Your father laughs.
“A beggar threatening me,” he mocks.
Then he leans toward you, voice low. “You think you found love? You found a trap.”
He spits the words: “Give her to me.”
You tremble, but you do something you’ve never done.
You step forward.
Your cane taps the floor, and the sound is small but powerful, like a gavel.
“No,” you say.
Your voice shakes, but it doesn’t break.
“No more.”
Your father goes quiet, shocked by your refusal.
“You don’t talk to me like that,” he snarls.
You lift your chin. “You stopped being my father the day you called me ‘that thing,’” you say.
Your words come out sharper than you knew you had. “I don’t belong to you.”
For a moment, no one moves.
Then Ibrahim’s voice slides into the room like smoke.
“Touching,” he says. “Very touching.”
Your skin crawls as you feel his presence, even without sight.
He walks closer, and you smell that expensive cologne again.
“So this is the blind wife,” he murmurs. “The one who can’t see the knives coming.”
Yusha’s body stiffens beside you.
Ibrahim laughs softly. “Relax,” he says. “I’m not here to harm her.”
Then his tone changes. “I’m here to harm you.”
Everything happens fast.
You hear a scuffle, a shout, a crash.
Someone grabs your arm and yanks, hard.
Your cane clatters to the floor, and panic explodes in your chest.
You reach for Yusha, but your fingers catch only air.
“Zainab!” Yusha roars, the sound ripped from somewhere primal.
You scream, and for the first time you don’t care who hears.
Hands drag you toward the doorway. Your feet stumble. Your breath tears.
Then, suddenly, the grip on you loosens.
A loud crack echoes, like wood snapping or a weapon striking bone.
A man groans. Another curses.
And the Imam’s voice cuts through the chaos, cold and commanding. “Enough.”
The room erupts with movement, the sound of bodies colliding, men being forced back.
You fall to your knees, palms scraping the floor.
You crawl, desperate, until your hands find fabric, then a wrist, then Yusha’s arm.
You cling to him like he’s the only solid thing in a world that keeps trying to erase you.
The Imam speaks to Ibrahim with a voice like judgment.
“You will not take her,” he says.
Ibrahim laughs, but it’s strained now. “Old man,” he says, “you can’t protect them forever.”
The Imam answers, steady.
“I don’t need forever,” he says. “Only long enough.”
Long enough for what? you wonder, shaking.
Then you hear it: the faint sound of whistles outside, the clatter of more boots, but different boots.
Official boots.
