Chapter 122

Moosa exhaled slowly and then squatted down beside the dead man. He squatted with the ease of a man who had done this many times before. His movements were unhurried, deliberate. He looked at Huzaifa’s face for a brief moment, as if ensuring that the man could no longer hear him, even though death had already made that certain.

“Nobody,” Moosa whispered, his voice low and steady, “I repeat nobody should know her past, except if she chooses to tell them herself.” The whisper was not for the dead man; it was for the universe, a vow spoken into the void. His eyes hardened as the words continued to spill from his lips, each one carrying conviction and obsession. “I will destroy every existence that has even caught a small glimpse of her in that state. Every memory, every witness, every trace.”

He paused, his jaw tightening. “My wife’s past is stained, yes. But there is no one purer, no one more innocent than her. Her innocence was not in her history; it was in her heart, and