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"Sometimes, the past doesn't haunt you with ghosts but with paperwork signed in silence and names you thought you buried."
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The Langham, Fifth Avenue – Midtown ManhattanPrivate Lounge, 10:00 AMInterior: Soft jazz hums from hidden speakers. Floor-to-ceiling windows reveal the cold morning skyline. Espresso steam curls in the light. Conversations are quiet, curt, expensive.
Keira sat at the window, her posture poignantly relaxed, the sort that didn't ask for notice but took it nonetheless.
She had on a pale beige coat, rolled collar, tightly coiled hair at the base of her neck. Her eyes, however, had nothing tidy about them. Just questions. Cruel and icy and unrelenting.
She hadn't even taken a sip of her beverage.
A soft ring of leather against marble caught her gaze upwards.
Mr. Arif, lanky and stylishly dressed in a slate-gray suit, strode to the table as a man who used to dealing with demanding clients—and nastier realities.
"Miss Keira," he said, tipping his head forward slightly.
"Thank you for coming," she answered, her tone flat, brief. "I won't take much of your time."
She turned it so it faced him.
"Tell me why my name on this says Keira Davenport."
Mr. Arif glanced down, adjusted his glasses.
"That's your legal name, Miss Keira."
"No," she snapped, too fast, too sharp. Then, quieter: "No. My name is Keira Anastasya. Has been since I was eighteen. Since the divorce."
Mr. Arif folded his hands. "I understand you've used Anastasia socially. But legallyyour records, your inheritance, your signature on the base agreement all remain under Davenport."
She glared at him.
"That's not possible."
"It is," he said in a detached, cold tone. "Your father never did a legal name change filing. And because you were still a minor in his custody when the papers were drawn up, your original identity was still the active one in all financial and legal dealings."
Keira sat back, as if physical distance could soften the impact to her stomach.
"So this contract," she said reluctantly, "this marriage this whole thing it was built upon a name I left behind."
"Yes," Mr. Arif said factually
he laughed once. Hollow.
"Of course it was."
There was a silence then thick, uncomfortable.
Then Keira asked, quieter this time, almost to herself:
"How long has this been planned?"
Mr. Arif hesitated.
Long enough to answer.
Short enough not to.
"Before the divorce," she guessed, voice tight. "Before the name change. Before I knew anything."
Mr. Arif didn't deny it.
Keira closed the folder.
"When individuals inquire why I accepted this union," she explained, standing up, "I inform them it was for family."
She regarded the man who'd arranged her life behind her back.
"If it was merely a name, I could well forgive it. But here it is about an old debt that was paid out of me by signature, ring, and contract."
She stood up from the lounge in silence.
The folder lay there unwritten on the table.
But the door that she used did not close after her.
Not quite.
The city whizzed past the window as the car headed uptown.
Keira sat in the backseat, arms folded, chin lifted slightly like a woman trying to keep herself together with posture. Outside, New York pulsed with its usual chaos honking cars, pedestrians wandering between lanes, tourists stopping to take selfies under gray skies.
But all she heard was her own silence.
She hadn't spoken a word since she'd left the meeting with Mr. Arif. The folder now lay beside her on the seat, unopened. As if opening it again, she'd unravel.
Her thoughts careened through the traffic.
"This is not about legacy. This is not even about marriage."
"I am doing this. because once, a man who I called 'Dad' grasped my hand like it was the only thing keeping him upright.".
"Because once, when I wept after bombing a test on the floor of our kitchen, he did not say to me, Toughen up. He sat beside me and said the world could be unjust, but I did not have to."
She clamped her eyes shut, refusing to allow the tears to fall.
Not here.
Not now.
The driver let up as they drove toward the bridge. Keira looked out the window and saw the Hudson River cold, vast, churning. The waves lapped gently beneath the overpass, like they were sharing secrets nobody wanted to hear.
She didn't speak.
She simply looked.
Her fingers clamped on her coat.
She hadn't a clue what she was waiting to feel.
Closure?
Peace?
She felt neither.
Only weight.
She shifted ever so slightly towards the glass. The sky was heavy with unshed rain. Below, the water shone like silver secrets.
Then, softly so quietly it was barely a breath
"Papa," she whispered, "Keira misses you."
She did not say it again.
Did not cry.
Simply sat there as the car rolled on, eyes still glued to the horizon, heart tight with words unspoken.
She was still angry.
Still lost.
Still alone to this.
But she also knew one thing:
She hadn't done it for commerce.
Or obligation.
She had done it for a man who had once shown her how to be courageous and for the memory of a failed love that, though imperfect, still resonated.
Even now.
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Long Island, Summer 2012
Keira was nine.
The waves were beefy that afternoon.
Curling, softening to the touch as they hit the shore, with no urgency to go or stay. The wind was gentle. Warm. The kind of wind that made the sky feel bigger than usual, making the world slightly quieter.
Keira was making nine years.
Her hands were buried in soggy sand, and she was already dripping wet from saltwater and laughter. Her father was knee-deep in the tide, sleeves rolled above the elbow, flinging a seashell into the ocean as if today's most important task.
"Beat it to the ocean!" he called out, grinning.
Keira sprinted behind the wave, shrieking, stumbling, laughing. Her feet went out from under her, and she tumbled into the shallow water.
Her father scooped her up immediately, spinning her once in a circle in his arms before setting her down on her feet.
"You okay, princess?" he asked, clearing seaweed from her hair.
She grinned widely up at him, flushed cheeks.
"Again!" she demanded.
Near the top of the beach, on the blanket, her mother sat cross legged, camera poised. She smiled behind the lens, quietly framing every snap: the glint in Keira's eyes, the matter-of-fact joy in her husband's voice, the kind of joy people think will last.
Click.
She sat cross legged on the living room floor, surrounded by flashcards and tears, that night. Her math test had come back with a red C-minus.
She knew it was a B, at least.
Her father got down next to her, carefully taking the paper from her.
"Sometimes," he said, "we fall. That's how we learn to balance."
Keira blew her nose. "I'm not smart."
"You're the smartest person I know," he said, with no hesitation whatsoever. "You just don't know it yet."
He didn't lecture.
Didn't scold.
He simply stayed.
On another day another mistake Keira had shattered her mother's favorite vase.
She'd expected anger. Yelling.
But her father had only knelt beside the fragments and said, "Accidents are allowed. Being human is sweeping them up."
He gave her the broom, rumpled her hair, and whistled an old tune as they swept.
She never forgot that.
The gentleness of his forgiveness. The compassion in his lessons. The manner in which he never made her feel like a failure, even when the world did.
Manhattan, Fall 2019
Keira was sixteen.
The house wasn't quiet. It was quiet.
Like someone had pressed pause on everything that made it a home.
Keira leaned in the doorway, fingers curled around the banister as she heard the half-heard words from the study.
Her parents were in.
Her mother's voice was sharp angry, exhausted.
Her father's was thick, broken.
She didn't hear every word.
Just snippets.
Only snippets.
"I was wrong. I should've listened. I thought I could fix it."
And then silence.
Long silence.
Broken by something she'd never anticipated.
A thud.
A whisper.
A voice that cracked like a man pleading with the past to forgive him.
"I was the fool. I thought the business would be easy. I didn't mean for this to cost everything. I'm sorry. I'm sorry."
Keira did not hear her mother reply.
She only witnessed her walk out a few minutes later face pale, jaw clenched, like a person who had already cried too much.
Hours later, her mother was packing.
Not crazily.
Not raging.
Just. methodically.
"Are we going somewhere?" Keira asked from the doorway, voice too quiet for the person who just saw her life break into fragments.
Her mother folded a dress, placed it in a suitcase very carefully, and smiled.
But it wasn't a smiling smile.
But it wasn't a smiling smile.
"We're moving, princess. New home. Quieterone."
Keira's throat tightened. "What aboutPapa?"
Her mom paused, still with hands over the suitcase. Then she looked up.
"Your dad loves you, Keira. He always will."
That was all.
Nothing more.
Just that.
As if love was why all the rest wasn't working.
A few weeks after that, Keira got the word they were finally divorced.
She didn't ask how.
She didn't ask why.
She didn't want to hear it.
She cried herself to bed that night.
Not the quiet kind.
The kind that sounded like something inside her was being torn out by the root.
And when the sobs stopped
She wiped her face with the back of her hand.
Walked to her mirror.
And said out loud, like a promise
"I'm not Davenport anymore."
She filled out the forms herself the next morning.
Name: Keira Anastasya.
No room for what used to be.
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Manhattan, 2025Present Day
The penthouse was dark when Keira walked in, her heels tapping softly on the marble floor.
She'd spoken nothing throughout the ride home. Just silence, that sort of filled a car like mist—heavy, invisible, smothering.
Rayyan was already sitting in the living room.
Not slouching. Not lounging.
Just. still.
His eyes tracked her as she placed her bag down, shrugged off her jacket, and passed by him.
She didn't say hello.
Didn't glance back.
"Someone just told me," Rayyan said, his voice calm too calm, "that a confidential report from my study has disappeared."
Keira halted at the stairs.
"Go on," he said.
"You don't believe it, do you?" he went on.
"You also had a series of meetings today with Mr. Arif."
Now she turned to face him.
Their eyes locked across the room his cold, impassive. Hers? Exhausted. Hurt.
"And apparently," he said, "you were seen by our neighbors sobbing all the way home."
"Hi," Keira said, as she rushed down the stairs.
"Take that as a coincidence, Keira? Or. is this your way of connecting the dots?"
Her jaw clenched.
"I wasn't connecting," she said sarcastically. "I was just trying to remember who I was. before it was all signed away."
Rayyan's lips curled half-frown, half something else.
"You know," he stood up slowly, "you keep blaming me for knowing everything, controlling everything, but never have you even wondered why I've been this calm through it all."
"Maybe because you had time to practice," she snapped. "You've known longer. About the contracts. About your name. About it all."
"I did not put your name into that contract, Keira. Your father did."
She flinched barely.
Rayyan's tone was softened, but only slightly.
"I'm not your enemy."
"No," Keira said, turning back toward the stairs. "You're just the one who benefits from my silence."
She walked away before he could respond.
Halfway up the stairs, she heard him say low, but clear:
"You could've asked me."
She didn't stop.
Didn't answer.
She just climbed.
Before she reached her room, she didn't even switch on the light. Just dropped her bag, took off her shoes, and headed directly to the bathroom.
The bathtub was clean as could be. As if waiting for her.
Keira filled the water, showered her hair, and slid in slowly like disappearing was all she had left to calm her.
Her eyes stared at the ceiling, unmoving.
No tears this time.
Just the weight of too many names and too little truth.
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Keira couldn't remember falling asleep, but she must have.
The bath was long cold. Her robe clung to her skin in soft folds as she lay back on her side, balled up on the edge of the bed as if trying to curl away from the world.
The room was quiet. Too quiet.
She'd not eaten dinner. Hadn't answered her phone. Hadn't even switched on a light.
Just the distant hum of the city beyond, and the muffled ache behind her eyes.
Then
A knock.
Soft. Two knocks.
She did not move.
The door opened creakily.
She did not look up.
But she knew who it was even before she heard the soft roll of footsteps against the rug.
Rayyan.
Of course he would be the one.
He said nothing. Did not ask to come in. He simply walked in, as always steady, and put something down on the nightstand beside her.
A tray.
She smelt chamomile before she could see it.
A tea cup.
A piece of toast.
No words.
Just. that.
He was going to turn and leave, but his voice was checked in mid-stride by hers.
"Rayyan."
He paused, hand on doorframe.
Still not looking at her.
"Why did you bring this here?"
"Because you didn't eat."
"That's not a reason," she said softly.
Rayyan's jaw tightened. Just a little.
"I don't want my wife tripping over her own pride."
The word wife hung in the air like a challenge.
Keira pushed herself slowly into a sitting position, the blanket slithering off her shoulder.
"So that's strategy, then? Damage control?"
He still didn't turn around.
"Call it what you want to."
She fixed him with a glare.
Tall. Stiff. The kind of posture that bristled with too many things left unspoken.
"Do you always go out of your way for your things you don't care about?"
That held him.
For a moment too long.
Then he glanced away just far enough for her to see the shadow of something on his face. Not quite softness. Not quite rage.
Something quieter.
Something deadlier.
"No," he said. "Only the ones I can't walk away from."
And he was gone.
No goodbyes spoken. No looking back.
Just the sound of the door closing behind him.
Keira stared at the tray.
Steam still rose from the cup as if it hadn't been left alone long enough to cool.
She did not drink it.
Did not even dip a finger in the toast.
But she sat very long, staring at the spot he had been in.
Not forgiving precisely.
But not quite untainted either.
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END OF CHAPTER 6
"The door closed behind him. But the echo of what he didn't say stayed with her longer than the warmth of the tea he left behind. Not quite an apology. Not quite affection. Just enough to hurt—and almost enough to heal."
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