“Go,” Rashid said quietly. “Go to him.”
Yusef didn’t move. Didn’t respond. Just stood there, staring at nothing.
“Yusef.” Rashid’s voice cracked slightly. “Go.”
The boy took a step. Then another. Moving like he was walking through water, each motion requiring tremendous effort. When he reached me, he stopped. Looked up.
For a split second—just a flash—I saw something behind his eyes. Relief. Recognition. A tiny flicker of the boy I knew.
Then it was gone. Replaced by that terrible emptiness.
“Hey, lil man.” I kept my voice soft. Gentle. The way I used to talk to him when we played chess. “You’re safe now. Go sit in the back, alright? I’ll be there in a minute.”
He didn’t respond. Just turned and walked toward the rear of the warehouse where I’d set up a chair and some blankets. His footsteps echoed in the cavernous space.
I watched him go. Felt something inside me crack.
Then I turned back to Rashid.
“Your daughter,” I said flatly.
I nodded at Thad. He disappeared through a side door and returned a moment later with Farah.
She looked worse than her father.
The bandage wrapped around her head was stained with dried blood. Her face was pale, her eyes swollen from crying. But it was something else that caught my attention. Something in the way she moved.
She wouldn’t look at anyone. Kept her eyes fixed on the floor. Her arms were wrapped around herself, protective, defensive. And when Thad’s hand brushed her arm as he released her, she flinched so violently she nearly fell.
I frowned. That wasn’t just pain from the ear. That was something else.
“Farah.” Rashid’s voice broke. He crossed the space between them and pulled her into his arms. “My baby. My baby girl.”
She collapsed against him, sobbing. Her whole body shook with the force of it. Rashid held her tight, one hand cradling herbandaged head, murmuring something in Arabic that I couldn’t hear.
I watched them. Father and daughter. Monster and victim.
I had done that. Cut off her ear. Made her scream. Reduced her to this trembling, broken thing.
I felt nothing.
Rashid finally pulled back, cupping Farah’s face in his hands, examining her. His jaw tightened when he saw the bandage. The missing ear. The evidence of what I had done.
“You’re dying,” I said.
He looked at me. The mask slipped back into place—the composure, the control—but it was thinner now. Fragile.
“I am.”
“That’s why you’re ending this?”
“I want to spend my last days with my daughter.” He pulled Farah closer, tucking her against his side. “Not waging war against a man I raised.”
“You should’ve thought about that before you kidnapped a twelve-year-old boy.”
“I was protecting my family. My legacy.”
“By torturing a child?”
