She wasn’t alone.
He hadn’t takeneverythingwith him.
Chapter 12
“What the hell is wrong with you?”
Zayn turned slowly, a dark scowl tugging at his mouth.He found himself staring at all three of his younger cousins—Saif, Ramzi, and Rylan—lined up like a damn intervention.His jaw clenched.He didn’t know which one he wanted to punch first.
“What exactly did I do?”he growled, his voice low and warning.
“You’ve been a raging jackass for months,” Saif snapped.“And now you’re getting worse.”
Zayn stepped to the side, but Saif blocked his path—a mistake, given Zayn’s mood.Saif might’ve matched him in size and training, but Zayn had age, rank, and the kind of experience that taught a man how to destroy someone without raising his voice.
“Move,” he bit out.
“No.”Saif’s hand lifted between them like a wall.“You don’t want to talk?Fine.But you don’t get to steamroll everyone in your path.”
Ramzi moved up beside his brother, arms crossed, jaw tight.“You were doing better a few weeks ago,” he said.“Almost like you were finding your way out of the hole you’d crawled into.”
Zayn’s fists curled at his sides.“My mood is none of your damn business.”
“It is if your temper explodes and Nahla ends up in the crossfire,” Rylan said, his voice calm but weighted.He was the quiet one.The tallest.The most dangerous.When Rylan spoke, people listened.
Zayn froze.
“Nahla?”he echoed, voice sharp.“What about Nahla?”
“She’s sad,” Rylan said flatly.“She won’t say why.But something’s wrong.”
Zayn’s pulse thudded in his ears.“What the hell do you mean she’s sad?”
“She cries in the garden,” Ramzi said.“Or stares out the window like she’s waiting for someone who isn’t coming.”
“And she’s shutting us out,” Saif added.“You want to tell us what the hell you did?”
Zayn looked between them.There’d always been a natural divide between the older and younger cousins—he, Angela, Laith, and Rafi had stuck together since childhood.The rest had formed their own little pack.He’d never begrudged it.
But Nahla?
She was the baby.His baby sister.Sweet.Kind.Gentle in a way that felt foreign in their world.He wasn’t close to her—not the way he should’ve been—but he’d always protected her.
And now she was crying?
“What happened?”he demanded, every muscle in his body tightening.
None of them answered, all of them staring back at him as if he was the problem.
But in his case, Zayn knew that the answer didn’t lie with Nahla.
It lay withher.
Azlyn.
Yesterday’s Academy Awards had felt like a blade in his ribs.Seeing her up there, next to Olivia, accepting the Oscar forBest Documentary, had shattered something inside him.
She’d done it.
