CHAPTER SEVEN

Zahara's POV

"Zahara, I think he got everything." The words settled into my body like...stones, dropped into still water spreading outward— until every part of me felt the weight of them. 

I pressed my back harder, against the hallway wall...forcing air into lungs that suddenly refused to cooperate.

"Where are they now?" I asked— proud of how level my voice came out even as my pulse hammered against my throat.

"Inside. Safe. I locked every window and I am not letting them near the door until you get here." Priya's breathing was uneven on the other end with the sound of her pacing audible even through the phone. "But Zahara, this man knew what he was looking for. He was not some random photographer chasing a story. He had their names ready before I even opened my mouth."

My blood went cold at that. A stranger with a camera was a coincidence but a stranger who already knew Cherry and Edward's names was something else entirely…something deliberate, something that reached directly into the careful architecture of the life I had spent five years building around my children.

"I am coming," I said. "Do not let anyone in. Not delivery men, not neighbors, no one at all you do not recognize by name."

"What do I tell them if he comes back?"

"Call the police if he does. Do not try to handle it yourself."

I hung up and stood there for a moment longer, with my mind already working through the mechanics of leaving a house that watched everything I did...without ever seeming to watch at all.

Staff who noted my movements without being asked to. A husband who had already caught me sneaking through his hallways once, asking questions about a name I was never supposed to hear.

I found Marta, the housekeeper, arranging the flowers in the front sitting room. And I forced my voice into something casual…something that would not invite a second look.

"I need the car this afternoon...," I said. "A friend of mine is having a difficult day and I would like to check on her."

Marta glanced up, her expression unreadable in the way of someone trained to notice everything...and comment on nothing. "Of course, Mrs. Ivas. Should I let Mr. Ivas know you have gone out?"

"That is not necessary. I will be back before dinner."

It was a small lie, the kind that should not have mattered but I felt it settle uncomfortably in my chest anyway…like one more brick added to a wall I was building faster than I could account for the pieces.

The drive across the city felt longer than it should have, every red light stretching my nerves thinner…every car that lingered too long behind us feeding a paranoia I could not afford to indulge and could not seem to stop either.

By the time I reached Priya's building, I was already out of the car before the driver had fully stopped. Taking the stairs instead of waiting for the elevator...my heart sitting in my throat all the entire way up.

Priya opened the door before I could even knock, pulling me inside and locking it again behind me in one motion.

"They are fine." She said quickly, reading the panic on my face before I could ask. "Scared—but fine. Edward has not stopped asking questions."

I found them in the living room…Cherry curled into the corner of the couch with a book she was not actually reading, Edward standing at the window with his small hands pressed to the glass, watching the street below with an intensity no five year old should carry.

"Mum." Cherry was up and hugged me before I had fully crossed the room, her arms tight around my waist…and I held her the way I had held her through every fever and every nightmare, as though my body alone could keep the world from reaching her.

"I am here, I am here, baby." I murmured into her hair.

Edward did not move from the window, his little voice steady in a way that worried me more than if he had cried. "The man had a big camera mum...," he said. "He said my name before I told him."

My stomach turned over. "What exactly did he say, sweetheart?"

"He said, is that Edward? Just like that. Like he already knew me." Edward finally turned from the window…his eyes searching my face for an explanation I did not have. "How did he know me, Mum?"

I knelt in front of him, choosing my words, as carefully— as I had chosen every word in five years of protecting them from a truth too large for small shoulders.

"I do not know yet, but I am going to find out. And if I do— I am not going to let anyone hurt you or your sister. That is a promise."

He studied me the way he always did when he suspected an adult was smoothing over something sharper underneath…a habit he had inherited from a father he had never met and did not know existed.

I hated, in that moment, how much of Armando lived in his son's face without either of them ever knowing it.

Priya pulled me aside once the twins had settled in front of a cartoon neither of them was truly watching, her arms crossed— her expression the particular blend of worry and frustration she reserved for moments like this.

"You cannot keep doing this alone, Zahara. Whatever is happening in that house…it is starting to reach them. You need to tell Armando the truth before someone else does it for you."

"I cannot..." I said, the same answer I always gave, though it felt thinner every time I repeated it. "Not yet. Not until I understand what I am protecting them from."

"And if it is already too late for that?"

I did not have an answer for her, because some part of me had already begun to suspect the same thing, that whatever quiet war was unfolding around Armando's locked door and my mother's name and a photographer who knew my son before he had ever met him…it had already found its way to my children whether I was ready or not.

I stayed until the light outside began to fade, and I was certain my twins were calm enough to sleep…then forced myself back into the car for the drive home, rehearsing an explanation for my absence the entire way.

The estate was dark when I arrived, most of the windows unlit—the household already settled for the night.

I let myself in quietly through the side entrance, grateful for the empty hallway, and made it halfway to the staircase before a voice stopped me, cold— from the shadow of the study doorway.

"You said you would be back before dinner?"

Armando stepped into the light, still fully dressed despite the hour. His expression was unreadable, in a way that always meant— he had already decided something, and was only waiting to see if I would lie to his face about it.

"I lost track of time," I said, as my heart started climbing into my throat.

"You have been gone for six hours, Zahara." He studied me with the same careful attention he had turned on the locked door the night before…as though he was cataloguing every detail that did not add up.

"And you did not take your phone with you, which I only know— because it has been sitting on your nightstand, ringing since three o'clock. Whoever you were with, they wanted you badly enough to call eleven times."

My blood turned to ice. I had left my personal phone behind on purpose…careful not to carry anything that might connect back to Priya's number, in a house full of people paid to notice such things, but I had never imagined he would go looking for it himself.

"You went through my room," I said, buying time I did not have.

"I did..." He did not flinch, or even apologize, he simply held my gaze— with a stillness that made the hallway feel smaller than it was.

"And I think it is time you told me who has been calling you eleven times in one afternoon, and why the caller ID only says one name. Priya.”