Chapter 124

He would speak with careful confidence, choosing phrases that kept her hope alive without making any firm commitments he could not keep. But as time passed and each new day slipped by without progress, his own attempts felt increasingly futile. The leads dried up one after another, the searches turned up nothing concrete, and slowly, steadily, he felt his own hope receding like water draining from a cracked vessel.

He set his fork down again and looked across the table at his mother. Her face was a mirror of his own exhaustion, lines carved by days that blurred into each other. Her face, lined with worry that had deepened over the weeks, held steady as she waited for him to continue. The room remained quiet except for the faint ticking of the clock on the wall and the occasional soft clink of dishes as Dilshad cleared something in the kitchen beyond.

It had only ever been a mere assumption that Alizeh was with Burhan. The assumption had become a conviction, not because o