Chapter 6
Tala's Pov :
The scent of my wedding bouquet, the gardenias and peonies, still lingered in my hair three days later as I stood in the soaring, cold atrium of Vale Industries. I remember clutching my new handbag, a lavish gift from Amir, feeling utterly displaced in my cream-colored trouser suit. It was supposed to be for airport lounges. Not for this sterile temple of glass and ambition.
"I need you with me, Tala," Amir had said that morning, his hands on my shoulders as we stood before our bedroom mirror. His reflection had been so earnest, his dark eyes shadowed. "With Grandfather's health failing... the board is like a pack of wolves sniffing for any weakness. My technical team speaks of many issues, and I can't afford to lose time. Having you here, it steadies me. You understand the gears inside the clock."
My heart, that foolish, eager organ, had swelled. He remembered. He needed me-not just the wife, but the engineer. The top of our class. The one who'd patiently explained data structures over library coffee, whose notes he'd borrowed before every exam, who'd debugged his final-year project while he schmoozed the professors.
His charm had opened doors, but my work had built the foundations he walked across to get his degree. And now he was admitting, in his way, that he still needed that. The cancelled honeymoon was a bitter pill, but it was a necessity and intimate partnership. "Of course I'll come," I'd said, turning to hug him. "Wherever you need me."
That first day, I felt a strange, secret thrill. While he was in back-to-back meetings, I was given a temporary desk just outside his office. I organized his chaotic files, brought him coffee, and smiled at executives. When he'd stride out, his focus absolute, and pause to murmur, "Karl from DevOps mentioned a cascading failure in the new API. Can you listen in and just... translate it into human for me?" I'd nod, feeling essential. See? I'd think. Our strengths complement each other. He handles the people; I handle the problems.
The "emotional support" quickly found a tangible, technical shape. On the second day, he placed a thick technical report on my desk-a diagnostics analysis for their flagship software, dense with code snippets and server logs.
"My eyes glaze over after the first page of this, azizam," he sighed, running a hand through his perfectly styled hair, a gesture of charming defeat I recognized from our university days. "You always had the magic touch with this stuff. Remember how you fixed my recursion algorithm in twenty minutes? I was stuck for two days." He gave me that boyish, grateful smile that had always made my efforts feel worthwhile. "Just see if the summary makes sense to you. I trust your brain more than any of those overpaid consultants."
I was disarmed, flattered. He was acknowledging our history, my skill. I took the report home, spreading the pages across our dining table. It felt good to flex that part of my mind again, to see the elegant, broken logic in the data clusters. The next morning, I presented him with concise notes, pointing out the flawed testing parameters.
He scanned the paper, his brow furrowing in a convincing imitation of deep technical thought. Then he looked up, the relief on his face genuine. "Thank you, Tala. This is it. This is exactly the leverage I need. I knew you'd see what I couldn't." He kissed my forehead. "Would you mind presenting this to the tech team? Just an informal chat. If I go in there, it becomes a power play. If you go, it's just... brilliant insight. They'll listen to you."
And so, I did. I walked into a conference room of skeptical men and explained the logical fallacies in their report. The lead developer, Karl, initially bristled at being schooled, then his engineer's mind took over. "Huh," he grunted, peering at my notes. "She's right. The sample size is skewed. Classic oversight." He looked at me, not as the boss's wife, but as a peer. "You've got a sharp eye."
When I reported back, Amir was triumphant. "See? I told you. They respect competence. You're my secret weapon." He said it like a compliment, and I soaked it in. The "we" felt potent-his social intelligence directing my technical firepower.
But the dynamic began to take a troll on me. The "informal chats" became my standing meetings. The "translations" became me doing the actual analysis. He'd breeze in from a client lunch, smelling of expensive aftershave and deal-making, and drop a complex problem on my desk. "The investors are asking about cloud migration bottlenecks. I need a narrative by 4 PM. Something confident, with data. You know what sings to them."
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