Thread Of Smoke

Chapter 3: Ash and Gold

"Would you like me to tell you where he is right now?" He asked it lightly, the way a man asks a question he already knows will wound.

She scoffed. "He's probably hiding from you."

"No." His smile widened. "He's three cabins away, with two brunettes."

She closed her eyes.

"I am surrounded by incompetent men." She opened them again, flat. "My fiancé is collecting women like loyalty points." She looked toward the ceiling. "God, if you're listening, I'd like a refund."

He watched her with open fascination, like her fury was the most interesting thing he'd seen all night.

She looked him up and down again. Slowly.

"You were fifty." Her brows drew together.

"I was." He didn't flinch.

"I was eighteen."

"You were."

She searched his face for the smallest crack. Regret. Shame. Anything.

She found nothing.

"You asked me to become your third wife."

"I did." His gaze never wavered.

She blinked. "...You're making my argument for me."

The corner of his mouth lifted. "No." He adjusted one cuff with meticulous precision. "You're still convinced youth is the most attractive thing a man can possess." His eyes met hers again. "I've spent thirty years proving otherwise."

"I wanted you to discover that before you became my wife."

"You embarrassed me that night." His voice stayed even, controlled, the tone of a man who considered raising it beneath him. "In front of everyone who mattered."

"You proposed to a stranger in under five minutes." She tilted her head, almost admiring the audacity of it.

"I proposed to the only woman worth proposing to." He said it without a trace of irony, like the math had always been that simple to him.

She actually laughed. "Oh my God."

The amusement disappeared first. The smile followed a heartbeat later, thinner than before.

"No one says no to me, Zoya."

"I've lost elections." He said it flatly, like a fact from a ledger, no performance in it at all.

Then his eyes settled on her.

"I never forgot losing you."

For a moment neither of them moved, the cabin holding its breath around the words.

His mouth curved again. It never reached his eyes.

"And I don't intend to lose twice."

He reached for the cigar, took one slow drag, and looked back at her over it.

"Your brother accepted my proposal."

Smoke from the cigar hung between them, and neither of them moved to clear it.

The question came out before she could stop it. "What proposal?"

He smiled, slow, savoring it.

"Not marriage."

The floor tilted under her.

"A hotel in the Alps," he said, watching her face for the moment it landed, turning the ring on his finger again like the words cost him nothing at all. "One night, alone with you. That was the price."

"He sold me?" Her voice cracked around the word. "That bastard."

"I wouldn't put it that way." He set the cigar down on the edge of the ashtray, unbuttoning one cuff with the unhurried precision of a man who had never once been made to wait for anything. "Adam understood business. His partnership with me depends on me leaving this yacht satisfied."

One door. Locked. No way out.

He reached for her wrist. She twisted away and drove her knee up hard, and he grunted but didn't go down, just laughed, low and delighted, like she'd confirmed something he'd already decided about her.

"There she is." He said it like delight, not deterrence, already straightening back up.

He got a hand into her shoulder and she bit down on the other before he wrenched free, cursing now, all the amusement gone out of his voice.

She drove her heel into his shin. He hissed, sharp, and for the first time that night the smile slipped off his face entirely.

"Enough."

He got a hand into her hair and slammed her back into the wall hard enough that the frame beside her head rattled. Her clutch hit the floor and burst open, and the cream invitation card bearing the Middle Temple crest slid across the carpet and stopped against his polished shoe.

He looked down. "What's this."

He nudged it open with his toe. His eyes skimmed the page.

"Call to the Bar." A short laugh. "Impressive."

Her chest went tight. "Don't touch it."

He held her eyes and brought his heel down on it anyway. Once. Twice. Twisted his foot until the crest disappeared into the carpet.

"Looks like he's not making it to that one either."

"You're sick." Her voice shook, but she didn't look away from him.

"No." He stepped over what was left of it. "I'm getting exactly what I paid for."

His hand shot out and caught the silk strap of her dress, and it tore with a sound too small for what it did to the rest of the night.

Her hand flew to her chest on instinct, fisting the fabric closed. Everything after that, she did one-handed. A bracelet snapped and skittered under the bed. Her hair fell loose across her face, and she shoved it aside just in time to see the cigar still burning on the ashtray.

He came at her again, certain now, careless with how certain he was, and in the half second his weight tipped toward her she grabbed the heavy metal lamp off the nightstand instead of the cigar and swung it into the side of his head with everything she had left.

He dropped like his strings had been cut.

She stood there a second too long, chest heaving, some distant part of her already asking if she'd killed him. She didn't care yet. She grabbed the cigar and pressed the lit end into the curtain beside the bed.

It caught fast. Cheap synthetic fabric, thick ugly smoke within seconds.

Somewhere above them a smoke alarm screamed, and a second one answered it, and she heard the click of the magnetic lock releasing on its own, some maritime safety code doing what her brother wouldn't.

She was through the door before the smoke had even filled the room, one hand fisted in the torn neckline, the other slapping the wall for balance, running toward the noise instead of away from it.

...

The deck was chaos by the time she reached it. Crew shouting, guests spilling toward the gangway in a slow, drunk, confused tide.

She scanned the crowd once, twice, for a face she recognized. Faiyaz was nowhere. Amer was nowhere. She would find out later, much later, that they were both exactly where they'd been all night, tangled up with women who weren't her, deaf to an alarm that everyone assumed was some drill or some drunk guest's mistake.

"Fire on the lower deck." A crew member's voice, tight with the panic of someone who'd just realized his job had become dangerous. "Someone check the cabins."

Men in dark suits were already moving, fast and organized in a way drunk party staff never were, and she understood with a cold drop in her stomach that those were Adam's men, and Adam's men meant Adam already knew.

She didn't wait to be seen.

She went over the side rail where the gangway met the dock, one hand still fisted in the torn neckline of her dress, bare feet hitting the wood hard enough to sting, and ran, past the guards who didn't recognize her with her hair down and her face streaked black with smoke, past the valet stand, past the last string of party lights, until the marina noise fell away behind her and there was nothing left but the sound of her own breathing and the dark.

She didn't stop running until she couldn't hear the party at all.

Behind her, somewhere out over the water, the sky had gone the wrong color, orange bleeding up into black, and she didn't look back to see how much of the yacht was actually burning. She didn't have anywhere to go. She didn't have a plan, a phone, or a single person left in that city she could call safe.

She just ran, and let the night take her.

She let herself in through the side entrance, moving on instinct more than plan, and for one full minute, crossing the dark kitchen barefoot with her ruined dress held closed in one fist, she actually believed she'd made it.

She was wrong.

"Zoya."

Loujain came around the corner from the hallway so fast her robe caught the air behind her. "Sweetheart." Her voice caught as she reached for Zoya's face, both hands framing her cheeks as though she were searching for broken bones instead of bruises, her thumb brushing a streak of ash from her cheekbone. "What happened to you?"

"I'm all right." It wasn't true, and Loujain's eyes said she knew it wasn't.

"You are not all right. Look at your dress." She was already steering her toward the kitchen, toward light, toward warmth, murmuring low the whole way. "Come, sit, let me get you something before"

"Where have you been?" Omar's voice came from the study doorway, and Loujain's fingers tightened on Zoya's shoulder before dropping away entirely.

He was standing there in his robe already, a glass in his hand he hadn't touched, and something about the fact that he was dressed, awake, waiting, told her the truth a full two seconds before he said another word.

"Dad." The word came out smaller than she meant it to. "I need to tell you what happened tonight. Adam"

"I know what happened tonight."

The floor tilted under her. "You know."

"My men called an hour ago." He set the glass down without drinking from it, and his knuckles stayed white around the base of it a second longer than the sentence needed. "I've known since before you walked through that door."

"Then you know he locked me in a room with"

"Do you have any idea what you've done?"

The question landed like a wall. Not a question at all, an accusation already decided.

"What I've done." Her voice cracked. "I didn't do anything, I was trying to"

"You set fire to a yacht with forty guests aboard. Nassef's people are already calling. The Halabi family is already asking questions." His jaw worked once, chewing on something he'd clearly rehearsed on the drive home from wherever he'd been. "Do you understand what tonight could cost this family? Two years of work. Your brother is fielding calls right now trying to contain what you started."

"What I started." Her nails bit half moons into her palms. "Adam sold me to him, Dad. Like I was a debt he owed."

He didn't deny it.

That was the part that would stay with her longest, later, replaying itself at three in the morning for years to come. He didn't deny it. He just looked at her the way he looked at a bad quarterly report, something to be managed, not mourned.

"None of this would have happened," he said, "if you'd done what you were told. You did nothing tonight but embarrass me. You were seducing him."