What if, in his obsession to protect his family, he had destroyed something—someone—innocent?
“No,” he muttered under his breath, pacing the length of his office, anger flaring again as if it could burn away doubt. “No. That’s impossible.”
Yet the words rang hollow even to his own ears, and as he stared out the window, city lights blurring beneath his restless gaze, the confusion tightened its grip, leaving him suspended between certainty and dread, unable to silence the one question that now refused to leave him alone.
What if everything he believed about her was wrong—and the cost of that mistake was far greater than he was ready to face?
--
Dinner at his parents’ house unfolded with the familiar choreography Zayn had known all his life, the kind that wrapped itself in warmth and tr
