THE MIRACLE AND THE MONSTER

I don’t remember the day I was born, obviously. But I’ve heard the story so many times it feels like a memory I borrowed and never returned. Like a family heirloom everyone kept polishing until it shone brighter than the truth. They said I came into the world angry. Not in a tragic way. In a very personal way. Like I’d been interrupted. My mother liked to describe it with this dramatic little sigh, head tilted, eyes distant, as if she could still hear me. “You cried like you were complaining,” she’d tell people. “As if you’d looked around and said, ‘Really? This is what you brought me into?’” People would laugh. They always laughed when my mother wanted them to. Then my father would do that thing he did—his smile would show up late. Like he was deciding whether the moment deserved it. And because everybody loved my father’s smile, because it made you feel chosen, they’d lean in. That was when the real part of the story started. The stock. The miraculous stock. The one he’d bought when nobody believed in it. The one his friends had mocked him for. The one he’d refused to sell even when it sat there for months like a stubborn child. According to my father, his phone started vibrating right after my first cry. At first he ignored it because he was staring at me like I was a piece of fine art he didn’t trust his hands to touch. Then the buzzing wouldn’t stop. My aunt swore it was the nurses complaining about him being in the delivery room and “disturbing the women.” My mother swore it was God, because she likes to win arguments with heaven as her witness. My father swore it was just the universe being dramatic. He checked the screen. One alert. Then another. Then a stream of numbers that didn’t make sense to a man who, until that moment, had been a careful investor, not a gambler. The stock rose. Not slowly. Not politely. It surged like it had been waiting for me. And in that bright, antiseptic hospital room, while my mother was exhausted and glowing and my father’s hands were shaking for the first time in his adult life, money poured into our future as if someone had opened a gate. The kind of money that doesn’t just change your life. It changes the people around you. It changes the way strangers look at your face before you even learn what your face means. By the time my father held me properly—his arms awkward, his expression too serious for a baby—he was already no longer just a man with a good idea. He was a man with a miracle. And I was the proof. They didn’t call me Shada that day. My father named me Shada. He wanted something that sounded soft but still carried weight. Something that could sit in a room full of men and not be swallowed. He gave me a middle name too, Zahira, but he kept it for himself. Like a private prayer folded into paperwork. To the world, though, I became something else. Miracle Baby. It wasn’t meant to be cruel at first. It was the kind of nickname people say when they’re excited to be close to a good story. When they want to touch the edge of your luck and see if it rubs off. It started in the hospital corridors, whispered by nurses and relatives. Then it followed us home and grew teeth. Because once people believe you are a miracle, they also believe you owe them one. My father used that money to build Aziz Holdings the way some men build empires—with obsession disguised as vision. In public he was calm, even gentle. He wore tailored suits and spoke like he was never rushing. Investors loved him because he made risk sound like destiny. Employees loved him because he remembered names and asked real questions, not the performative ones. In private he was relentless. He’d come home, loosen his tie, kiss my mother’s forehead, and sit on the floor with me while still answering emails. My mother would complain, and he’d look up at her like she was the only woman in the world, say something sweet enough to soften her anger, then go right back to building. Sometimes I’d toddle over and climb into his lap, and his eyes would change. The numbers left him for a second. The future became small enough to hold. That’s what I remember most about him—not his company, not the money. The way he looked at me like I wasn’t a symbol. Like I was simply his child. But outside our walls, the nickname grew up with me. At school, teachers said it like an introduction. “This is Shada Aziz,” they’d announce, the way they announced winners. “You know… Miracle Baby.” Some students smiled too hard. Some stared. Some decided they hated me before I spoke. Adults liked to warn my mother. “She’ll become rude,” they’d say, with that fake sympathy that is really just anticipation. “All this money, and people calling her Miracle Baby… she’ll be a brat.” My mother would smile, smooth as glass. “Then we’ll raise her better than that.” And she did. My mother raised me the way she ran a company—quietly, sharply, with rules that didn’t need shouting. I didn’t get everything I asked for. I got what made sense. I didn’t get to be cruel. I got consequences. I didn’t get to hide behind my father’s name. I got told, again and again, that names are borrowed until you earn them. Which was funny, because everyone else acted like my life had been handed to me wrapped in gold ribbon. They didn’t see the training behind the softness. They didn’t see how heavy it is to grow up inside a story people repeat like scripture. Miracle Baby. Say it enough times and it stops sounding like praise. It starts sounding like a cage. By the time I was old enough to understand, I was already learning a language most teenagers never have to learn: the language of being watched. Watched when I walked into rooms. Watched when I spoke. Watched when I didn’t speak. People studied my manners like they were searching for the first crack in the miracle. And I learned to be still. Not because I was timid. Because stillness is a weapon when everyone expects you to be loud. The first time I met Caius, I was fourteen. Crestfall Institute’s hallway smelled like expensive perfume, polished floors, and competition. The school had a reputation for producing future leaders, which was another way of saying it produced people who knew how to smile while they sharpened knives. I’d already been there long enough to have a seat in the classroom nobody challenged and a reputation that kept drama from touching me directly. Respected. Not loved. Which I was fine with. Then he walked in. Curly hair, damp like he’d argued with the weather and won. A body that made people look twice and then pretend they hadn’t. A face that belonged in a campaign poster or a runway, depending on what kind of world you believed in. The room shifted around him without permission. Some boys stared too long. Some girls stared and didn’t even care who noticed. A teacher paused mid-sentence like her brain needed a second to reboot. And Caius Morozov—Caius Ilay Aleksei Morozov, later, once I learned him properly—looked around the room with the bored confidence of someone who’d been stared at his whole life and had decided it was everyone else’s problem. A girl behind me whispered something nasty. Not loud, but loud enough for me to hear. I didn’t turn. I didn’t react. I’d learned that attention feeds cruelty. Caius turned anyway. He looked the girl up and down like she was a badly sewn hem. “If you’re going to be cruel,” he said, calm as if he was offering advice, “at least be original. That was boring.” Silence slapped the hallway. The girl’s face went red. People shifted, suddenly uncomfortable. Even the teacher looked offended but unsure what rule to enforce. And I laughed. It slipped out. One short sound I didn’t plan. Caius’s eyes snapped to mine like I’d just flicked a light on. He stared for a second, then smiled—not sweet, not polite. Recognizing. Like he’d just found the only person in the room who was real. After that, he was mine in the way that mattered. Not like possession. Like alignment. He didn’t ask permission to sit next to me. He didn’t act intimidated by my last name. He didn’t act impressed either. He treated me the way you treat someone you’ve decided is worth your honesty. He called me Miracle Baby once, with a dramatic sigh, rolling his eyes at the ceiling like the nickname personally offended him. I stared at him until he stopped. Then he leaned closer and murmured, “They say it like you’re an event, not a person.” My throat tightened in a way I didn’t like. Caius glanced at my face and softened, just a little. “Don’t worry,” he added. “I’ll teach you how to disappoint them properly.” That was the beginning. He became the person who fixed my collar without asking. The person who could spot a lie across a room the way some people spot a stain on white fabric. The person who could stand in front of me when the world got too curious and make them feel embarrassed for looking. And because his parents were rich in the old-money way—quiet, vast, unquestionable—he fit beside me without anyone trying to compare. He was just… Caius. Beautiful enough to make straight boys stare and then laugh too loudly to cover it up. Sharp enough to make teachers sigh and secretly enjoy being challenged. Fearless enough to break a dress code and still get away with it, because when Caius broke rules, it looked like the rules were wrong. He protected me loudly when people tried me in public. He protected me quietly when the threats were invisible. And when my father died—when I was seventeen and the ground under my life cracked open—Caius was the one constant I didn’t have to beg for. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Back then, at fourteen, I still had my father. Back then, the word “accident” belonged to other families. Back then, Aziz Holdings was my father’s kingdom, and I was just the girl with green eyes people stared at and a nickname that wouldn’t die. Back then, my father still called me Zahira when it was late and the house was quiet. And when he said it, I believed, just for a moment, that I would never be forgotten. End of Chapter One