Chapter 5 - Orientation
1252 Words
Layla's POV
I had expected someone to call.
Instead, a black car arrived at my building at seven in the morning, and a woman in a sharp grey suit knocked on my door and told me I had forty-five minutes.
She didn't say forty-five minutes for what. She just stood there with the patience of someone who had never once in her professional life been kept waiting, and something about her expression told me this wasn't a negotiation.
I grabbed my bag and went.
The Al-Nassar Group's New York office was not what I expected.
I'd braced myself for intimidating — and it was, in the way that spaces designed to remind you of your own smallness always are. All glass and cold marble and air that smelled expensive. But what I hadn't expected was how quiet it was. No bustling assistants. No ringing phones. Just a long corridor and the woman in the grey suit walking two steps ahead of me and a door at the end that she opened without knocking.
The man inside was standing at the window.
He turned when I entered, and I took him in the way I took in everything — quickly, thoroughly, cataloguing details before my face gave anything away.
Rashid Al-Nassar was handsome. I wasn't going to pretend otherwise. Tall, broad-shouldered, with sharp features and dark eyes that moved across me with the particular efficiency of someone assessing rather than admiring. He was dressed simply — dark trousers, a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up — and he wore it all with the careless ease of someone who had never once had to think about whether he looked good.
He also looked at me the way you looked at a piece of furniture you were considering purchasing.
"Sit," he said.
I sat. Not because he told me to — because I wanted to, and the distinction mattered to me.
He settled into the chair across from mine and folded his hands on the desk. No small talk. No welcome. Just those dark eyes and a silence he seemed perfectly comfortable in.
"I assume you read the contract," he said.
"Three times."
"Good. Then you have questions."
"Just one," I said. "Why me?"
Something moved across his face. Not quite amusement — something more controlled than that. "Because you are exactly what my family doesn't want," he said, with a frankness that was almost refreshing. "American. Christian. Tattooed. Not their idea of an Al-Nassar bride." He paused. "That is not an insult."
"I know," I said. "I'm just making sure we're both being honest."
He studied me for a moment. Then he leaned back slightly and said, with the same calm tone he'd used for everything else — "I am a gay man, Miss Layla. I intend to remain one. This arrangement changes nothing about who I am or how I live my life. What it does is buy us both something we need." His eyes held mine steadily. "I need my family off my back. You need your debt cleared and your brand funded. Two years. Clean. Professional. Do we understand each other?"
I looked at him.
He hadn't flinched saying it. Hadn't dropped his voice or looked away. There was no shame in it — just the flat, unadorned truth delivered like a business term.
I respected that, even if I didn't particularly like him yet.
"We understand each other," I said.
"Good." He slid a envelope across the desk. "Your passport. You'll need it. We leave Thursday."
I blinked. "Leave for where?"
"Dubai. My family's residence." He said it the way people said the grocery store. "There are introductions to be made. A traditional ceremony to be arranged." He glanced at his watch. "My family believes this is real. You will conduct yourself accordingly."
"Thursday," I repeated. "That's four days."
"Three, technically."
I opened my mouth to tell him that I couldn't just leave the country — that I had outstanding loan payments flagged on my account, that my passport had been held as collateral by a private lender for the past eight months, that I was, in the simplest possible terms, not a person who was currently allowed to leave.
Then I remembered the contract.
All outstanding debts cleared within thirty days of signing.
I pulled out my phone and opened my banking app slowly, the way you opened something you were afraid to look at.
The number at the top of the screen stopped me cold.
Zero balance. Every loan. Every flag. Every creditor that had been calling me for the past six months — gone. The timestamp on the clearance was from this morning. Before the car had even arrived at my building.
I stared at it for a long moment.
Then I looked up at Rashid, who was watching me with an expression that said he already knew exactly what I was seeing.
"Check your passport office notification too," he said simply.
I did.
Released. Processed. Ready for collection.
I put my phone face-down on my lap and took one slow breath.
"Thursday," I said.
"Thursday," he confirmed, and reached for his own phone, already moving on to the next thing.
I texted Dani from the elevator.
girl. GIRL. I signed it. It's real. He's gay, he told me himself, it's literally just business. He cleared ALL my debt this morning like it was nothing. We're flying to Dubai on Thursday.
Her response came in seconds: LAYLA WHAT
I laughed for the first time in what felt like weeks, leaning against the elevator wall, watching the floors tick down.
I didn't notice the small icon at the top of my screen — barely visible, easy to miss. A faint indicator that my notifications were being mirrored somewhere else.
I didn't notice it because I wasn't looking for it.
I should have been looking for it.
The airport was chaos in the way all airports were chaos — organized noise, the particular anxiety of departures, people moving with luggage and purpose in every direction. Rashid moved through it like it didn't apply to him, which somehow it didn't — staff materialized, lines disappeared, doors opened. I followed in his wake and tried not to look too obviously impressed.
We were crossing toward the private terminal when it happened.
The pilot was coming the other direction — tall, broad, with a jaw that belonged in an advertisement and a uniform that he was wearing very well. He and Rashid made eye contact, and something passed between them that had nothing to do with aviation.
Rashid slowed down.
"Captain," he said smoothly, extending a hand.
"Mr. Al-Nassar." The pilot smiled — slow, deliberate, the kind of smile that knew exactly what it was doing. "Didn't know you were flying out today."
"Spontaneous trip." Rashid reached into his jacket pocket and produced a card, pressing it into the pilot's hand with the ease of someone who had done this exact thing many times before. "We should connect when I'm back in the city."
The pilot glanced at the card. Then at me. Then back at Rashid with a barely contained grin. "I'll be in touch."
Rashid moved on without missing a beat, rolling his carry-on forward like absolutely nothing had happened.
I fell into step beside him and said nothing for a full ten seconds.
Then, quietly, mostly to myself — "You are one lustful man."
Rashid didn't look at me.
But the corner of his mouth moved. Just slightly.
- Writer
