Chapter 3
972 Words
She stepped away then. Raiyan didn't follow. He stood there instead, still holding the coffee she'd pressed into his hand before leaving.
He took a sip without thinking. Then another.
Only then did he realize he was smiling.
Not the polite kind. Not the controlled one. An actual smile. It lingered longer than it should have—long enough to bother him.
By the time he noticed, she was already gone.
He'd been surrounded by women his entire life. Family gatherings. Offices. Parties. People who mistook closeness for access. He'd learned early how to keep distance without explanation, how to make himself unavailable without effort.
It had never been difficult. And yet — he was standing in the middle of Heathrow, holding a paper cup of coffee he hadn't paid for. Smiling.
But just before he was through the door — involuntarily, briefly, before he could stop it — his eyes went to the one she'd walked through.
Already gone.
⸻
Present day.
Geneva came back hard and cold, too fast, like the memory had been cut off before it was finished with him.
Raiyan blinked once. He looked down at his sleeve. Old reflex. Checking for something that wasn't there. Hadn't been there for two years. His jaw was tight. He breathed in. Slow. Out. He turned.
Michael — who had been watching, because watching carefully was part of his job — saw it. Just for a second. The corner of Raiyan's eyes. A redness that had no business being there. Gone before it fully arrived. But there.
Raiyan straightened. Adjusted his cuffs. Reset his expression to its operational setting with the efficiency of a man who had practised this for years.
"Michael."
"Sir."
"Whatever Zoya Al Fayez has against Mansoor Corporation — I want all of it. Every file, every weapon she can use. Every contact. Everything she doesn't want found." A pause. "And find out who the victims of Mansoor chemical factory's water poisoning are."
Zoya Al Fayez. He let the name sit in his mind for a fraction longer than necessary, just long enough to remember exactly how it used to sound when it belonged to him.
He walked out. The door closed. Michael stood still for a moment. Armaan appeared beside him. Neither of them said anything.
"Come on," Michael said.
They followed.
⸻
The Geneva Global Climate & Technology Summit looked like transparency designed by people who didn't trust it. Glass walls. Silent security. Conversations kept just soft enough to feel like secrets.
Raiyan Al Mansoor arrived. He moved, and the room adjusted to make space. He stepped onto the stage. He didn't build up to his point. He didn't try to be liked. He spoke about corporate accountability and enforcement gaps with a voice as level as a blade and when he finished he took the award, handed it to Michael without looking at it, and walked off.
That was when he saw her.
Sophia Roseann Reyes was standing a few meters away.
Raiyan stopped.
His feet hit the floor but it felt like he had just stepped off a cliff. His heart gave a violent, ugly thud against his ribs. The bone structure. The way she held her shoulders. The specific, lethal grace of her movements.
She turned slightly. And then she looked at him.
She was older, her features more settled, but the resemblance could not be unseen.
She raised one hand — a quiet gesture to the delegates waiting for her — and stepped toward him.
"Mr. Al Mansoor," she said.
Her voice was even. It didn't have Zoya's youthful fire, but it had the same underlying steel. The voice of a woman who had spent decades winning.
"Mrs. Reyes," he replied.
"Your models don't work when they're softened," she said. A pause. Her eyes locked onto his with sudden, intense focus. "Don't take the compromise language tomorrow."
Then she turned and walked away. No hesitation. No backward glance. She disappeared into the crowd with the same efficiency Zoya used when she left a room.
He stood in the middle of the corridor, his jaw locked so tight it ached. It wasn't just the face. It was the energy. She moved through the room like she owned the oxygen in it.
Michael stepped close. Voice low. "Sophia Rosean Reyes. EU climate infrastructure. Very low media presence."
"Get her full profile," Raiyan said. His voice was a rasp. "Everything. Her family. Her history."
"Already on it," Michael said.
Raiyan started walking again. He kept his pace steady. He kept his expression cold.
But inside, the scar in his chest was burning.
She looked like her. She sounded like her.
⸻
The dream was always the same.
She was running through a corridor where the air tasted wrong — metallic and thin. No matter how much she pushed, her feet felt like they were moving through deep water. She could feel them ahead of her. Both of them. Close enough to touch, then vanishing into the shadows.
She turned.
Raiyan was there. Not the man who used to fall asleep on the sofa waiting for her, or the one who left half-empty coffee cups on her side of the desk until it became a ritual.
This version looked at her with a quiet, devastating certainty. He didn't shout. He never shouted in the dream. He just stood there, his eyes like cold obsidian, and spoke the words that gutted her every time.
"You did this to us."
In the dream, she had no defense. Her voice was gone, her throat filled with ash. He just kept looking at her, and the weight of his judgment was a physical blow.
Then, the shift. Two small, warm arms wrapped around her neck from behind. A tiny weight pressed against her spine.
"Mommy."
Zoya's eyes snapped open.
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