's been fighting spill down her cheeks and off her trembling chin. No. Goddamn it, this can't really be happening. Not after everything we've already been through.
I've tried money. I've tried threats. I've tried offering my own life in exchange for hers.
None of it has moved Nadiyah so much as an inch closer to releasing the woman I love.
I stare across that impossible distance at Avery.
Beautiful, strong, pregnant with our child.
Helpless now, terrorized by the gun at her temple and the six-story drop at her back.
Fuck. I'm out of moves. The realization washes through me like ice water in my veins. Every tool I've ever relied on—money, influence, the ability to bend the world to my will through sheer determination—all of it is worthless here. I might as well be holding a handful of sand.
Suddenly, from somewhere at my back, a female cry sails toward me from the direction of the open stairwell door.
It's raw, guttural, torn from somewhere deep.
My head snaps in that direction and I see Nadiyah's mother and son emerging onto the rooftop.
The old woman's weathered face contorts with horror at the scene before her.
The little boy surges in front of her. "Maman! Maman!" His voice is a hoarse, broken wail, arms straining toward his mother, small hands opening and closing on empty air. "Maman!"
The grandmother is too upset to hold him. Her grip loosens as her attention fixes on her daughter. The boy sees his chance. He twists, squirms, then breaks free.
"Stay back!" The command rips out of me as I lurch into his path to stop him.
This whole situation is a tinderbox on the verge of disaster. I can't risk—won't risk—Nadiyah's terrified son inadvertently detonating the whole goddamned thing.
I pull him back, my hand wrapped around his tiny arm before he can bolt across the rooftop toward his mother. The grandmother's eyes meet mine. I push the child toward her and she rushes forward to receive him, pulling him close.
I shake my head, holding my hand up to make her understand. "Both of you. Stay back."
She nods, her whole body curving around him like a shield.
Nadiyah's reaction is immediate. She shouts something at her mother in Arabic—harsh, rapid-fire syllables. The meaning is clear in her tone, in the wild edge creeping into her voice: Go. Take him away. Don't let him see this.
But the grandmother doesn't move. She stands frozen with the child behind me. Her voice rises to meet her daughter's, words tumbling over each other, and I hear "Allah" more than once. Pleading. Demanding. Praying.
Nadiyah's grip on Avery tightens. The gun shakes in her hand.
Not the controlled steadiness from before, but something jagged and unpredictable.
This is panic. Her careful plan didn't include witnesses.
She wasn't counting on having to carry out her plan while she listens to her son crying for her and her mother quietly weeping and murmuring repeated prayers.
I force myself to think. To analyze. Threats haven't worked. Money hasn't worked. Offering my own life hasn't worked.
But Nadiyah's son, Sami, is here now. Her mother is here. The audience she wanted was me, not them. Not the people who love her.
"Your son is watching, Nadiyah." I keep my voice level, controlled, even though everything inside me is screaming. "Whatever happens next—whatever you do in the next sixty seconds—Sami will carry it for the rest of his life."
Her eyes flick to the boy. Just for a second. Just long enough for me to see the fissure open in her resolve before she tears her gaze away. She stares at me, visibly anguished.
It's a struggle to keep my tone level. To not betray the bone-deep fear that's squeezing me like a vise. "Is this how you want Sami to remember his mother? It's not too late to make this right."
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 do something.
But I know—I know—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.
Slowly.
Down to Nadiyah's side.
The arm holding Avery against her loosens, just enough.
I see the moment it happens. Avery's gaze is still locked on mine. I nod, almost imperceptibly. Come on, baby. Come to me.
She takes a small step forward. Nadiyah doesn't stop her. Then Avery takes another. Deliberately. Carefully. Moving away from the ledge, away from the gun. Toward me.
I'm already in motion, my feet closing the distance to her. At last.
We collide somewhere in the middle of the rooftop.