She didn’t reply. She couldn’t. She could barely stay upright. Her knees felt like they were about to give. Reza caught her arm, steadying her.
“Hena, what’s going on?” he asked.
He looked around, taking in the hushed voices. The wide eyes. People were pulling out phones to snap pictures. To share proof this was really happening.
“Everyone’s acting like they’ve seen a ghost,” he said.
Because they had. Except Nasir was no ghost. He was real. He was here. At her sister’s wedding.
Which was bad. Very bad.
She craned her neck, searching for Haris. He’d know what to do. Except—she winced—he was at the police station.
Nasir scanned the space. At last, he saw her. Time stopped moving.
He took a step toward her, then paused. Unsure.
She gestured to the door.
He nodded. Because he knew.
They needed to talk.
Hena,Sister of the Bride
Three years ago, I was a girl getting ready to marry the boy I loved.
It had been a bumpy journey—from a fairy-tale beginning to the nightmarish years of dealing with his gambling addiction. High-stakes tables. Always. A handful of enormous wins, followed by losses so big they triggered the sale of his cars, his condo. They triggered a broken rib and too many black eyes to count from the people who enabled him. Who expected to be paid.
I didn’t give up on him. I stayed by his side. We’d been together nine years, and most of those years were good. Perfect, really. And love isn’t love if it breaks at the first obstacle. Or the second. Or the third. And I loved him. So much. No, he wasn’t perfect, but he was kind and gentle—everything my father wasn’t. Addiction is an illness, isn’t it? I saw behind the sickness to the man he truly was—the one I had fallen in love with in college. The man I knew he could be again.
I waited for him to hit rock bottom. And when he did—when he appeared with eyes so beaten he could barely open them, his tibia shattered—he told me thiswas it. I saw it in his swollen eyes. He meant it this time.
I drove him to his weekly meetings. To his therapy appointments. I saw the work he put in, and I saw the results. He was better. He wasn’t hiding his phone from me anymore. He let me check his bank statements without hesitation. We were laughing together. He was dragging me once again to the movies, to concerts, and even if I pretended to complain, I loved it. Loved seeing my Nasir come back to me. He was doing the work, and now he was clean. Which meant we could finally get our life back on track.
We set a wedding date. Sure, there was stress. His parents for starters. But we powered through. All was well. Caterer and photographer deposits paid for. Honeymoon booked. A cute cottage in Coral Gables we were days away from closing on.
And then, sitting at my bridal vanity, getting ready for the professional photographs, I saw the alert on my phone: My bank account was empty. Every cent gone, and along with it, any dream I had of our happily ever after.
The video capture shared for the world to see was not altered. Every word was mine. Yes, I screamed at him that morning. It was bad enough to fall off the wagon, but to steal from me? That was a line he had never crossed until then.
But then he told me the truth. He told me everything.
How they kidnapped him the night before, after the mehndi ended. Covered his head with a sack. Dragged him to a car. He’d lain tied up in the trunk for hours.
He held out his hands. I nearly fainted at the sightof his nails—gone. Pulled out with pliers. One by one. Only then did I notice him wince as he moved—his shoulder was dislocated. Lifting his shirt, he revealed a sea of purple and black bruises.
“They want to kill me,” he said. “They won’t stop until I’m dead.”
“How much do you owe?” I’d asked.
“I don’t owe anything. I’m clean, Hena. I’ve stayed clean.”
“Then why?” My voice cracked. “Why would they do this?”
The lender was upset when Nasir stopped gambling. It’s not easy to lose one’s best customer. In the ensuing months, they’d grown paranoid, convinced Nasir had turned on them. That he was informing. Preparing to take them down. They gave him one more night to come clean, but Nasir knew no answer would satisfy them. He was a dead man walking.
“I’m calling the police,” I told him.
