“Is there?”
“Yes.” I met her eyes. “He doesn’t tell me what to wear. Doesn’t isolate me from people. Doesn’t need to know where I am every second.” I paused. “And when he found out what Baba did to me and Zahara… he’s the reason our father is in that hospital bed.”
Mehar’s eyebrows shot up. “He did that? Put Baba in the hospital?”
“Yes.”
A long silence. Then, slowly, a smile spread across Mehar’s battered face.
“Then he’s okay with me.”
I laughed—a real laugh, the first one in days. “Yeah. He’s okay.”
We movedto the living room after breakfast, curling up on opposite ends of the massive sectional with our coffee cups. The view through the floor-to-ceiling windows was stunning—gray water, gray sky, the occasional seagull cutting through the mist.
“Tell me about your life,” Mehar said. “The real version. Not the one Baba told us, about how you and Zahara were living in sin somewhere, corrupted by the West.”
The mention of Zahara’s name sent a familiar ache through my chest. But I pushed through it.
“I own a business now. Sweet Zin. Dessert catering.” I pulled out my phone and showed her the Instagram page—photos of cinnamon rolls, event setups, happy customers. “Started at farmers markets. Now I do corporate events, galas, private parties.”
“Zainab.” Mehar scrolled through the photos, her eyes wide. “This is incredible. You built this yourself?”
“With help.” I thought about Prime. The commercial kitchen he’d built for me. The PR firm he’d hired after the gala incident—quietly, without fanfare, just handling it the way he handled everything. Within forty-eight hours, the narrative had shifted from “roach in cinnamon roll” to “possible sabotage of Black-owned business.” The firm was worth every penny. “But yeah. It’s mine.”
“I’m so proud of you.” Mehar’s voice cracked. “You and Zahara—you got out. You made something of yourselves. While I just…” She trailed off, staring at her hands.
“Hey.” I scooted closer, tilting her chin up. “You survived. That’s not nothing. And now you’re out too. You get to start over.”
“Start over doing what? I don’t have any skills. Ahmad made sure of that. No education. No work experience. I don’t even know how to drive.”
“You know how to cook. Baba made sure all of us knew that much.” I squeezed her hand. “Work for me. At Sweet Zin. I’ll teach you everything else.”
Her eyes went wide. “Really? You’d do that?”
“You’re my sister. Of course I would.” I smiled. “Besides, I need someone I can trust. Someone who won’t?—”
I stopped. The image of Farah’s smirking face flashed through my mind. The roach. The sabotage. The slap that had felt so satisfying and cost me so much.
“Won’t what?” Mehar asked.
“Nothing.” I shook it off. “Just… I need good people around me. And you’re good people.”
Mehar threw her arms around me, squeezing tight despite the pain it probably caused her bruised body. “Thank you, Zainab. Thank you.”
I held her close, breathing in the familiar scent of my sister. My family. The only family I had any connection to except?—
Yusef.
The thought hit me like a punch to the gut.
While I sat here in this beautiful beach house, eating pancakes and making plans, my nephew was somewhere with Rashid. Being molded. Being broken. Being turned into something he was never meant to be.
Was he okay? Was he eating? Was he scared?
Of course he was scared. He was twelve years old, ripped from his bed in the middle of the night by men who thought brutality was the same as love.
I pulled back from Mehar’s embrace, blinking away the tears that had sprung up without warning.
