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The shift came without warning.
One moment, Khaled was sitting across from Sarah in the warm, almost unreal glow of the restaurant, watching her wipe tears from the corners of her eyes while insisting she was fine.
The next, something smaller—and somehow more disturbing—caught his attention.
Her hand.
He reached for it suddenly.
Not tenderly. Not romantically. Not even fully consciously.
She lifted her hand to brush at her face again, and the inside of her palm flashed beneath the light. The movement triggered something instinctive in him. His hand shot out before thought could intervene.
Khaled caught her wrist.
Sarah froze.
His gaze dropped immediately to the center of her palm.
There was a scar there.
Not a thin line.
Not the sort of mark left by a kitchen knife or some careless accident.
This was larger. Deeper. The tissue had long since healed, faded into a pale, ugly white, but the shape still carried violence. Something had gone through that hand. Knife. Bullet. Metal. He could not tell. Only that whatever had caused it had not been minor, and certainly not harmless.
Khaled stared.
Something tightened in his chest.
His grip loosened slightly—not because he had lost interest, but because all his attention had narrowed. His eyes lifted on reflex, tracing upward, only to stop again when the neckline of her blouse shifted just enough beneath the restaurant light.
Another scar.
This one sat high on the right side of her chest, partially hidden, but visible enough to make his breath catch for a beat.
It was worse.
Longer.
More brutal.
The kind of scar no one carried unless life had once cornered them with real violence.
The teasing ease vanished from his face at once.
What replaced it was focus. Then shock. Then something darker.
Who did this?
The question rose in him before words formed around it.
He was still looking—too directly, too intensely—when Sarah reacted.
Her fist slammed into his stomach.
Hard.
The blow knocked the air out of him so abruptly that he jerked back in his seat, one hand flying to his abdomen as pain punched through him.
"What the hell—"
Sarah glared at him, cheeks flushed, tears forgotten beneath outrage. "Where are you looking, you pervert?"
Khaled sucked in air and stared at her. "You punched me?"
"You were staring!"
"At your scars!"
"That is not better!"
For one absurd second, the tension between them became something almost ridiculous.
Then it vanished.
Khaled leaned forward again, the pain in his stomach already secondary to the anger rising fast beneath his skin.
"What happened to you, Sarah?"
His voice had changed completely.
No humor left.
She blinked, caught off guard by the shift.
Khaled's eyes dropped once more to her hand, then returned to her face. His jaw tightened. "What are those scars?"
There was fury in him now, but not directed at her.
"Who did that to you?" he asked, and there was something in his tone—rage, jealousy, protective instinct so immediate it surprised even him. "What kind of bastard did that?"
The words landed heavily between them.
Sarah stopped moving.
Stopped blinking.
For half a heartbeat, she seemed to stop breathing.
The color drained from her face.
The anger she had just shown him vanished so quickly it was unsettling. She went still in a way that did not look calm. It looked empty. As if some old door inside her had been forced open and everything warm behind it had died at once.
Khaled noticed immediately.
His frown deepened. "Sarah—"
"It was an old accident," she said.
Her tone was flat.
Too flat.
He stared at her.
She withdrew her hand gently from his grasp and added, without looking at him, "Four years ago. Don't worry about it."
Don't worry about it.
As if scars like those belonged to a simple answer.
Khaled did not believe her.
Not for a second.
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 over her face like a locked gate.
So he let the question remain unanswered.
For now.
By the time they parted, the delicate softness of the evening had changed.
Not shattered.
But altered.
Too many things now sat beneath the surface: old pain, hidden truths, the wrong kind of intimacy restored too quickly, and his growing suspicion that everyone around him knew pieces of his life they either would not or could not return to him.
The next morning, reality returned in a more practical form.
Work.
He needed one.
Resigning from the company had been the only honest decision, but honesty did not erase consequences. He could not spend his days pacing through missing memories and unresolved questions. He needed structure. Income. Something that belonged to the present instead of the ghost of the man he had been.
So, after nearly an hour of pacing through the house in worsening irritation, Khaled did something he had not wanted to do.
He called Osama.
The line rang twice.
Then connected.
"What?" Osama said, voice rough and direct, sounding very much like a man who still had no interest in pretending the café incident had been forgiven.
"I need your help," Khaled said.
Silence.
Then, with immediate suspicion, "Why?"
Khaled closed his eyes briefly. "I need work."
A pause.
Then Osama barked, "You need what?"
"Work."
The next sound from the line was somewhere between disbelief and insult. "Are you insane? You were a general manager, you idiot."
Khaled's mouth tightened. "Not anymore."
That got Osama's attention.
"What do you mean, not anymore?"
"I resigned."
The silence on the line lengthened.
When Osama finally spoke again, his tone had changed. Slower now. Sharper.
"You resigned… from your own company?"
"I couldn't run it."
The bitterness in Khaled's voice came without effort. "I don't remember the systems, the people, the development, the decisions that got it there. I'm not going to destroy a company because everyone expects me to act like I still know how to lead it."
Osama exhaled hard through his nose.
For a second, Khaled expected another explosion. Another insult. Another lecture.
Instead, Osama muttered, "Fine."
Khaled frowned slightly.
"I'll look for something suitable," Osama said. "At least until your brain stops trying to sabotage your life."
By Osama's standards, that was practically tenderness.
Khaled let out a slow breath. "Thanks."
"Don't thank me yet," Osama said dryly. "I might find you something humiliating."
Then he ended the call.
It should have left Khaled steadier.
It didn't.
The restlessness remained.
By evening, it had sharpened into the familiar unease that had begun to follow him whenever he approached the house.
He turned onto his street—
And stopped.
Black cars.
Several of them.
Long, polished, expensive, and wrong enough to send a chill straight through him. They lined the front of the house like a message written in metal and tinted glass. Nothing about them looked casual. Nothing about them suggested relatives, harmless visitors, or ordinary business.
Khaled felt his whole body go cold.
Men stood near the cars.
Well dressed.
Large.
Still in that deliberate way dangerous men often were—too calm, too aware, too certain of themselves.
His first thought was ridiculous.
Organization.
His second was worse.
A gang.
A syndicate.
Some criminal debt from the missing years is finally coming to collect itself.
His pulse kicked hard.
Every instinct told him to leave.
Quietly.
Immediately.
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, voice splitting the evening air.
"It's him! Grab him!"
Khaled turned and ran.
There was no dignity in it. No planning. No dramatic pause.
He ran with the blind, brutal speed of a man whose body had chosen survival first and explanation later.
Behind him, shouting erupted.
Footsteps pounded the pavement.
A car door slammed.
Then—
Gunfire.
A shot cracked somewhere too close to his left.
Another rang out behind him.
The sound sent ice straight down his spine. He jerked sideways instinctively and nearly crashed into a wall before correcting into a narrower street.
His breathing turned ragged almost immediately.
"Fantastic," he muttered in horror, sprinting harder. "Looks like I'll die tonight."
He cut right.
Then left.
Then into 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 business?
Family?
Sarah?
Something from those missing five years that 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 exhausted body protested every movement, but panic lent him speed he should not have had.
He turned another corner—
—and stopped so abruptly he nearly fell.
More black cars.
Ahead this time.
Waiting.
Men stepped out.
Calmly.
Efficiently.
Like this had never truly been a chase.
Like it had always been a trap.
Khaled spun around.
There were more behind him now.
The alley entrance.
The street mouth.
The side lane he had nearly taken.
Every exit was closed.
The realization landed all at once.
He was surrounded.
No dramatic standoff followed. No miracle opening. No escape.
Khaled stood in the narrowing space, chest heaving, sweat cooling against his skin, and slowly lifted his empty hands.
The men approached at once.
They did not beat him there, though one shoved him hard enough to stagger. Another grabbed his arm. A third twisted his wrists behind his back with brutal efficiency. Then someone yanked a black cloth over his eyes, tying it tight enough to plunge him into instant darkness.
"Wait—who are you, people?" Khaled snapped, breathless and furious.
No one answered.
A hand shoved his head down as they marched him toward one of the cars. He struggled uselessly against the grip on his arms. A second later, they forced him inside. He landed awkwardly against leather seats.
The door slammed shut.
Darkness.
Contained air.
The low hum of an expensive engine.
Then something else hit him.
A smell.
Strong.
Ridiculously strong.
Khaled frowned.
He inhaled again in disbelief.
Hookah smoke.
Not faint. Not lingering. Fresh. Thick. Completely unmistakable.
His eyebrows rose beneath the blindfold. "Who smokes shisha inside a car?"
No one answered that either.
Then something cold touched him.
Very cold.
Very deliberate.
It pressed with horrifying precision against the most vulnerable part of his body.
Khaled went rigid.
Every muscle locked.
He did not need sight to know it was a gun.
And not aimed casually.
A deep male voice sounded beside him, rich with menace, outrage, and the absolute confidence of someone who believed himself fully entitled to this level of drama.
"You have your uncle with you now."
Khaled swallowed.
The gun pressed harder.
"You want a divorce, do you, you little thug?"
His eyes widened beneath the blindfold.
The voice dropped into a growl.
"I will erase your manhood."
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