At work, Kathy learned that Tehar had left on the first flight that morning, back to Abu Sadah on some family business. She worried if Shadaf was all right, but she didn't dare text Tehar to ask.

There was going to be no more talking to him about anything that wasn't related to work or the baby. She'd made up her mind. That last pained look he'd given her before they separated the night before haunted her, but she told herself that they both knew it wasn't possible. They both had things that were simply more important.

It was a long, exhausting day. Kathy was a little hungover and preoccupied with her situation. She went through the motions of her work, unable to focus. Near the end of the day, she took a break, hoping the fresh air would clear her head.

She shouldered her way through the heavy parking lot door, making sure the brick was in place to hold it open. It was another unseasonably warm day. Her mood wanted it to be gray and overcast, but the sky was as cheerfully blue as ever, oblivious to the plight and personal struggles of the people living under it.

The birds still sang; the flowers still bloomed in reckless profusion, coating the barren parking lot in petals like a snow drift. Kathy leaned against the wall and watched them stir in the hot, listless breeze. Her brain kept turning the problem over in her head, again and again, looking for another angle, a different solution. She tried to force the thoughts away. This was how it had to be. She wasn't going to risk her career over a man, not even one as gorgeous and perfect as Tehar. Their single night of passion had been risky enough.

She heard the scrape of the metal door opening and looked over, expecting an intern telling her she was needed back on set. Instead, she saw Mitchell swaggering out. From how smug he looked, she worried she hadn't succeeded in protecting the interns from him last night after all. Then he turned that nasty grin on her and Kathy realized that this, whatever it was, was personal.

"Morning, Kathy," he said.

"Morning, Mitchell," she replied, suspicious.

"Beautiful morning, right?" He nodded his head towards the parking lot without looking. "But you seem distracted today. Everything all right?"

"Everything's fine," she answered, wondering why he was burying the lead like this. "I just have a lot on my mind. I should probably get back to—"

"That was some party last night," Mitchell went on, ignoring her. "Seems like you had a good time."

He gave her a significant look, and Kathy felt her heart speed up. She kept her expression flat, unimpressed.

"It seems like you and the chairman were getting along great," he said casually. "Really getting into the spirit of the holiday, you know?"

Kathy's nostrils flared as she fought the urge to hit him and run. She said nothing.

"I mean, hooking up at the office party is kind of par for the course," Mitchell said with a laugh, finally getting to the point as he pulled his phone out of his pocket. "But I think you two might have broken some kind of record."

Kathy's blood ran cold as Mitchell began playing a video on his phone and she heard the distinctive sound of her own moans. Tehar spoke her name in a breathless whisper, and Kathy snatched the phone out of Mitchell's hand and threw it hard onto the pavement, stomping on it with all the power in her sturdy, office-appropriate heels. Mitchell laughed.

"That's all right, sweetheart," he said. "I've got plenty of copies. This isn't going away, sugar. Not for a while."

"What do you want?" Kathy spat like the words were venomous, fear battling her righteous anger.

"I already got everything I want," he said. "As of this moment, you're suspended, indefinitely. You're just too much of a liability to keep around, you know? We can't afford any scandals around here."

He chuckled, clearly pleased with himself. Kathy wanted to punch him more than she'd ever wanted anything else in her life.

"The Sheikh will—" she started to say.

"The Sheikh won't do anything." He cut her off with a snap of sudden, real anger. "Unless he wants his perfect reputation and yours flushed down the toilet, he'll stay in the desert where he belongs. You tell him, he comes back to this studio, to this state, if he ever interferes with my business again in any way, I will post this video everywhere, and I will make damn sure he never works again. Understood, sweet cheeks?"

Kathy's fists clenched. She was already suspended, and he probably couldn't call the cops without revealing the leverage he had over her. It was all the permission Kathy needed to pull back and plant her fist just as deep in his nose as she was able. She heard the satisfying crunch of it breaking, and Mitchell stumbled back, dazed and swearing and bleeding.

Kathy didn't wait for him to recover. She stormed off to her car and left, anger a boiling fog in her brain. She didn't even remember getting home. One minute she was pulling out of the parking lot, the next she was slamming her apartment door so hard that the print of her favorite painting fell off the wall, the glass front of the frame shattering loudly.

The anger drained out of her slowly. She stumbled into her bedroom and locked the door, flopping onto her bed.

There was nothing she could do. All avenues had, with the sudden finality of a guillotine, been closed to her all at once. She couldn't be with Tehar. Her career was over. She probably wouldn't even be able to have the baby. All because of her stupid father's stupid will.

Why had he done this to her? What had caused the cruel, senseless impulse that had made him think he should force his daughter, practically a stranger to him at that point, to have a baby or give up her home and everything else he'd ever built for her? What had he wanted from her?

Tears stung her eyes and she hid them in her pillow. She'd probably never understand. She'd barely known him. She'd always thought he wanted her to follow in his footsteps, to become a great journalist like him.

For the first few years after she got her start, she'd sent him her articles and TV spots, half out of spite ("See how much I've accomplished without you? I don't care that you left. I never needed you.") and half out of a desperate, terrible desire for his approval. He'd never responded at all. She'd never known how he felt about her progress. And now, she never would.

Unless this, this bear trap of a will, this spike pit he'd pushed her into, was his response after all. And the truth was he didn't approve, he never had. He'd been disappointed in her the whole time. She'd never be good enough to follow him, and the only way to get her to let go of her stupid, futile dreams, was to saddle her with a kid and force her to settle down.

Was that what he wanted? Was that what her father had thought of her? The thought made her want to break something more. Instead, she choked on the anger and buried herself in her blankets.

There was a tap on her door.

"Kathy?"

It was Tessa. Kathy said nothing.

"Kathy, are you okay? There's broken glass all over the floor. Should I call the hospital?"

Silence.

"If you don't answer soon, I'm going to call 911."

"I'm fine," Kathy shouted. "I'm fine. Please just…go away."

Tessa considered it for a long moment.

"Okay," she called through the door at last. "I'll leave you alone. I'm going to clean up this glass first, though. And I'll come back in a few hours. You can text me if you decide you want to talk, okay?"

"Okay," Kathy replied. She could almost feel Tessa's reluctance as she left the door. She heard the shuffling sound of Tessa sweeping up the broken glass, then the quiet click of the front door.

Silence descended, and Kathy suddenly didn't know what to do with herself. Her head hummed with a dozen desperate, angry sorrows like frantic insects flinging themselves against the inside of her head, bouncing off the lights of her eyes.

She wanted to do something, anything, to fix this, but she lay paralyzed instead. There was nothing to do. There was nothing she could do at all.

* * *

Tessa did come back in a few hours, but Kathy still wasn't ready to talk to her. She told her that she just wanted to sleep, and Tessa reluctantly left again, promising to come back in the morning.

Kathy got up long enough to take off her clothes, an achievement really considering how she felt, then crawled back under the covers and proceeded to lay there, worrying and wondering and wishing she could just close her eyes and go to sleep.

But sleep eluded her for most of the night. It wasn't until sunrise that she finally dozed off for a few hours. She dreamed of chasing her father through a dark thicket, all tangled thorns and snaring branches that slowed her down. There was something awful hunting her, an ugly beast with dripping jaws, but she knew if she could just catch her father, they could fight it together. But she could never catch him.

She woke with a jerk and found herself reluctant to try sleeping again, despite being exhausted. She got up instead and started researching ways to deal with blackmail. She didn't find much that would help in her situation, but then again, she hadn't really expected to.

Rather miserably, she started looking at other career options instead. It was a phenomenally depressing task. She wasn't going to be able to work in journalism again most likely. Mitchell would blackball her for the entire industry. She knew he had the connections for it.

She had the communications degrees to go into teaching, but if they saw the video, that would be right out the window. She was sure Mitchell would publish it as soon as he got tired of extorting them, anyway, just for fun. She'd never be the face of anything again. Christ. Maybe she could do radio?

Around lunch, Tessa knocked on her door again, and this time, reluctantly, Kathy let her in. They sat on her bed as Kathy explained everything that had happened, from the Valentine's party to the confrontation with Mitchell.

"What a mess," Tessa muttered. "Have you told the Sheikh yet?"

Kathy shook her head. "I don't know what to say. This is all my fault. He wanted to stay impersonal, but I pushed him to get closer. If I had just kept my distance, none of this would have happened."

"You don't know that," Tessa reassured her. "You don't know what would have happened. From what you described, it sounds like he was pretty into you too."

Kathy shook her head and Tessa took her hand.

"Either way," Tessa said. "You need to tell him. Soon. There may still be a way out of this."

Kathy wasn't so sure. And it was hard to motivate herself to do anything, feeling the way she did. Without her work, it was like all the energy had left her. Still, Tessa was right. She needed to tell Tehar.

* * *

She texted him around the time of what had been their nightly phone call, abandoned since Valentine's Day. Just a simple, We need to talk.

It took him about twenty minutes to call her back.

"Hello, Miss Burgess," he said, and she could hear from the first word how very intentionally distant he was keeping himself. No more mistakes. Just business. "Is something the matter?"

"Yeah," she said, rubbing her tired eyes. "We have a problem."

She gave him the short version and then, when he asked, the long version too. Once she'd finished, he fell silent for a few long, tense moments, considering. Kathy waited for his verdict and considered going back to bed. She was so tired. She remembered her nightmare from before and shuddered, dismissing the idea.

"Thank you for telling me," Tehar said at last, clipped and emotionless. "I will speak to my lawyers. This will be sorted out."

"What should I do?" Kathy asked. "I could look into—"

"Nothing," Tehar replied sharply. "Don't do anything. Stay at home; stay under the radar. I will take care of this."

"Shouldn't we at least talk about—"

"I will take care of everything. Just stay out of the way."

Kathy felt his words like a knife. Did he blame her for this? Did he think she would only make things worse?

"What about our arrangement?" Kathy asked. "The baby?"

"I think it's safe to say that plan is no longer viable."

It felt like a cold slap to the face. Kathy didn't answer, holding her breath as she tried to control her emotions.

"I'm sorry, Kathy," Tehar said, the cold distance in his voice slipping for just a moment. She started to answer him, but the call cut off with a click. He'd hung up.

* * *

A week crawled by.

Kathy tried to stay busy and keep her mind off of things. She had plenty of personal writing work she'd been putting off. But she struggled to stay focused and motivated. It had always been easy to focus on work before, but now her thoughts kept wandering, mostly to Tehar. She knew he had to cut her off. Even without Mitchell, they had both decided to rebuild and respect those barriers. But it hurt how easy it had been for him. She hated herself for wanting more.

Tessa tried to help, visiting frequently and trying to help Kathy distract herself. But it just wasn't going to work.

"I wish I knew how to help you."

Kathy sat on her couch, wrapped in a blanket. There was a cheesy horror movie on the TV and pizza on the coffee table. Tessa had brought everything, wanting to make up for the night they'd missed together.

Kathy did her best to be appreciative, but she couldn't focus on any of it. It just reminded her of what had happened on Valentine's Day. Tessa looked increasingly unhappy as her attempts to help fell flat. She was curled up on her own side of the couch, picking at her pizza slice.

"If it was just a breakup I'd know what to do," Tessa said. "Even if you'd lost your job. But this… I don't know what to do, Kathy. I don't know how to help you."

"You're doing everything you can," Kathy said with a sigh. "More than anyone could expect of you. I just…I just need to be a mess for a while I think. I'll get through it. I just need time."

"It just isn't fair," Tessa said, strained with unhappiness. "It's enough to lose your inheritance and the house, but your job too, and him…"

"Hey, at least my dad will be happy," Kathy said with a shrug. "He's getting his last wish. I'm not working anymore. That's what he really wanted, after all. I guess this is what I get for trying to get around his will."

"You know he didn't mean it like this," Tessa said gently. "He wasn’t the model father, but I know he didn't mean it that way."

"I don't know that," Kathy pointed out. "That's the point. I have no idea what he meant. I didn't know him at all."

"Then what's the point in assuming the worst?" Tessa asked.

"Well, if he'd actually cared about me he wouldn't have left, would he?" Kathy pointed out, her words lemon bitter and sharp as broken glass.

"I can count the number of times I saw him after high school graduation on one hand. And I could probably do the years from age ten to eighteen on two. He didn't care about me. He didn't want to be around me. I don't think he even liked me. So, I can hardly imagine he'd do something like this for my own good. It's just one last spiteful jab to make sure I really know just how much he wished I'd never been born."

Kathy realized how loud she was getting and cut herself off so hard her teeth clicked together. Tessa stared at her in worried silence.

"I'm going to go to bed," Kathy said and stood up, dragging her blanket behind her. "Thank you for the pizza."