The shift came without warning.
One moment, Khaled was still sitting across from Sarah in the warm, almost unreal glow of the restaurant, watching her wipe tears from the corners of her eyes while pretending she was fine. The next, something much smaller—and somehow more disturbing—snagged his attention.
Her hand.
He reached for it suddenly.
Not tenderly, not with romance, not even fully consciously. The movement came out of instinct, quick and unfiltered, because she had lifted her hand to brush her face again and the inside of her palm flashed into view beneath the light.
Khaled caught her wrist.
Sarah froze.
His eyes dropped instantly to the center of her palm.
There, cutting across the flesh like a pale, brutal memory, was a scar.
Not a faint line.
Not the sort of injury one gets from a kitchen accident or a careless scrape.
This was larger.
Deeper.
The kind of scar that looked as though something violent had once gone clean through her hand—knife, bullet, metal, he could not tell. But whatever had caused it had not been small, and certainly not harmless. The tissue was old now, healed long enough to fade into a muted, ugly whiteness, but the shape of it still carried force.
Khaled stared.
Something in his chest tightened.
His fingers loosened slightly around her wrist, not from disinterest but from concentration. His gaze lifted on reflex, tracing upward, only to halt again when the neckline of her blouse shifted just enough for him to catch another mark.
A second scar.
This one lay on the right side of her chest, partly hidden, but visible enough to stop his breath for a beat.
It was worse.
Longer.
More frightening.
The kind of damage no one should be carrying unless life had once cornered them with real violence.
Khaled's expression changed.
The teasing ease from minutes ago vanished completely. What remained was stunned focus, then curiosity sharpened instantly into something darker.
Who did this?
The question rose before he could even put it into words.
He was still looking—too intensely, too openly—when Sarah reacted.
Her fist slammed into his stomach.
Hard.
The blow knocked the breath out of him so abruptly that he jerked back in his seat, one hand flying to his abdomen with a rough exhale of pain.
"What the hell—"
Sarah glared at him, furious, color rising in her cheeks through whatever tears had remained. "Where exactly are you looking, you pervert?!"
Khaled sucked in air and stared at her in disbelief. "You punched me?"
"You were staring!"
"At your scars!"
"That's not better!"
For one ridiculous second, the tension between them sparked into something almost absurd. But Khaled's face darkened almost immediately again. The pain in his stomach mattered less than the anger now rising fast under his skin.
He leaned forward.
"What happened to you, Sarah?"
His voice had changed. Lost all humor.
She blinked once, caught off guard.
Khaled's eyes dropped briefly back to her hand, then lifted again, his jaw hardening. "What are those scars?"
There was real fury there now, but not at her.
At whoever had left those marks.
"Who was it?" he demanded, his tone thick with a jealousy and rage so instinctive it surprised even him. "What kind of worthless bastard dared to do that to you?"
The words landed between them.
Sarah stopped moving.
Stopped blinking.
Stopped even breathing properly for half a heartbeat.
Something drained out of her face.
The anger she had just shown him vanished so quickly it was unsettling. She went still in a way that did not feel calm—it felt deadened, as if some old door inside her had been kicked open and all warmth had left the room.
Khaled noticed at once.
His frown deepened. "Sarah—"
"It was an old accident," she said.
Her tone was flat.
Too flat.
He stared at her.
She gently withdrew her hand from his grasp and added, without meeting his eyes, "Four years ago. Don't worry about it."
Don't worry about it.
As if a woman carried wounds like those and the explanation should end there.
Khaled did not believe her.
Not even slightly.
But something in the way she had gone so still warned him not to push further—not here, not now, not while that expression sat on her face like a locked gate over something unbearable.
So he let the question remain unanswered.
For the moment.
By the time they parted ways, the fragile softness of the evening had been broken.
Not shattered entirely.
But altered.
There were now too many things sitting beneath the surface—old pain, hidden truths, the wrong kind of intimacy restored too quickly, and his growing suspicion that every person around him knew parts of his life they were either unwilling or unable to give back.
The next morning, reality returned in the form of practicality.
Work.
He needed one.
Resigning from the company had been the only honorable decision, but honor did not simplify the consequences. He could not spend his days wandering through fractured memories and impossible questions. He needed structure. Income. A place to stand that belonged to the present and not the ghost of the man he had been.
So, after pacing the house for nearly an hour in worsening irritation, Khaled did something he had not wanted to do.
He called Osama.
The line rang twice before connecting.
"What?" Osama's voice came rough and direct, as though he still had not forgiven him for the café incident. Which, judging by the bruise on Khaled's jaw, he probably hadn't.
"I need your help," Khaled said.
Silence.
Then, with open suspicion, "Why?"
Khaled closed his eyes briefly. "I need work."
A pause.
Then Osama barked out, "You need what?"
"Work."
The next sound from the line was halfway between disbelief and insult. "Are you insane? You're a general manager, you idiot."
Khaled's mouth tightened. "Not anymore."
That got Osama's full attention.
"What do you mean not anymore?"
"I resigned."
This time the silence on the line was longer.
When Osama finally spoke again, it was with dangerous slowness. "You resigned… from your own company?"
"I couldn't run it."
The bitterness in Khaled's voice was immediate and unhidden now. "I don't remember anything, Osama. Not the systems, not the people, not the development of the company, not the experience that got me there. I'm not going to destroy a business because everyone expects me to act like I still know how to lead it."
Osama exhaled sharply through his nose.
For a moment, Khaled thought another explosion was coming. Another lecture. Another insult.
Instead, Osama said, in a lower tone, "Fine."
Khaled frowned slightly.
"I'll look for something suitable," Osama muttered. "At least until your brain decides to stop sabotaging your life."
That was, by Osama's standards, practically kindness.
Khaled let out a breath. "Thanks."
"Don't thank me yet," Osama said dryly. "I might find you something humiliating."
The call ended there.
It should have left Khaled feeling more stable.
Instead, the restlessness remained.
By evening, it had sharpened again into the familiar crawling unease that followed him whenever he approached the house.
He turned onto his street—
And stopped.
Black cars.
Several of them.
Long, polished, expensive, and far too ominous to belong there casually. They stood lined in front of the house like a message made of metal and tinted glass. Nothing about them looked ordinary. Not family. Not visitors. Not business in any harmless sense.
Khaled felt his entire body go cold.
Men stood near the cars.
Well-dressed.
Large.
Still in the way dangerous men often are—too calm, too aware, too deliberately placed.
His first irrational thought was organization.
His second was worse.
A gang.
A syndicate.
Something criminal from the missing years comes back to collect a debt he did not remember making.
His pulse kicked hard against his throat.
Every instinct screamed at him to leave.
Slowly.
Quietly.
He took one careful step backward.
Then another.
One of the men lifted his head.
Their eyes met.
Recognition flashed across the stranger's face.
Then the man shouted, sharp enough to split the evening air.
"It's him! Grab him!"
Khaled turned and ran.
There was no dignity in it. No strategy. No heroic pause. He ran with the blind, brutal speed of a man whose body had decided survival first and questions later.
Behind him, shouting erupted.
Feet pounded pavement.
A car door slammed.
And then—
Gunfire.
A shot cracked somewhere too close to his left.
Another rang out behind him.
The sound hit his spine like ice. He jerked sideways instinctively and nearly slammed into a wall before correcting course into a narrower street.
His breathing became ragged immediately.
"Great," he muttered in sheer horror, sprinting harder. "Looks like I'll die tonight."
He cut right.
Then left.
Then through an alley so narrow the walls nearly brushed his shoulders.
His mind raced as wildly as his pulse.
Who were they?
What had he done?
Was this work-related?
Family?
Sarah?
Something from those lost five years no one had warned him about?
More shouting behind him.
Another shot ricocheted somewhere ahead and to the side, forcing him to pivot again. His lungs burned. His injured, exhausted body protested every movement, but panic lent him speed he should not have had.
He turned another corner—
—and stopped so abruptly he almost fell.
More black cars.
Ahead this time.
Waiting.
Men stepped out.
Calmly.
Efficiently.
Like this had never been a chase at all.
Like it had always been a net.
Khaled spun around.
There were more behind him now.
The alley mouth.
The street corner.
The side lane he had nearly tried to take.
Every exit was sealed.
The realization landed with sickening finality.
He was surrounded.
No dramatic standoff followed. No miracle opening. No way through.
Khaled stood in the middle of the narrowing space, chest heaving, sweat cooling on his skin, and slowly lifted his empty hands.
This was it.
The men approached at once.
They did not beat him there, though one of them shoved him hard enough to stagger. Another seized his arm. A third twisted his wrists behind his back with brutal efficiency. Someone yanked a black cloth over his eyes, tying it tight enough to plunge the world into immediate darkness.
"Wait—who are you, people?" Khaled snapped, breathless and furious.
No one answered.
A hand shoved his head down as they forced him toward one of the cars. His tied hands strained uselessly behind him. He was pushed inside with no ceremony, landing awkwardly against leather seats.
The door slammed.
Darkness.
Contained air.
The low hum of an expensive engine.
And then something else hit him.
A smell.
Strong.
Ridiculously strong.
Khaled frowned.
Was that—
He inhaled again in disbelief.
Hookah smoke.
Not faintly. Not residual. Thick, fresh, unmistakable.
His eyebrows shot up beneath the blindfold. "Who on earth is smoking shisha inside a car?"
No one answered that either.
Then something cold touched him.
Very cold.
Very deliberate.
It pressed against the most vulnerable place on his body with horrifying accuracy.
Khaled went rigid.
Every muscle in him locked.
He did not need sight to know it was a gun.
And not aimed vaguely, either.
A deep, thunderous male voice sounded beside him, rich with menace and outrage and the bizarre authority of someone who fully believed himself entitled to this level of dramatic violence.
"You have your uncle with you now."
Khaled swallowed hard.
The gun pressed more firmly.
"You want a divorce, do you, you little thug?"
Khaled's eyes widened beneath the blindfold.
The voice dropped into a terrifying growl.
"I will erase your manhood."