Accidentally His

Chapter 3

LAYLA

I DIDN'T HAVE TIME to fully process the weight of what he'd just said before the security head cleared his throat, visibly uncomfortable at being caught in the middle of whatever silent standoff was happening between us.

"Mr. Marchetti," he said carefully. "The partners on the call. They're asking for confirmation."

Zayd's eyes didn't leave mine. "Give me two minutes."

"Sir, with respect, the timeline for tomorrow's signing was already tight before---"

"Two minutes," Zayd said again, quiet and final, and the security head retreated without further argument, already speaking into his earpiece as he walked away.

Zayd guided me toward a quieter corner of the ballroom, away from the cluster of guests still whispering behind raised phones, his hand light against my elbow in a way that felt more like courtesy than possession.

"I need you to explain to me, quickly and honestly, exactly what you know about how tonight happened," he said. "Every detail. I don't care how insignificant it seems."

"I'm the assistant," I said, my voice shaking despite my effort to steady it. "My aunt asked me to help with the guest list. That's the entire scope of what I agreed to tonight."

"Your aunt."

"Samira Farah," I said. "She's Nadia's mother. My mother's sister." I hesitated, the memory of what I'd witnessed earlier surfacing with new, horrifying clarity. "Before the blackout, I saw her near the east staircase. Talking to a man I didn't recognize. She had a folder, papers, and she handed something to him right before the lights went out."

Zayd's expression sharpened. "What kind of papers?"

"I don't know," I admitted. "They looked official. Stamped, maybe. I couldn't see clearly from where I was standing."

"And after the blackout, your identification suddenly matched Yasmine Conti's."

"I don't understand how that's even possible," I said, panic threading through my voice again. "I have my own ID. My own name. I don't know how anyone could have---"

"Forged documents," Zayd said, more to himself than to me, some cold, calculating focus settling over his features. "Convincing enough to fool my own security team under pressure, timed exactly to a blackout that conveniently disrupted every camera in this building at once." His jaw tightened. "This wasn't chaos, Layla. This was engineered."

Hearing him use my actual name, after everyone else in the room had spent the last ten minutes calling me by a stranger's, sent an unexpected wave of relief through me.

"Why would anyone do this," I asked. "What could they possibly gain from making everyone believe I'm someone I'm not?"

"That," Zayd said, "is exactly what I intend to find out. But not tonight, and not in front of two hundred witnesses and a room full of international investors currently deciding whether my company is stable enough to trust with a nine-figure partnership."

"So what happens now?"

He was quiet for a long moment, something calculating and unreadable settling behind his dark eyes.

"Now," he said, "you have a choice to make. I can walk back out there and correct the mistake publicly, embarrass myself in front of partners who've been circling for any excuse to back out of this deal, and hope whoever orchestrated tonight doesn't simply try again with more success next time." He paused. "Or you can let the announcement stand, temporarily, while I find out exactly who did this and why, before either of us decides how to actually resolve it."

"You're asking me to pretend to be engaged to you," I said, disbelief coloring my voice. "To a complete stranger. Because of a business deal."

"I'm asking you to give me enough time to protect both our interests," he said. "Yours, because whoever set this up clearly has resources and reach I don't yet understand, and mine, because that deal doesn't simply fund my next project, it employs six thousand people whose jobs depend on partners who are currently one bad headline away from walking."

I stared at him, my mind racing through implications I didn't fully understand yet, weighing the terrifying strangeness of his proposal against the very real fear that whoever had orchestrated tonight's chaos might not be finished.

"I need to call my father," I said finally. "Tell him something's happened, before he sees it on the news before he hears it from me."

"Fair enough," Zayd said. "Though I'd ask you to be careful what you say to anyone right now, including him. If someone inside your own family orchestrated this, we don't yet know how deep that reach extends."

The suggestion sent ice down my spine.

"You think my aunt did this deliberately," I said. "Not simply some accident with the paperwork."

"I think," Zayd said carefully, "that a woman who hands off suspicious documents to a stranger right before a convenient blackout, then fails to correct a very public case of mistaken identity involving her own niece, has earned considerably more scrutiny than the benefit of the doubt."

I swallowed hard, the horrifying logic of his conclusion settling uncomfortably into place alongside my own growing suspicion.

"Two minutes are up, Mr. Marchetti," the security head said, reappearing at the edge of our conversation, his expression tight with barely restrained urgency. "The partners need an answer."

Zayd held my gaze for one final moment, something almost like an apology flickering behind his composed exterior.

"I need your answer, Layla," he said quietly. "Play along, temporarily, while I sort out the truth. Or I correct this now, and we both take our chances with whatever consequences follow."

I thought of my father's exhausted face, the eviction notice sitting unopened on his desk, the firm he'd spent thirty years building hanging by threads Samira had made very clear she controlled. I thought of Zayd's calm, deliberate certainty that tonight hadn't been an accident at all.

"Fine," I said, the word tasting strange and heavy in my mouth. "Temporarily."

Something shifted in his expression, relief, maybe, or simple satisfaction at securing exactly the outcome he'd calculated from the start.

"Thank you," he said, already turning back toward the waiting crowd, already reassembling the composed, confident billionaire the cameras expected to see. "I promise you, Layla. Whoever did this to us tonight, I intend to make sure they regret it."

He offered his arm, and after a long, uncertain moment, I took it, letting him lead me back into a room full of strangers who now believed, with absolute conviction, that I was about to become his wife.

Behind us, near the back of the ballroom, I caught one final glimpse of Samira watching the entire scene unfold with an expression of carefully composed satisfaction that made my blood run cold.

She'd wanted this. Whatever "this" actually was, my aunt had wanted it from the very beginning.

And I had absolutely no idea why.