Zaid was gone by morning.
No note. No sound. Just the lingering heat on the pillow where his head had been. Lina stared at it longer than she should have, hoping he'd come walking back in, bare-chested, coffee in hand, with some charming excuse. But the apartment was silent, and the only thing that remained of him was the photograph she couldn't stop looking at.
She had studied every line of that photo a dozen times in the last four hours. Her brother, Karim—smiling, alive, strong. And right beside him, Zaid, looking younger but unmistakably the same man who'd kissed her until she forgot what pain felt like.
She didn't even cry. Not yet.
Instead, Lina did what she always did when her world turned sideways—she researched.
She dragged out her old case files and powered up her ancient laptop. Names, locations, connections. Everything from the time Karim vanished during a classified mission in Syria two years ago. There was always a piece missing, always a blank where answers should've been.
Now that blank had a name.
Zaid Rami.
A few databases later, she struck something. A buried military record. Scrubbed mostly clean. Former special operations. Attached to a black-ops unit under NATO command, disbanded after a failed operation near the Turkish border. No mention of Karim. No mention of what happened to the rest of the unit. Just a cold end date.
Disavowed. Erased.
And that was the scariest kind of silence.
Her pulse ticked like a bomb in her wrist.
She needed answers. And if Zaid wouldn't give them, she'd find someone who would.
Meanwhile, 3,000 miles away, Zaid stood in a safehouse in Beirut, stripped of charm and civilian clothes. He was back in black tactical gear, the pistol holstered at his waist feeling like an old scar you learn to stop noticing.
Across from him sat Salim Asfar.
"You're getting sloppy," Salim said, swirling his espresso with a silver spoon. His eyes were always too calm. "Leaving her alone with that photo? Amateur."
"She wasn't supposed to be involved," Zaid replied coldly.
"She was involved the moment you touched her."
Zaid looked away, jaw tight.
Salim leaned in. "You can still finish the job. Bring her in. Karim wants to see his sister."
Zaid flinched. "He's alive?"
Salim only smiled.
And it was the kind of smile that promised nothing but pain.