Semua Bab A Twist In My Marriage Deal With The CEO : Bab 181 - Bab 190

The scent of cardamom coffee still lingered in the air as Rami stared at his laptop, the glow of the screen etching lines of frustration onto his face. Outside, the Amman sunset painted the hills in shades of burnt orange, but inside our small living room, the weight of uncertainty felt heavy. "I keep running the numbers," he muttered, dragging a hand through his hair. "An IT firm here would need servers, licenses, hardware... Even a skeleton team requires capital we don’t have." I watched him from the worn armchair, Farah asleep in my lap after a day chasing pigeons in the park. His shoulders were tens, that familiar armor he wore when battling invisible enemies. Dubai’s ghost still haunted him. "Then don’t start there," I said softly. "Start small. Something that doesn’t need six-figure investments." He glanced up, skeptical. "Like what? A flower shop?" "Why not? Fresh blooms every morning, the smell of jasmine—" "—and margins thinner than paper," he cut in gently. "The

The office smelled like burnt coffee and frustration. I pushed open the blue door with my hip, balancing two foil-wrapped kebab sandwiches and a plastic container of homemade tabbouleh in my arms. The silence hit me first, no frantic typing, no heated discussions about coding languages I barely understood. Just the whirring of an overworked ceiling fan and the faint hum of a single laptop. Rami sat slumped at his desk, his head buried in his hands, fingers digging into his scalp like he wanted to peel back his own skin. The whiteboard behind him was a battlefield of half-erased equations and angry question marks. I set the food down carefully, the crinkling of foil too loud in the hollow quiet. "Habibi?" He didn’t move. I touched his shoulder, and he flinched, before looking up at me with bloodshot eyes. The laptop screen reflected on his glasses, lines of code scrolling endlessly like they’d written themselves into a noose. "They left," he said. His voice was scraped raw.

The front door creaked open hours too early. I looked up from folding Farah's tiny socks to see Rami standing in the doorway, his tie loose, his suit jacket slung over one shoulder. The shadows under his eyes looked like bruises in the afternoon light. "You're home early," I said, my voice too bright for the weight settling in my chest. He didn't answer, just dropped his keys on the side table with a clatter that made me wince. Farah was napping one wrong sound and she'd be up for hours. I followed him to the kitchen, watching as he poured himself a glass of water with deliberate, too-careful movements. The kind of control that came right before breaking. "What happened?" I asked softly. The glass hit the counter harder than necessary. "Nothing. That's the problem." His laugh was jagged. "No matter how hard we work, no matter how many features Yusuf adds" He ran a hand through his hair, leaving it standing in wild tufts. "It's not enough." I reached for him, but he turne

The phone's ring shattered the fragile silence of our house at 3:17 AM. My body knew before my mind did - that particular hour belonged only to one person now. I looked at Farah's sleeping face, her tiny fingers still clutching the stuffed rabbit. The one she refused to sleep without since he left.I caught the phone on the third ring, my bare feet hitting the cold tile floor as I scrambled to answer before it woke Farah. The balcony door stuck when I tried to slide it open, another quirk of this old apartment that Rami would have fixed immediately. The metallic screech made me wince as I finally escaped into the night air."Dema?" His voice came through clearer than it had in weeks, the static of our usual poor connections noticeably absent. He sounded... different. More rested. Like Germany had already begun erasing the exhaustion lines that Dubai had carved into his voice."I'm here," I whispered, curling my toes against the wrought-iron railing. The chill of early autumn in Amman

The voices of the neighborhood women buzzed around me like persistent flies, their words ringing in my ears until I couldn’t take it anymore. "Dema, you must drink this herbal tea every morning, it strengthens the baby!" "No, no, my dear, you need to rest more. Too much walking will make the baby come early!" "In my day, we ate dates and honey. Look how strong my children turned out!" I forced a smile, nodding along, but inside, I was suffocating. Their endless advice, their knowing glances, the way they patted my belly as if it were public property, it was too much. Even Farah, my sweet baby had started mimicking them, pressing her tiny hands against my stomach and whispering, "Hello, baby!" like the aunties did. That afternoon, I couldn’t take another second of it. "Farah, let’s go to the park," I announced, grabbing her little sandals before she could protest. She jumped up immediately, her dark curls bouncing. "Yay! Swing!" I didn’t even bother changing her clothes