Accidentally His

Chapter 4

LAYLA



I DIDN'T SLEEP.

I spent the night in a guest suite larger than my entire apartment, staring at a ceiling I didn't recognize, replaying every second of the last twelve hours until the details blurred together into something that felt less like memory and more like a fever dream I couldn't wake from.

By the time morning light finally broke through the curtains, my phone had accumulated forty-three missed calls, most from numbers I didn't recognize, several from my father, and one, terrifyingly, from a news outlet I actually respected, asking for comment on my "engagement."

I called my father back first, my hands shaking as the line connected.

"Layla." His voice cracked with relief the moment he picked up. "Where are you? I've been calling all night. Your face is on every channel, they're saying you're engaged to some billionaire, I don't understand what---"

"I know, Baba." I forced my voice steady, though everything in me wanted to fall apart entirely. "It's a mistake. A complicated one. I need you to trust me for a few days while it gets sorted out."

"A mistake doesn't end with your photograph on the morning news standing next to Zayd Marchetti," my father said, sharper now, worry giving way to something closer to fear. "What happened last night? Tell me the truth."

I told him as much as I dared over the phone, keeping my voice low despite being alone in the room, Zayd's warning from the night before echoing uncomfortably in my mind. If someone inside your own family orchestrated this, we don't yet know how deep that reach extends.

"Samira," my father said slowly, once I'd finished, his voice carrying a grief I hadn't expected. "You think Samira actually planned this."

"I don't know what to think," I admitted. "But she didn't correct anything last night, Baba. She just watched."

The silence on the line stretched long enough that I wondered if the call had dropped.

"Your mother never trusted her," he said finally, quietly. "Not completely. Even after everything, even after Samira married into that money and started acting like the two of you had never grown up sharing a bedroom in your grandmother's house. I always thought it was old jealousy. Sisters carrying grudges neither of them ever properly resolved." He paused. "Maybe I was wrong to dismiss it so easily."

"I need you to be careful," I said. "Whatever this is, however deep it goes, I don't want you caught in the middle of it because of me."

"You're my daughter," he said simply. "I'm already in the middle of it."

✦ ✦ ✦

A soft knock interrupted the call before I could respond, and I ended it quickly, smoothing down the borrowed silk robe I'd found hanging in the guest closet before opening the door.

Zayd stood on the other side, already dressed in a dark suit that made him look considerably more composed than I felt, a tablet tucked under one arm.

"I need ten minutes," he said. "Before the staff wakes fully and this entire house turns into a circus of people pretending not to stare at us."

I followed him down a hallway lined with art I didn't have the emotional bandwidth to appreciate, into a study that smelled faintly of cedar and old books, the kind of room clearly designed to impress rather than to actually be lived in.

"I had my team pull everything they could overnight," he said, gesturing for me to sit as he set the tablet on the desk between us. "Financial records, property filings, anything connecting your aunt to the deal, to Yasmine Conti, or to the forged documents used last night."

"And?"

"And it's cleaner than it should be," he said, frustration evident beneath his controlled tone. "Whoever orchestrated this covered their tracks well enough that we're not finding obvious smoking guns. But there's one detail worth pursuing." He turned the tablet toward me, displaying a property record I didn't immediately understand. "Your aunt's household holds a minority stake in a shell company that, three months ago, quietly acquired debt connected to your father's firm."

My stomach dropped. "You're saying Samira bought my father's debt."

"I'm saying someone connected to her did," Zayd said. "Which would explain considerably more about last night than simple opportunism. If she's been positioning herself financially over your family for months, engineering a situation where you'd feel obligated to help her, then orchestrating an outcome that benefits her specifically---"

"Then this wasn't random," I finished, horror and understanding tangling together in my chest. "She needed me there. Specifically me. Not just any assistant."

"That's my read as well," Zayd said. "Which raises the question I still don't have an answer for. What does she actually gain from you being mistaken for Yasmine Conti, publicly, in front of my international partners?"

I sat with the question for a long moment, my mind racing through implications I didn't yet fully understand.

"Maybe it's not about me at all," I said slowly. "Maybe I was simply convenient. Someone she could control through the debt, someone with no real power to fight back if things went wrong." I looked up at him. "Maybe the actual target was never me. It was you."

Something shifted behind Zayd's eyes, sharp and calculating, like I'd just handed him a piece of a puzzle he'd been missing.

"My company," he said slowly. "If this deal collapses because of a scandal involving my sudden, suspicious marriage, the resulting instability would tank our stock considerably. Enough that a patient buyer, positioned correctly, could acquire a controlling interest for a fraction of its actual value."

"You think someone's trying to take your company," I said.

"I think," Zayd said, "that I've spent the last twelve hours assuming this was simply an elaborate mistake or a personal scheme involving your family's finances. I hadn't considered that it might be considerably larger than either of us initially understood."

A knock at the study door interrupted us before either of us could continue, and Zayd's assistant, a sharp-eyed woman named Farida who I'd meet properly later that day, stepped inside, her expression tight with barely restrained urgency.

"Mr. Marchetti," she said. "You need to see the news. Now."

Zayd took the tablet she offered, and I watched his expression shift from confusion to something considerably darker as he read whatever headline had prompted the interruption.

"What is it," I asked, dread pooling cold in my stomach.

He turned the screen toward me without a word, and I felt the floor tilt beneath me as I read the breaking headline scrolling across the top of the page.

Yasmine Conti, Marchetti's True Intended Bride, Issues Statement From Abroad: "I Have No Idea Who This Woman Is, But I Intend to Find Out."