Ya Allah, I am a sinner but You are the Most Merciful the Most Beneficial. Please forgive me.
The words trembled as they left her lips. Her hands were raised in dua, palms open, shoulders bowed as tears slid down her cheeks and darkened the prayer rug beneath her. She had been asking for the same thing for days. A week, maybe. Time didn’t hold its shape anymore. The nights blurred together, each one heavy in the same way, each one ending here on the floor in her prayer rug, the same desperate plea spoken into the quiet, hoping it would be heard this time.
Everything felt lost.
She felt lost.
Her body no longer felt like her own. It moved when she told it to, breathed when it had to, but it felt distant, claimed, altered, no longer familiar. For the last seven days, she had been locked in a silent war with herself, torn between faith and fear, between endurance and breaking. She asked Allah for protection, for guidance, for mercy, for forgiveness over and over again until the words blurred together and all that remained was her desperate broken heart.
And when Yahzaan did not appear for the first three days, she had allowed herself to hope.
Just a little.
She told herself it was an answer. That maybe her prayers were finally being answered. That maybe Allah, in His infinite mercy, was listening to her broken heart. She clung to that thought, grateful for the silence, grateful for the absence that felt like relief.
Still seated on the prayer rug, she opened the Quran. Her voice was soft as she recited, the familiar verses. Each word slowed her breathing, eased the tightness in her chest, stitched something fragile back together inside her.
When her eyes began to burn and her lids grew heavy, she closed the book carefully. She pressed a kiss to its cover and returned it to its place with care, as if setting something precious back where it belonged.
The truth remained, no matter how much she prayed.
She still couldn’t accept that she was married.
The word felt unreal, like it belonged to someone else’s life. This house didn’t feel like home. It felt too large, too quiet, too strange, filled with expensive things that didn’t belong to her. But she had nowhere to go. No door she could open that didn’t lead her right back here. So every night, she prayed for the same thing, that Yahzaan would forget about her, that he would leave her untouched, unseen, alone.
On the second day, she had tried to leave.
She hadn’t even reached the door.
The two women who worked in the penthouse stopped Her and One of them handed her a phone without a word. Layla’s fingers trembled as she brought it to her ear.
His voice came through immediately. Deep. Calm. Controlled.
“If you dare to leave the house, Layla, there will be consequences.”
The line went dead before she could speak.
She hadn’t tried to leave again.
That was the moment she understood what this place truly was. Not a home. Not safety. A gilded cage, beautiful on the outside, locked tight from inside. A prison designed to look like a privilege.
She took a sigh and folded her prayer rug carefully and placed it back inside the cupboard. It was already ten at night. The penthouse was quiet now, empty of other voices. The women left every afternoon at two, and after that, the silence belonged to her alone.
Just as it had all week.
She went downstairs to refill her water bottle, the cool tile against her bare feet familiar now. Before returning upstairs, she checked the locks on the doors once, then again making sure they were secure, as if that ritual might offer some small sense of control. Only after that did she feel settled enough to turn away. Upstairs. In to the bedroom.
The bed looked the same as it always did, neatly made, untouched. The sheets were soft beneath her fingers, but the comfort felt foreign, almost wrong, in a way she couldn’t explain. She lay down on the mattress and turned onto her side, curling into herself, her back to the empty space beside her.
She hadn’t checked her phone in a long time. Not since she realized it held nothing that would make this better. That was another kind of loss. A quieter one. One she didn’t let herself think about anymore.
She closed her eyes.
Sleep came slowly, uneven and light, pulling her under it's spell.
It was past midnight when she felt the weight settle against her abdomen.
At first, she thought it was a dream. Her eyes opened sluggishly, heavy with sleep, her mind struggling to catch up. Then she felt the arms, one, then the other wrap around her waist, pulling her back until she was pressed against a solid chest behind her.
Warm and Steady.
Her body went still.
The familiar scent of his expensive cologne reached her a second later.
Her body reacted before her mind caught up. She tried to move away, a small instinctive shift, but his arm tightened around her waist.
He groaned softly near her ear.
“Stop moving,” he murmured. “You’re making me excited.”
The words hit her like cold water.
She went completely still.
There was a pause, as if he noticed the way her body locked beneath his. Then he spoke again, his tone lighter, almost amused.
“No salaam? No how are you? No warm welcome for your husband?”
Out of habit, her lips moved automatically.
“Assalamualaikum.”
He chuckled quietly at her answer. His face dipped toward her neck, his lips brushing her skin, pressing brief, careless kisses there. She stiffened further, her muscles tightening, breath shallow.
Before she could react, he turned her toward him. His hand guided her chin up, and his mouth found hers. The kiss was brief but deliberate.
She didn’t respond.
She stayed rigid, fear sitting heavy in her chest, even as he pulled her closer and tightened his hold, pressing her against him again.
“Relax,” he said after a moment. “I’m not going to do anything tonight.”
The words didn’t loosen her.
“I just want to hold you,” he added, sounding tired now. “I’m exhausted.”
With that, his grip eased just enough to be bearable. His breathing slowed. His eyes closed.
He settled behind her as if the matter was finished.
God knew how long she lay there, wide awake, unmoving, listening to his breath, knowing better than to mistake stillness for safety. She waited for the moment he might wake and pull her closer, devour her like a hungry wolf. Every shift in his breathing made her tense, every small movement of the bed sent her heart racing.
His hold remained unchanged. Heavy and Still.
But that moment never came.
Eventually, exhaustion crept in where fear had been. Her body, worn down and could no longer stay alert. Her thoughts slowed. Her eyes burned, then closed.
Sleep took her quietly, deep and dreamless, before she could stop it.
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End of the chapter🤍
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