Twisted Shadows

Chapter 8: Secrets of the Rooms

I returned to the house in Al-Muhajirin a full hour before Houssam’s arrival. I took off Raghad’s olive coat and her sunglasses, hiding them tightly in a secret cavity behind the kitchen wall so that they would not fall into any hands. I sat in the living room, opened my laptop, and began browsing the pharmacy files with a cautious coldness and feigned innocence, while my mind was reviewing with triumph Houssam’s psychological shock and his terror in the Ghouta warehouses behind the crowds.

The door of the house opened violently in the evening, and Houssam entered, dragging his steps with a mysterious heaviness. His features were no longer just pale; they carried signs of pure psychological madness, and his red eyes were turning around the hallway with a terrifying panic and constant apprehension, as if he expected ghosts to come out of the walls of his dark house.

He closed the door and leaned his forehead against the polished wood, breathing with difficulty, then turned and looked at me with sharp glances filled with suspicion and deadly jealousy:

- "Kinda!.. I swear to you that I saw her today! I saw Raghad with my own eyes on the outskirts of the city! She was wearing her olive coat.. how is this possible? Did anyone visit the house in my absence? Do you go out without my knowledge?" he shouted in a faint, interrupted voice that almost blew the silence.

- "Houssam! Please enough.. you are losing your mind and living a visual hallucination because of lack of sleep and the pressure of your engineering company's drug deals! I was in the pharmacy all day and the staff prove my presence. Raghad is gone, and what you see is nothing but shadows made by your guilt and exhausted imagination.. go and rest!" I answered with shocked features and wide eyes overflowing with feigned innocent concern, while controlling the threads with complete coolness.

He stepped back and entered his office room quickly without uttering an additional word, locking the iron padlock from the inside in a real panic that I had never known in him before. I moved with the silent steps of a shadow behind the door, took out my secret phone with a cold steadiness, and directed the crushing message to him for this night: (Raghad's ghost does not only inhabit the Ghouta warehouses, Houssam.. it sleeps in the room next to your office, and your restricted merchandise will be a black ink writing your end cash cash without review!).