Aleded woke to the shrill vibration of his phone.
It did not ring once and stop. It kept going.
Again.
Again.
Again.
The sound drilled straight through the thin, uneasy sleep he had finally managed to fall into just before dawn. His head was heavy, his jaw still faintly sore from Osama's punch, his body carrying the stale exhaustion of alcohol, anger, and a night that had offered no true rest. For a moment, he stared at the ceiling without moving, disoriented by the insistence of the noise.
Then he reached for the phone.
The screen lit his face in the dimness of the room.
Missed calls.
Dozens.
Message notifications flooded beneath them, one after another, stacked so tightly they looked almost accusatory. Emails. Urgent texts. Internal company messages. Several from unknown names he was apparently supposed to know, all carrying the same tone of alarmed insistence.
Sir, we need your approval immediately.
The board is waiting for your decision.
Please come in as soon as possible.
This cannot be delayed any longer.
The General Manager must return to his duties.
Khaled frowned.
For one second, he simply stared at the title on the screen as if it belonged to someone else.
General Manager.
He knew, abstractly, that he had built a successful career. He understood from the house, the people around him, the way everyone spoke to him, that he occupied a significant place in the world. But reading it there—seeing the urgency, the dependence, the expectation pressed into formal language—sent an unpleasant chill through him.
General Manager.
Of what, exactly?
Of how much?
And more importantly—
How was he supposed to manage anything when five years of his life had been cut cleanly out of him?
He sat up slowly, scrolling through the messages with a tightening expression. The more he read, the heavier something settled in his chest. There was a board meeting he had apparently postponed because of the accident. A major file requiring his review. International communications await his final decision. Signatures. Authorizations. Strategic planning.
The words were all familiar enough in shape.
But not in substance.
Not in context.
Not in ownership.
He felt as though he were reading the responsibilities of a stranger while wearing that stranger's face.
By mid-morning, he had no choice but to go.
The company headquarters rose before him in glass and steel, polished to the kind of corporate perfection that usually projected power and confidence. Today, it looked unreal. Like a structure built for someone else's life and mistakenly assigned to him.
Khaled stepped out of the car and paused for half a second, staring up at the building.
Then he went inside.
The lobby was immaculate. Marble floors. Bright reception lighting. The faint scent of coffee and an expensive air freshener. Employees moved with practiced efficiency, heels and dress shoes tapping softly against polished surfaces. Screens glowed. Phones rang somewhere in the background. Everything hummed with the smooth machinery of a successful empire.
And to Khaled, it might as well have been a spaceship.
His expression hardened as he walked through the entrance, but inwardly the discomfort sharpened with every step. Faces turned toward him almost immediately. Reception staff straightened. A few employees visibly froze for one startled second before greeting him.
"Good morning, sir."
"Sir, welcome back."
"We're glad to see you—"
He nodded curtly at all of them, saying little, his eyes flicking from face to face with growing unease.
He did not know any of them.
Not one.
There were too many names he could not place, too many expressions carrying professional familiarity he could not return. Some looked relieved. Some nervous. Are some merely curious? A few glanced at him with confusion after he failed to respond with the recognition they clearly expected.
By the time he reached the executive floor, the atmosphere had changed.
Not openly.
No one would dare say it to his face.
But it was there.
The subtle disbelief in people's eyes.
The nearly hidden stares.
The silent question moving through the office like static:
Is the boss joking?
Khaled could almost hear it.
He entered his office and stopped.
The room was vast, modern, expensive—floor-to-ceiling windows, a dark wood desk, shelves lined with files and awards, a seating area for private discussions, city skyline spread beyond the glass like proof of power acquired and secured. It was exactly the kind of office a high-ranking executive should have.
It should have felt like his.
Instead, it looked like a carefully arranged set waiting for the wrong actor.
His assistant entered two minutes later carrying files and urgency in equal measure. She began speaking at once, quick and respectful, outlining pending decisions, delayed approvals, a meeting rescheduled for his convenience, and documents requiring immediate review.
Khaled listened.
Or tried to.
But each sentence only deepened the same terrible fact:
He did not know how to do this.
Not now.
Perhaps five years ago, he had been competent in an earlier version of his career. Perhaps he had already been promising, ambitious, sharp. But whatever growth, experience, and knowledge had elevated him from that man to the one currently occupying this office was gone.
He was being asked to govern an empire with missing maps.
His fingers rested on the desk.
Cold wood beneath his palm.
Steady.
"Leave the files," he said at last.
His assistant hesitated. "Sir, the board is expecting—"
"I said leave them."
She obeyed immediately.
When the door closed, Khaled sat alone in the silence of his own office and looked at the mountain of responsibility waiting for him.
Then he made the only honest decision he had left.
By afternoon, he had drafted his resignation.
The board meeting did not go well.
Of course it didn't.
There was disbelief first, then polite resistance, then genuine alarm once they realized he was serious. Several members argued that he should only take a temporary leave. Others urged patience. One insisted that no resignation should be made in his present condition. Another reminded him of the chaos his departure would cause.
Khaled heard all of it.
And rejected it all.
Because beneath the irritation and pressure lay something he could not ignore: integrity.
He could not remember how he had built this company to its current height. He could not remember key employees, strategies, negotiations, systems, or internal developments from the last five years. To continue sitting in that office, signing orders, rs and directing people while lacking the full ability to do so, would not be a strength.
It would be arrogance.
It would be fraud.
And if he stayed out of pride, he might destroy what another version of himself had spent years creating.
"No," he said finally, his tone leaving no room for argument. "I won't ruin this company by pretending to be a man I currently am not."
The room fell silent at that.
Because honesty, in a place built on control and image, could sound almost violent.
Khaled signed the resignation.
The pen felt heavier than it should have.
When he stood to leave, the empire remained behind him—towering, polished, intact.
But it no longer belonged in his hands.
By the time he returned home, the day had hollowed him out.
He entered the house with the same hard, shuttered face he had carried through the boardroom, but inside he felt scraped raw. The loss of Maryam still haunted the rooms in a strange, silent way. The resignation weighed on him. The questions about Sarah remained unresolved. His own life seemed to be slipping away from him one piece at a time, and every answer he reached for turned to mist.
He loosened his tie as he stepped into the living room—
Then stopped.
Sarah was there.
For one startled second, he simply looked at her.
She had come at what seemed, on the surface, like an ordinary hour, dressed elegantly but not extravagantly, concern softening her expression in a way that made her appear gentle, almost careful with him. She rose when she saw him, as if she had been waiting.
"Khaled."
He exhaled slowly. "Sarah."
Her gaze moved over him at once, taking in the drawn face, the fatigue around his eyes, the stiffness in his shoulders. Concern deepened—real enough in appearance to be convincing.
"You look terrible," she said quietly. "How are you feeling?"
Khaled gave a humorless laugh. "That depends. Physically? Alive. Mentally? I'm not sure."
Sarah stepped closer, but not too close. Measured. Patient. "Did something happen?"
He looked away, jaw tight. "Everything happened."
That answer might have frustrated another person. Sarah only studied him more carefully, as though adjusting her approach.
"And…" Her voice softened. "What is the last thing you remember?"
The question landed lightly.
But it was precise.
Khaled rubbed the back of his neck and answered without much thought, too tired to guard himself. "I remember…"
He paused, searching.
Then his eyes shifted toward her face.
"That trip," he said. "The one we took together five years ago."
For a single instant, something flashed through Sarah's expression.
Showas ck.
Bare, undeniable, quickly hidden.
But not quickly enough.
Khaled frowned faintly. "What?"
"Nothing," she said too fast, then softened her tone. "I just… I didn't expect you to remember it so clearly."
He leaned one shoulder against the wall as fatigue dragged at him. "That's because everything stops there."
Sarah went very still.
Everything stops there.
The meaning arrived in full.
His mind had not merely gone backward.
It had stopped at her.
At the version of his life where she still stood at the center of it.
The realization struck Sarah like sudden heat.
For a heartbeat, she forgot to breathe.
Then another realization followed, colder and sharper and far more dangerous.
This was her chance.
The thought rose fast, instinctive, almost greedy in its emotional hunger.
Her chance before it was too late.
Before anyone filled in the missing truth.
Before whatever had happened in those five lost years found its way back to him.
Before he learned the thing she most needed him not to remember.
Her fingers curled subtly at her sides.
She lowered her eyes for a second, masking the storm of calculation beneath what looked like tenderness.
Yes, she thought.
This is my chance.
I have to use it before it slips away.
Before the truth reaches him.
When Sarah suggested they go out for dinner, Khaled agreed with a weariness that bordered on surrender.
He did not want to sit alone in that haunted house.
He did not wantt silence.
He did not want another evening trapped with his own fractured thoughts.
So he went.
She took him to an old restaurant—one of theirs.
The place was tucked into a familiar part of the city, intimate rather than grand, warm lights hanging low over dark wood tables, old music drifting through the air like an echo from another time. The scent of grilled food and spices filled the space. Couples talked softly around them. Glassware caught the amber glow.
The moment they walked in, something in Khaled's face loosened.
Not because memory returned in some dramatic rush.
But because recognition lived here in fragments.
The corner table.
The menu he seemed to know by instinct.
The ridiculous framed print on one wall made him pause and say, "This thing is still here?"
Sarah blinked, then laughed despite herself. "You hated it even back then."
"It looks worse now."
"It looked expensive back then."
"It looked ugly back then."
The exchange came too naturally.
Too quickly.
And just like that, the atmosphere shifted.
What had been tense and uncertain on the drive over dissolved into something strangely familiar—teasing, light, edged with an old rhythm they seemed to fall into without effort. It was almost absurd. Almost grotesque in its ease.
A black comedy of time itself.
Because as they sat there trading comments and half-remembered habits, they became, for moments at a time, the mischievous pair they had once been five years ago. He stole food from her plate because apparently, he used to do that. She smacked his hand away and called him shameless. He muttered that she always overordered. She accused him of pretending restraint only so he could steal her dessert too.
At one point, she laughed so hard at a dry remark of his that she nearly choked on her drink.
At another, he actually smiled—fully, briefly, with enough real amusement to make him look years younger.
And in those moments, it was as though Maryam had never existed.
As though the missing five years had dissolved.
As though the accident had not happened.
As though reality itself had politely stepped outside and shut the door behind it.
It should have made Sarah happy.
Instead, her chest began to ache.
Because even in the middle of the laughter, she knew what this was.
False.
Beautifully, painfully false.
This was not recovery.
Not a second chance earned cleanly.
Not fate returning what had been lost.
This was a distortion.
A dream built on a wound.
Khaled reached across the table to take another piece of food from her plate.
She slapped his fingers again on reflex. "Unbelievable."
"You're eating too slowly."
"It's my food."
"You'll thank me later."
"For what? Theft?"
"For helping."
Sarah laughed.
Then, while still chewing, while still half-smiling, the truth hit her so violently that her eyes suddenly burned.
Khaled was married.
Not to her.
To someone else.
To the woman whose name sat between every line of this lie, even when neither of them spoke it.
The smile on Sarah's lips trembled.
She looked at the man across from her—the man who currently remembered her, wanted her, reached toward her because his broken mind had frozen at a point where she still mattered most—and a terrible fear rose inside her.
This is a beautiful dream, she thought.
And I am going to wake up.
The nightmare was waiting outside it.
The truth.
The years.
The bet was really buried somewhere behind the curtain of his lost memory.
The possibility that all of this would vanish the second he remembered who he had become without her.
Tears spilled before she could stop them.
Khaled frowned immediately. "Hey."
Sarah looked down, still holding her fork. She let out a shaky laugh that collapsed into a sob so quickly it sounded absurd, almost embarrassing. She was crying while eating.
Actually crying.
At the table.
Mid-bite.
Like someone too emotionally fractured to choose whether she belonged to joy or grief.
Khaled stared at her. "What's wrong?"
She shook her head, wiping at her tears, laughing once through them because the moment itself felt surreal enough to be cruelly ridiculous.
"Nothing," she whispered.
But that was not true.
Everything was wrong.
She was living inside a happiness she had no right to trust.
And that made every second of it feel more precious—
and more doomed.