A

N'T S

n't recognize, replaying every second of the last twelve hours until the details blurred toget

-three missed calls, most from numbers I didn't recognize, several from my father, and one,

first, my hands shakin

re you? I've been calling all night. Your face is on every channel, they

wanted to fall apart entirely. "It's a mistake. A complicated on

next to Zayd Marchetti," my father said, sharper now, worry giving way to

the room, Zayd's warning from the night before echoing uncomfortably in my mind. If someon

shed, his voice carrying a grief I hadn't expe

ted. "But she didn't correct anything

tched long enough that I won

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

this is, however deep it goes, I don't want

said simply. "I'm alrea

d I ended it quickly, smoothing down the borrowed silk robe

dark suit that made him look considerably more co

wakes fully and this entire house turns into a

dth to appreciate, into a study that smelled faintly of cedar and old books, th

e set the tablet on the desk between us. "Financial records, property filings, anything con

nd

t 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 immedia

ou're saying Samira bo

an simple opportunism. If she's been positioning herself financially over your family for months, engineering a

derstanding tangling together in my chest. "She need

don't have an answer for. What does she actually gain from you being mis

oment, my mind racing through implic

ne she could control through the debt, someone with no real power to fight back if thi

rp and calculating, like I'd just handed

icious marriage, the resulting instability would tank our stock considerably. Enough that a patient

s trying to take yo

an elaborate mistake or a personal scheme involving your family's finances. I hadn't c

d Zayd's assistant, a sharp-eyed woman named Farida who I'd meet properly later

e said. "You need t

sion shift from confusion to something considerably darker

ked, dread pooling

I felt the floor tilt beneath me as I read the brea

, Issues Statement From Abroad: "I Have No Ide