Chapter 7 — “The Ride Back”
1086 Words
Angela POV
The restaurant was on the 42nd floor but the elevator ride down felt much shorter than it should have.
Neither of them talked in the elevator. Hassan stood with his hands in his pockets looking at the doors. Angela stood slightly apart from him and looked at the floor numbers counting down.
It wasn’t uncomfortable exactly.
It was just — full. Like the silence had weight.
Kareem was waiting outside with the car. He opened the back door without a word and Angela got in. Hassan walked around and got in the other side.
She’d expected Hassan to sit separately — she didn’t know why she’d expected that, he’d come in this same car — but somehow having him right there in the back seat felt different from the office. No desk between them. No professional context to hide behind.
Just the leather seat and the city moving past the windows and about two feet of space.
Kareem pulled into traffic.
Five minutes of silence.
Angela watched the streets. Dubai at night was all lit up and moving — cars, people, neon signs in Arabic and English, the occasional burst of music from somewhere. She usually found it overwhelming. Tonight it just felt like noise she was behind glass from.
She was tired.
Not just tonight tired. The deep kind. The kind that had been sitting in her chest for three years.
“How long did it take you.” Hassan said.
She turned her head. “What?”
“To plan all of this.” he said. He was looking out his own window. “Coming here. The fake resume. Getting close to me. How long did you spend planning it.”
She considered not answering.
Then — she didn’t know why — she did.
“Eight months of research.” she said. “Two months building the cover identity. Three months saving enough money to actually do it.”
He was quiet for a moment.
“Thirteen months.” he said.
“Yes.”
He turned to look at her then. She met his eyes briefly before looking back out the window.
“You gave up a good job in London for this.” he said. Not accusatory. Just — like he was putting pieces together.
“It wasn’t that good.” she said.
“Your resume said—”
“My real resume.” she said. “Not the fake one. Yes it was decent. I didn’t care.”
Another silence.
The car stopped at a red light. A group of tourists crossed in front of them, laughing about something, completely unbothered by the world.
Angela watched them.
“Did you have anyone helping you?” Hassan asked. “With the planning.”
“No.”
“Friends? Family?”
“My friend Maya knew I was coming to Dubai.” she said. “She didn’t know why. My mother died when I was nineteen. No siblings.” She paused. “It was just me and my father for a long time.”
She hadn’t meant to say that last part. It just came out.
Hassan didn’t respond immediately. Didn’t rush to fill the space with something meaningless.
She appreciated that more than she wanted to.
“What was he like.” Hassan said finally. Quietly.
Angela looked at her hands in her lap.
“Careful.” she said after a moment. “He was very careful about everything. What he ate, how he drove, how he spoke to people. He thought everything through before he did it.” She almost smiled. “He used to drive me crazy when I was a teenager. I wanted to be spontaneous and he wanted to plan everything three days in advance.”
“And now?”
“And now I plan everything thirteen months in advance.” she said.
Hassan made a sound. Low, brief. Almost a laugh.
She glanced at him.
It had changed his face entirely — that almost-laugh. Just for a second he looked like someone different. Someone younger. Someone who hadn’t been carrying whatever he’d been carrying for however long he’d been carrying it.
She looked away before he could catch her noticing.
The car turned into her street.
The neighborhood was quiet at this hour. Her hotel sat between a closed laundromat and a convenience store that was still open, its yellow light spilling out onto the pavement.
Kareem stopped the car.
Angela reached for her bag.
“Angela.”
She stopped.
Hassan was looking at her. Straight at her, no deflection, no careful neutral expression. Just direct.
“What Hale did.” he said. “To your father. To you. It wasn’t your fault. The letters — not opening them — that wasn’t your fault either.”
She went very still.
She hadn’t told him about the letters. About realizing she’d been the one who set them aside.
But of course he knew. He’d watched her face in that office when he’d pushed them across the desk. He’d seen the moment she figured it out.
She’d thought she’d hidden it.
She hadn’t.
Her throat was tight.
“You don’t know that.” she said.
“I do.” he said. Simply. Like it wasn’t even a debate. “You were twenty three and your father was dying and you were trying to hold everything together by yourself. You didn’t open some letters. That’s not a crime. That’s just a person surviving.”
She didn’t say anything.
She didn’t trust her voice right now.
“Hale destroyed your family.” Hassan said. “Not you. Not those letters. Him.”
Angela stared at the back of Kareem’s headrest and breathed slowly and carefully through the tightness in her chest.
She had been holding that guilt for so long she hadn’t even noticed it had become part of how she breathed.
“Goodnight Angela.” Hassan said. Quiet. Giving her an exit.
She grabbed her bag and got out of the car.
She made it all the way to her room before she sat on the edge of the bed and let herself feel it — all of it, the letters and the guilt and the strange terrifying realization that the person who had just said the thing she’d needed to hear for three years was the last person on earth she’d expected to say it.
She pressed her hand flat against her chest.
Don’t. she told herself.
Don’t you dare.
But she already knew she was in trouble.
- Writer
