Chapter 4.

"Away from here." I didn't step back, even though every instinct told me to. "I'm taking my son and I'm leaving. Tonight."

"You're not going anywhere."

"I don't want to stay in that house." My voice cracked, but I kept going, because if I stopped now I'd lose whatever courage I had left. "I don't like this place. I don't know any of you. Something about your family makes my skin crawl, and I am not raising my son in it. We're leaving."

Khalil's jaw tightened. "This isn't your decision to make."

"He's my son."

"He's also my brother's." The words landed flat, final, like a door closing. He turned his head slightly, toward the man standing near the second car. "Reza. Take him."

"No—" I lunged, but Reza was already moving, already lifting Rayyan gently but firmly out of my reach. My son's cry cut through the night, and I fought against Khalil's grip as he seized my arm.

"Let go of me. Let go of my son, let go of me—"

He didn't let go. He didn't even slow down. He pulled me back through the gates, back across the courtyard, back toward the house I'd just risked everything to escape, and I kept talking the entire way because it was the only weapon I had left. "You can't keep us here. This is kidnapping. This is my child. I have rights, I have—"

"Save your breath," Khalil muttered, not even looking at me.

We came around the corner of the main house into a smaller courtyard, and I heard raised voices before I saw the source of them. Noura stood in the center, her face raw with something sharper than anger, hurt, deep and personal, aimed at three people standing before her with their heads bowed.

"Two hours," Noura was saying, her voice shaking. "My son's body arrived and you were nowhere. Nowhere. After everything, after all these years, you couldn't manage to be here for this?"

A woman, older, dressed in dark mourning clothes, stepped forward first. "Noura, I'm sorry, truly, we—"

"Don't." Noura's hand came up. "Don't apologize to me, Safiya. Explain."

Safiya's shoulders sagged. Beside her stood two younger men, clearly her sons, both looking as though they'd rather be anywhere else on earth.

" Our Grandma was ill," the taller one said quietly. "We had to go to the village, to see her. She collapsed yesterday. We were coming back when we heard about Zayn, and then there was an accident on the highway, traffic backed up for miles. We came as fast as we could, I swear it."

"Omar is telling the truth," the other added. "We tried calling ahead. The signal out there is—"

"I don't care about the signal." Noura's voice broke on the last word, and for a moment she looked less like a matriarch and more like exactly what she was, a mother who had lost her son and felt abandoned by everyone who should have stood beside her for it. Amira stood a few feet away, arms folded, watching her mother with quiet, careful eyes, saying nothing.

That was the moment Khalil chose to drag me into the courtyard.

"Mama."

Noura turned, and whatever grief had softened her face a moment ago vanished instantly, replaced by something harder.

"She was trying to leave," Khalil said, no hesitation, no shame in his voice at all. "Through the window. With Rayyan. One of the maids saw them near the outer wall."

Silence dropped over the courtyard like a physical thing. Safiya, Omar, and Tariq turned to stare at me. Amira's arms unfolded slowly, her expression shifting into something I couldn't read.

Noura crossed the distance between us in three sharp steps.

"We haven't even buried my son," she said, her voice trembling with a fury that had nowhere else to go. "His body isn't even in the ground, and you were already running. With his child."

"I was scared," I said, my voice small against the weight of everyone watching. "I didn't know what you people would do to me, I just wanted to take Rayyan somewhere safe—"

"Safe?" She spat the word back at me like it was filthy. "You think anywhere is safer for that boy than with his own blood?"

"He's my son too—"

The slap came before I even saw her hand move.

My head snapped sideways, pain blooming hot and immediate across my cheek, and I staggered, catching myself against Khalil's arm before I fully understood what had happened. The courtyard rang with silence. I lifted my hand slowly to my face, feeling the shape of her palm still burning into my skin.

Noura stood there, breathing hard, her own hand trembling in the air like she was surprised by what it had just done, though nothing in her expression suggested regret.

"Rayyan," she said, loud enough for everyone in the courtyard to hear, loud enough that it wasn't meant for me at all — it was a declaration, "is an Al-Rashid heir. He belongs with his father's family. And he will not be going anywhere."

No one spoke. Not Amira, not Safiya, not her sons. Not even Khalil, whose grip on my arm hadn't loosened once through the entire exchange.

I stood there with my cheek on fire and my son nowhere in sight, and understood, finally and completely, that I hadn't stumbled into a house of grieving strangers.

I had walked directly into a claim being staked on my child, and no matter how loudly I screamed, no matter how many times I ran, this family had no intention of ever letting him go.