“Ulfat! Have you seen my black kur—”

Rehman stopped short, his words mingling into silence as he entered the kitchen. His wife, contrary to popular opinion, wasn’t the typical homemaker whom you’ll find slaving away in the kitchen. 

Yes, she was mainly responsible for the household but that was just for designating and managing the budget. The day to day activities including the kitchen came under their manager, Parveen Khala’s purview. 

Ulfat only entered the kitchen when she wanted to. When she cooked something on their children’s demands or on the rare occurrence Rehman wished for something, or sometimes when Meher or Uzair were being particularly demanding. 

Ulfat owned a franchise of bookstores, spread across the city. 

She was mainly immersed in her business most of the time. She had always had a burning passion for literature and poetry. When she married and came to the Baloch household, she had had just one request to make to her new husband. 

To let her build one bookstore in the town and look after it. 

But Rehman, usually supernaturally in control of himself, had never quite developed the ability to restrain himself when his family asked for something. And Ulfat defying all expectations, had turned out to be quite the shrewd businesswoman herself. 

“At least let me invest in the franchise? Your bookstores are garnering quite good profits annually. I am not being biased”, Rehman had tried cajoling. 

“No can do, sir. I am not letting your blood money into my business. Stay away—”, Ulfat had responded, playfully swatting and then kissing his frustrated protests away for good measure. 

The bookstores were probably the only business venture of the Dakaits that wasn’t built on blood money or any illegal funds. 

So, the point was, as far as Rehman knew, Ulfat didn’t have time to spare in the kitchen, cooking what appeared to be quite a feast. There was his wife, instead of commanding an army of sous chefs as expected, standing by the stove herself, stirring a suspiciously delicious smelling pot, while looking at what appeared to be a small recipe book. 

There was no one else in the kitchen. The counters and the table were filled with colourful paraphernalia of half cut vegetables, freshly grinded masalas, fragrantly chopped herbs, an odd container or two and various other kitchen utensils.

“Did I miss an anniversary or something?”

Rehman asked almost cautiously, trying to remember any special occasion he had missed, being too absorbed in his work as usual. Ulfat almost dropped the ladle into the pot, startled by her husband’s voice appearing suddenly just beside her ear. 

“Goodness! Rehman! Seriously. How many times have I told you not to startle me when I am working in the kitchen? Phir mujhe chot lg jaegi aur aap pura ghar sar pe utha loge…”

“Sorry..”, Rehman said sheepishly even as his eyes showed blatant curiosity, “But why are you slaving in the kitchen? Do I have to hire more cooks?”

“Its nothing like that. I was just feeling like cooking today…”

Rehman came around Ulfat and peered into the pot and his eyes caught the neat lines of his wife’s handwriting on the recipe book kept on the counter. 

“You just suddenly felt like cooking rogan josh?”, Rehman raised an eyebrow. Ulfat looked sheepish. 

“Why? Can’t I feel like cooking a—”

“A dish that I know you don’t care for much because you find it too rich for your taste?”

“Damnit!”, Ulfat whispered under her breath, “how do you even know that? You know what, I don’t want to know— twenty years of marriage, at this point you probably know the pattern of my breathing—”

“Three small ones, half a second pause and another—”, Rehman answered deadpanned without missing a beat, “but that is not the point. I know Faizal doesn’t even know the name of the dish, Uzair and Meher have gone to the movies and I certainly didn’t ask for it.. So—”

“Can you not give a rest to your detective brain for one second? Everything is not a puzzle you need to solve—”

“To me it is. You know how my mind works, my dear. So you better tell me who has had my queen slaving in the kitchen the entire afternoon?”

“He doesn’t even know I am cooking…”

“Oh it is a he, then? Do I know him? I have to know him…”

“Rehman…”

Rehman smirked as Ulfat groaned, dropping her beautiful head on his shoulder, her messily tied mahogany hair tickling his neck softly. 

“It's for Hamza, isn’t it?”, Rehman asked softly, his fingers already threading through her hair gently. 

“He was just telling me stories of his childhood and mentioned how his Ammi used to cook rogan josh on special occasions and he misses her sometimes and—”,Ulfat's voice was muffled against his kurta. 

“And so you decided to make it tonight for dinner and invite him”, it wasn’t a question so Ulfat didn’t answer. 

The ache spreading through Rehman’s chest was sweet. Sometimes he marvelled at how quickly Ulfat had taken to the young Baloch. At the beginning Rehman had believed his wife had been trying to fill the wound left from their eldest’s absence but then he had felt ashamed of his own reasoning. 

Nothing would fill the gaping chasm Naeeim’s death had left behind in their hearts. 

Rehman will always falter while drawing in air. The easy almost subconscious pattern to his breathing, forever destroyed. Ulfat will always have that slight haunting in her eyes, the everflowing warmth in them chopped off in half. 

But Hamza had made his own place in between them. 

Fitting inside the gaping hole left in Rehman and Ulfat’s souls like a messy, imperfect piece of a jigsaw puzzle which will never fill it completely but stop their hearts from falling out of their chests all the same. 

“Don’t look at me like that”, Ulfat whispered, finally moving her head away from him.

“Like what?”, Rehman whispered equally low. 

“With pity.”

Something fractured in his chest and Rehman pulled Ulfat back in his arms, enveloping her in an embrace just tight enough to hurt pleasantly yet not suffocate her at the same time. 

“Meri jaan… you are my spine, my heart, my strength, the very air in my lungs. The only person I pity is myself. The most powerful man in this part of the country and I can’t even—”

“Hush..”, Ulfat’s hands tightened their grip on his back, her breathing uneven as she pressed a kiss on his chest through the fabric of his kurta, “you have given me everything I will ever need. You… are everything I will ever need.”

His head dropped on top of hers automatically as the simmering noises of the pot and the heady smell of the cooking masalas lingered in the balmy kitchen air. 

“Nevertheless, looks like Faizal and I will get to taste the leftovers, thanks to your darling Hamza—”

Ulfat laughed and the moment lightened immediately. 

“Don’t get high and mighty with me, Sardar. I know perfectly well, the only reason you requested me to cook kheer, was because Hamza and Uzair were cribbing about not getting to the sweets before Donga in Meher’s cousin’s wedding last week.”

Ulfat chuckled and went back to her stirring ignoring her husband’s indignant protests with flourish. 

“Also, your black kurta is in the laundry. I swear you ruin all the cuffs because of the blood—”

And if later that evening, during dinner, Rehman had smiled at Hamza’s delighted compliments to his wife with the softness he had reserved only for his children, no one had been the wiser. 

Through the decades of incessant battles and suffering, if there was one cardinal fact that Rehman Dakait had thoroughly realised, it had to be that waking up to a resurrected consciousness was a far more agonizing process than almost dying. 

Waking up was overrated anyway. 

Every nerve ending in his body was screaming. His entire nervous system was aflame. It hadn’t been a jarring immediate way that he had come to consciousness. 

It had been a slow, long drawn out, incredibly painful saga. 

His mind, cloudy with the nauseating after effects of anaesthesia, had been lucid before his body had fully woken up. He had laid there, eyes closed, trying to make sense of his surroundings, almost paralysed from neck down. And then his fingers had regained sensation and he had been able to move them slightly. 

His extremities had answered after a few moments and it had travelled up his limbs with alacrity. 

But it had been his torso finally gaining the precious touch of life that had almost made him cry.

How embarrassing. 

Rehman had been made aware of every single moment of abuse he had subjected his body to, for almost thirty years in that few minutes. 

His chest a canvas of white hot agony, his abdomen pulsating with a vengeance unforeseen. 

His old scars protested howling. 

The bullet wounds, the lacerations and abrasions, the stabs, the messily done stitches, the bone which had never quite set properly after an incident, the swollen joints, the ligaments going through it over and over again, the regenerated tendons and tissues and the over burdened nerves abused by a steady stream of cigarettes and alcohol. 

In his youth, Rehman Baloch had been reckless to the point of being suicidal. His ferocious ambition had driven his unprepared soul into disastrous ruin. 

At one point, if he had had to fall on a fucking sword to reach the power just at his finger tips, he had done it. His overconfidence in his body’s recuperative abilities had primarily stemmed from the fact that he was perfectly confident no one would care if he did die.  

He was pretty sure he had single handedly given Uzair most of the latter’s blood pressure issues. 

In his defense he had tried controlling his impulses after getting more than an earful from his hysteric young cousin till that latter had been almost in tears, after one time too many of waiting outside the OT not knowing whether his brother would survive or not. 

Marriage had mellowed him more than he cared to admit. 

Ulfat’s pain was one thing Rehman had adamantly refused to accept, no matter the fact that whether he deserved even her concern let alone her devotion, had always been a point of baffled wonder to him. 

Yet now as he lay helplessly drowning in excruciating agony, unable to even breathe let alone scream or cry, Rehman Baloch wondered whether all this power and wealth had been worth it in the end.

All the money in the world hadn’t been able to shield him from the bullets tearing through his gut and then caving his sternum in. 

And all that deferential power and envious influence hadn’t saved him from the way his entire ribcage had fractured as the realisation of betrayal had struck him much before the fists and the bullets. 

Hamza…

How could he have been so blind? So fucking stupid. Such a goddamned rookie idiotic blunder—

‘You know exactly why—’, his own mind answered back, merciless in its clarity. 

“You care too damned much, brat! Feel too damned hard… react too fucking strongly. Your heart will be the fucking end of you.. And when that happens.. You will hear my fucking laugh, even if it comes from the fucking underworld—”

‘Well, Haji, you fucking monster, I can hear your laugh coming from the damned fucking underworld’

Life always did come full circle. 

Rehman must have conveniently forgotten it.

He had snatched his throne through a series of horrifyingly manipulative tactics drenched in betrayals, treacheries and a completely capricious and cruel disregard of everyone else’s life or feelings. 

His legacy was drenched in traitorous bloodshed and littered with shattered pride. 

It was only fitting that his end was soaked in it too. 

But it wasn’t the end, was it? He had to live with this now. Survive the collapse of everything he knew to be true - wade through his own blood and reach an end which seemed too far for reach.

‘But he is my son! My son! I didn’t—’, his broken mangled heart howled still. 

Rehman had felt it scream even then, half blinded in red hot rage and the blood clotting near one eye, hand quaking with a grip so fierce it hurt, barrel pointed at Hamza while he stood in that wretched forest floor. 

Hamza had a gun pointed at him too. His hands had been shaking violently. 

‘Goddamnit kid, steady hands—’, Rehman had almost corrected him, habitually. 

Even if the bullet had been poised to hit him this time. 

If Hamza had thrown the gun away then, and run towards him, Rehman would have still caught him. He would have still protected him. His stupid old heart would have still forgiven him. Even through the blows and the confused anguish and the charred remains of loyalty and love - he would have accepted any fucking reason if it had been just a moment of madness.

But it was a cold premeditated trap, meticulously planned and staged for years. Every smile, every moment of camaraderie or affection, every word, every act of loyalty and devotion had been a carefully crafted lie. A fucking pretense carried out with brutal efficiency. 

Hamza Ali Mazari had done what no one else had been able to do. 

Unravel Rehman Dakait so masterfully, destroy the previously impregnable walls of defence around him with such aplomb that when the time had come, even if there had been a chance of rebuttal, Rehman had faltered, frozen, crumbled. 

Hamza had shot him. 

Hamza had shot him knowing that Rehman never would. He couldn’t shoot the boy. The twenty five year old grown man whose eyes were still painfully young, whose laugh made his entire face glow, who had appeared to love so innocently, yet so deeply.

He couldn’t press the goddamned trigger. He couldn’t steady his infamously rock solid aim. 

Rehman Dakait’s notorious control had failed him completely. 

It had reminded the gangster lord of that one story in a Hindu epic that Ulfat had narrated to him, one evening. About an ill fated warrior, cursed to forget all his skills and his training right at the moment when he had needed it the most. 

The toll of all his sins. 

Exacted in one brutal stroke of fate. 

The second bullet had not hurt as much.

 Maybe his body had already gone into shock and that had numbed most of the pain from the second one shredding through his chest. 

Who was he fooling— he knew perfectly well why it hadn’t hurt as much. 

SP Aslam’s attack was expected. The man had always been maddened in a jealous rage against him. His attack was almost offensive. 

But Hamza… that was his own blood poisoning him. A man he had sheltered like a child for seven long years. Mentored him, guided him, opened up his home to him, let him play with his child, saw him laugh with his wife, roughhouse with his brother… opened up his heart.

And it had all been a game of smoke and mirrors.   

In that single moment, lying in a pool of his own blood, choking, wheezing, struggling to breathe through his shredded insides, his mind had shattered, body had fractured and soul had completely hollowed out. 

‘But he is my son!’

If only his stupid bruised heart would stop screaming for one goddamned second. 

—

Ulfat had fallen asleep with her cheek pressed to his hand, her body curled up in a decidedly uncomfortable position on the chair beside the bed. 

Ulfat…

Rehman’s eyes had searched for her the moment his vision had somewhat cleared off. The stark hospital lights had brought out the ashen pallor of her pulchritudinous face. She looked like she had aged a decade in one night. 

“Ulfat..”, his fingers fluttered weakly against her soft wet cheek. 

The poor woman had undoubtedly cried herself to an exhausted stupor. Her eyes were moving restlessly beneath her papery eyelids, the lower half swollen and reddened. As if she was battling with her nightmares tirelessly. 

Rehman felt his heart, or whatever was left of it, shatter into dust. 

Ulfat had always been his pillar. She was deceptively angelic to look at. But very few people had met the steel and fire behind those playful marble eyes. If he was a mountain, she was a river. She had effectively burrowed through him with a staggering force and he had bent around her obligingly. 

And here she was, a paragon of power, beauty and wit reduced to a husk. 

Again. 

Because of him. 

The guilt would eat him alive if the lingering betrayal wouldn’t. 

Ulfat, Rehman was convinced, was a saint - a messiah sent by some benevolent God who had taken pity on him. 

Her eyes fluttered as the movement of his fingers steadied somewhat. She woke up gently, the exhaustion and grief clear in her sleep drunk gaze. They met him for a second, then widened and she was up with a twang. Like an overstretched bow. 

“Rehman! Oh God! Oh thank god! Oh my god! Nurse… doctor.. someone!”, Ulfat blabbered incoherently, almost falling off her seat as she stood up violently. 

“Easy my love..”, Rehman rasped, his mouth feeling full of cotton wool, his throat parched like the desert and his tongue leaden like sandpaper. 

“Oh god, Rehman.. You need.. Water. I am gonna get ice chips.. Wait…”

Ulfat turned and was about to leave when Rehman used the last burst of his strength and caught her hand. She stilled and turned back to him. His eyes must have said everything his dried throat couldn’t utter yet. 

She sat back down carefully and leaned her forehead to his temple ever so gently. Like the slightest pressure would crush him. 

It took Rehman a minute to realize she was praying under her breath. Weaving gentle gratitude and asking mercy from a ruthless God, feather light against his skin. Her cracked lips moved almost rhythmically. The mild scent of mogra and vanilla seemed to dissipate the strong odour of antiseptic, morphine and blood. 

‘Meri jaan…’

Rehman closed his eyes and breathed. He felt her lips press to the corner of his eyes next. 

Ulfat’s kisses drank away his tears before anyone else could witness that one moment of weakness. 

She always had protected him in her own small yet increasingly impactful ways. 

The doctor swung open the door and Ulfat raised herself immediately. The small quiet in the room broke and Rehman slowly wore the mask of the Bastard King, back again. 

Mutilated and mangled, attached to wires and machines, weak as a kitten physically at least and yet his presence was a live thing blanketing the entire room as it always had. 

The disposition of a warrior and a monarch never did fade, even if Rehman did look like death warmed over. Several times over. 

“Three ribs fractured, two on the left, one on the right, bits of the sternum had pierced one lung, we have platted most of it… breathing troubles might persist. The aortic lining was nicked. One centimeter to the left and we wouldn’t be having this conversation. Brute force trauma to the kidneys, one minor hairline fracture on the back of the cranium.. Probably from the fall. There were minor scratches and abrasions and a very nasty case of road rash. I’m worried about the abdomen though. The intestines were a mess.”

Rehman didn’t even blink. Ulfat’s face had paled, a little green at the gills, but her eyes were dry and her lips didn’t quiver. 

It apparently took more than this to break the Leader of the Balochs and his consort. 

“Recovery time?”,Rehman’s voice was still parched. 

“More than you’ll like for sure. But.. Sher-E-Baloch or not, I will advise you to take it easy for a year, at the very least. I don’t want to be up to my elbows inside your body again rearranging your insides as it lies in pieces—”

“Come on Doc… everyone wants.. a piece.. of me…”, Rehman drawled with a smirk, words interspersed with deliberate pauses because of the pain. 

The surgeon sighed and rolled his eyes. He had been tending to the Dakaits for the past two decades and was well versed in Rehman Baloch’s twisted sense of humour which being as rare as it was, only bloomed in the most inopportune and inappropriate of times. 

“God help us all! If he is joking he’ll be fine. Don’t worry Ulfat Bibi.. your husband will be out of my hospital and back on the streets and giving us both grey hair in no time at all—”

Ulfat snorted, “He wishes. I will tie him to the bed if necessary, don’t you worry doctor sahab.”

The smiles lightened the mood somewhat. 

That was before there was a shout from the corridor. A loud smash and then more screaming. Rehman’s instincts roared and if he had had even a fraction of his strength remaining he would have launched himself from the bed. 

But he could only turn his head towards the noise, that also with much difficulty. 

The world was still somewhat syrupy. 

Ulfat had already reached the door by then. The doctor, hot on her heels. 

“Ulfat.. Don’t—”

Rehman tried to warn but his wife had already run out. 

—

“...ucking dare you! You spineless treacherous snake! And here you were yesterday, pretending, after everything that you did!”

Ulfat gasped as Uzair rammed his fist into Hamza’s abdomen in such a powerful uppercut that the younger man slammed into the opposite wall, winded like he had run a marathon. 

“Hamza! No—”, Yalina cried out, struggling in the almost merciless grip Donga had on her arm. 

Meher was leaning against the wall, near the door of the ICU, holding it in a grip so fierce that it was almost as if her knees could no longer support her own weight. Her face was a pasty shade of grey. She had still not changed her clothes from the previous night. 

A few of their men had collected at the end of the corridor and seemed to be guarding the exit. Two nurses and a resident doctor were cowering at a distance. 

Uzair pulled Hamza by his hair next, ruthless yet precise and bashed his face against the same spot where he had fallen just a second prior. The blood bursting out of his temple made Yalina scream and Meher gasp. 

Ulfat was frozen at the door, unable to grasp the scene which was playing like a nightmare in front of her eyes. For a moment, she thought she was still asleep by Rehman’s bed, and was dreaming up this nonsense. 

But Uzair’s next words brought her back to Earth as the lieutenant to the Baloch gang practically spat them out— vitriol, disbelief and a strangely aggrieved anguish clear in his tone, “Mere bhai ke saath dagaabaazi ki tune tune! Rehman Bhai ke saath dagaabaazi! Namakharam salee!”

Dagaabaazi? 

Betrayal? 

What the hell was Uzair babbling?

“Uzair! What the hell are you doing? Hato usse! Aur Donga Yalina ka haath chodo! Kya badtameezi hain ye? Dimag kharab ho gaya hain tum logo ka! Arre chot lg jaegi use, kya kar rhe ho?”

Ulfat pulled Uzair off Hamza with a beastly strength she didn’t even know she possessed. Maybe it was a mother’s instinct overpowering her intuition which had been screaming at her since yesterday night, when she had first seen Hamza after the incident. 

The poor boy had been bleeding like a slaughtered pig and for the life of him couldn’t meet her eyes. Ulfat had known that very moment that something was very wrong but worry for her husband’s condition and seeing the young man she had grown to love like a little brother or rather like her own child, had shadowed her instincts somewhat. 

Now, in the daylight, in the middle of what looked like an impromptu battlefield, they were blaring at her like sirens. 

“Bhabi aap saamne se hatt jaen, aaj main iska qatl kardunga!”, Uzair shouted, his face contorted in agonized rage even if for some reason his hands were shaking, his eyes suspiciously bright. 

“Pagal ho gye ho! Kya bak rahe ho? Hamza, are you okay?”, Ulfat looked at Hamza, then finally noticed how, even as the latter was heaving, was looking everywhere else except at her. 

“Haan ho gya hoon pagal! If you come to know what your darling Hamza has done, it would drive you insane as well—”

Uzair turned around and went and picked up his mobile from where he had thrown it on the floor in rage and held it out to Ulfat. 

The recording was dodgy and the sound was of poor quality but there was no doubt about the identity of the people on the screen. But what shook Ulfat to her core was what they had been discussing. 

It was a five minute long video which clearly showed how the trap was laid. 

Cold, meticulous, brilliant. 

Calculated, precise, cruel. 

“And remember, Baloch. If you betray me, I will kill that pretty wife of yours before I kill you too and Jameel sahab, I will castrate you.”

SP Aslam Chaudhary warned his two co-conspirators, his words turning in Ulfat’s mind relentlessly in a neverending loop as the video ended. 

The mobile slipped from her numb fingers. Shock gripped her throat with one breathless hand and denial surged like a tsunami inside her. It wasn’t possible. It had to be a trick. There had to  be some explanation to this. Anything else. 

She turned to Hamza. 

He was looking at her now. And Ulfat knew it even before she asked, her voice tremulous even if her resolve hardened like a diamond. A long instilled defence mechanism. 

“Is this true? Did you—”, she walked towards him, voice getting lower as her nerves steadied, “Look at me Hamza!”, she barked at him when he had shifted his gaze. It made the other man jump slightly and his eyes met hers finally. 

The truth was a dragon breathing fire into her lungs. 

“Is it true? Did you betray us? Did you plan this? Is the video real?”

Ulfat Baloch could be terrifying in her own right. Something which most people found out much too late and often to their detriment. Her face had turned paper white. Whether in shock or wrath, no one could determine. 

Hamza breathed. 

“Yes.”

One word. One simple monosyllable. And Ulfat felt her world crumble. 

Yalina let out a single sob from somewhere behind, Meher who had slowly inched to come and stand by her, caught her, pulling her away from Donga’s grasp in one fluid move. Uzair let out an inhuman sound - something caught between anger and pain. 

Ulfat felt the ground beneath her feet shift. Years of cautiously built relationships snapped within a split second. Her heart folded into itself like it was catering to the momentum of being kicked carelessly and with cruel disregard. 

She closed her eyes for a second and a scene from one evening came unbidden to memory. 

Ulfat raised her eyebrows. It looked like a bomb had gone off in Rehman’s study. The entire office was covered in sheets, old files, bulky ledgers and what not. The musty smell of papers and alkaline scent of ink mixed with the smoky flavor of cigarettes had filled the air. 

And in the middle of the battlefield, her husband stood, cigarette dangling from his lips, a stack of papers in one hand and what appeared to be a pocketbook in the condition of completely coming apart in another, an adorable frown between his eyes as he peered into both. 

“Has anyone ever told you, your thinking face makes you look annoyingly hot. Especially if you are wearing your glasses?”, Ulfat chuckled while coming inside, carefully avoiding stepping on the papers littered on the floor. 

“Has anyone ever told you, flattery absolutely works on me”, Rehman smirked through the cigarette, a plume of smoke blowing on Ulfat’s face as put the tea cup on the desk and leaned against it.

“What are you even doing?”, she asked. 

“I have been trying to map all our businesses since the beginning. Do you know, we used to sell soap boxes alongside the drugs at one point?”, Rehman frowned as he picked up a ledger, discarding his trusted pocketbook on the desk. 

“Why am I not surprised..”, Ulfat sighed and picked up a paper and mentally appreciated the patience of their accountants who had to decipher her husband’s infamous chicken scrawl, “why the sudden trip down the memory lane?”

“I need to make a blueprint for the upcoming review. I was thinking of recording it all down. It might prove to be helpful for foraying into new ventures.”

“Sounds like a wise plan. Only that I know, you, meri jaan, have a near eidetic memory. So this is definitely not for your benefit or our businesses. You are doing it for someone else—”, Ulfat saw Rehman look down into a book, almost covering his face with it and knew she had hit the nail right on the head. 

“Thinking of retiring already?”

“You wish. I will go insane doing nothing all day and eat your head. Then you’ll kick me out. No no…. I am merely preparing the boys. We lead a dangerous life, my love. We have to be prepared for every situation.”

The situation being his sudden death because of their innumerable rivals’ uncountable plans succeeding, went unsaid. Ulfat hated it when he did that. Trying to spare her from the truth by weaving flowery words. But she understood it all the same. 

But if her husband thought she wouldn’t catch it, he was dead wrong. 

“Wait… did you say boys? As in plural? As in, Uzair and— someone?”

Rehman gave his wife a long suffering look but it was softened with pride and clear affection. 

“As much as I love my little cousin, Uzair will not be able to handle the entire thing alone. He is a terrific enforcer, knows the inner workings of our business and is well connected within our networks but— his diplomatic skills leave a lot to be desired.”

Ulfat's smile was commiserate. She adored her brother in law and his ferocious devotion towards her husband and their family as a whole, but it was true. Uzair Baloch was a fantastic general but put him on the throne alone and it would be a catastrophe. 

Especially for an empire which basically ran on cloak and daggers as much as it did on Rehman’s legendary reign of terror. 

A sudden shout and a giggle brought the couple’s attention to the window. They looked at each other and then went towards the single window in Rehman’s office, which incidentally faced the garden. 

Ulfat peered down and saw them. 

Hamza was running around letting out theatrically high pitched yelps as Faizal chased him with what looked like the wooden sword Rehman had carved for him some days ago. Their eight year old was yelling. 

Yalina and Meher sat on garden chairs, gossiping and peeling what looked like a mountain of oranges. The late afternoon sunlight was hitting their beautiful hair and lighting the gravel path where Uzair stood barking at someone on the phone. 

“Mercy, Shehenshah! I surrender!”, Hamza yelped again, as the wooden sword hit him at the ankles. 

“There is no surrender in battle, evil king! Only death!”, Faizal shouted and hit Hamza with a ferocity which had Rehman winching in sympathy beside her. 

Uzair, unbeknownst to how close they had come to him, turned at the last moment, just as Hamza barreled into him at full speed, Faizal hot on his heels. The two men tumbled down in a tangle of overgrown limbs, suspiciously feminine shrieks and a giggling child atop. 

“Abbe behenchod! Kya kiya!”

“Abbe haramkhor bacche ke saamne gaali nhi!”

“I will tell Abbu you both are saying bad words. Ammi will make you give money to the swear jar.”

Faizal warned his uncles sagely as the two men groaned, letting go of dignity and contended to lie like a pair of lions basking in the sun together. Meher and Yalina’s laughter filtered in the crisp winter air and reached Ulfat from below. 

“Are you sure, these are the men you want to leave your legacy to?”

Ulfat teased her husband. 

“Hush, I am rethinking all my life choices”, Rehman sighed in her hair as he pulled her by the waist to his chest. 

Ulfat’s answering laughter rumbled through both their bodies as she tucked herself contented by her husband’s side and looked down on her strange messy family, heart feeling full. 

“He was about to give you everything anyway…”

Ulfat’s voice was thin. Mortifyingly weak. She didn’t have to look at Hamza to feel the jolt of bewilderment passing through him. 

“He trusted you. You and Uzair were going to get everything divided equally. He wished you both would continue together but he made sure you both would get your rightful share even if you decided to go your separate ways.”

The hallway was quiet. Not even the crickets outside could gather the courage to sing. 

The sheer weight of the truth had sucked the very air in the space around them. 

Ulfat swayed lightly and Hamza raised a hand towards her, almost unconsciously, almost instinctive. 

“Don’t!”, he jerked back like he had been hit. Ulfat breathed and breathed and coughed till she could finally speak through the suppressed scream building in her throat. 

“It would have been all yours anyway, Hamza. You didn’t have to… break his heart too.”

A sob. 

Ulfat didn’t know who let it out. Whether she had broken her control, whether it was Yalina or Meher or Uzair… or maybe it had been Hamza himself. His usually effervescent face was a mask of cracked anguish. 

Like Ulfat’s pain had cut meandering trails of vengeance on his own bloodstained one. 

Old wounds layered underneath the new ones Uzair had given him just now. 

“Bhabi—”, he almost whimpered. 

“Don’t you fucking dare call me that”, she didn’t shout, she didn’t yell. She hissed the words through painfully gritted teeth. Wrath coloring her vision blood red. 

“I trusted you. I let you around my kid. My family. I thought—”, Ulfat turned, words breaking into a pathetic hysteric laughter, her knees wobbled and Meher caught her arm. Ulfat removed her gentle grip and went and sat on the waiting chair kept aside. 

This time her words were soft. Almost whispered in wonder. As if she was marvelling at her own lack of foresight. At the blind faith she had had in Hamza. At the innocent image of a family she had built that one winter afternoon, looking down from her palace. 

“I thought even if Rehman didn’t survive this… yesterday—”, the thought itself was so excruciating she almost gagged on it but powered through, despite the small sound Hamza made like that of a wounded animal.

“...that, even if he died. He wouldn’t have been alone. You would have been there…holding him. He would have gone with someone who loved him… whom he loved, making the process less painful.. I—”

“Bhabi, please breathe—”, Meher’s voice was achingly empathetic. But Ulfat couldn’t stop. Her words were spiraling out of control. Just like her mind. 

“But I was a fool. A naive, hopeful idiot. The only people surrounding him as my husband lay dying had been his enemies… and you…”

“You were the third fucking bullet that no one could see!”

The last words were spat almost viciously as she stood up again, storming towards Hamza. 

A rage contorted Ulfat’s pretty features into an expression no one had ever seen on her face before. Not even when she had lit Rehman’s cigarette before he had gone to murder her son’s murderer. 

Hamza looked terrified for a moment. His body curved inside. Bracing for a staggering impact. And Ulfat didn’t hesitate. She was spitting fire. She was Rehman Dakait’s rage at the moment. Burning everything within sight, uncontrollable, unquenchable, devastating. 

A slap echoed through the corridor like a verdict. 

“Jiss insaan ne tumhe apne seene se lgage rakkha, tumne ussi ke seene mein khanjar khop diya! Maine tumhe apna beta manaa! Faizal ke jaise pyaar kiya tumse! Aur tumne meri zindagi hi cheen li mujhse!”

Tears rolled down Hamza’s face but Ulfat didn’t care.

“You killed Rehman and me and every fucking dream we had seen with you in it! You lying deceiving snake! I will kill you myself—”

Yalina suddenly jumped in between Ulfat and Hamza and caught Ulfat’s raised hand with both of hers. She was crying. Her pretty face was a mess of smeared kajal, splotchy red marks and those curly tresses sticking to her cheeks. 

“Please Bhabi… please… no.. no…please…I beg you…please”

Ulfat heaved, the anger slowly dissipating under such a tidal wave of grief that it nearly stole all her breath away. She stroked Yalina’s wet cheek, the girl still crying incoherently. 

“I had considered you my son and no matter what you have done, I still can’t bring myself to curse you. But show your face around my family again, and I will personally put a bullet in your skull.”

Hamza was looking down, his towering frame cut almost in half, as if asking for his neck to be severed from his body. 

“Bhabi, aap bhai ke saath rahe, isse toh main niptata hun—”, Uzair began, detaching himself from Meher’s tight grasp and walking towards the accused. 

Yalina was still trying to cover her husband’s figure with her painfully smaller body. 

Ulfat was about to say something when another voice stopped Uzair in his tracks. 

“Koi.. kisiko.. nhi niptaega…”

“Bhai!”

“Oh my god—”

“Rehman!”

Ulfat gasped and ran towards her husband who was standing by the door of the ICU.

Standing would be an understatement.

Rehman was leaning against the saline pole he had brought with himself, the IV still inside his vein. There was a heavy coat on his shoulders, over the dressing gown and the doctor was two seconds away from having an aneurysm by the expression of disapproved alarm on his face. 

Rehman's face was so white, everyone was afraid he would faint. The dark circles under his eyes were black craters and his knees shook just a little from the strain of holding himself upright. 

Anyone else would have cut a tragically pathetic figure. 

But not Rehman Baloch. 

His eyes were piercing. Glazed yet awash in that same terrifyingly cunning intelligence that has petrified everyone in Karachi into near subservience. He was wounded, no doubt. 

But he was a Titan, still. 

And his body played no part in the sheer authority which his rasping voice delivered. 

It was brutal and filled in the charged space of the corridor like a live wire. 

This was the Rehman Baloch, Hamza had read about, studied for years before the infiltration and whom the streets whispered about in barely suppressed terror. There was not a single hint of pain in his expression even if everyone knew he had to be in tremendous agony. 

“Sit down, for god’s sake! What are you doing? You’ll rip all your stitches—”, Ulfat stopped talking seeing the look on her husband’s face. She knew it was futile to argue with him at the moment. 

“Hamza.. Ali.. Mazari.”

Hamza flinched violently yet raised his eyes to meet his maker. 

“Is that even… your real name?”

“Yes.”

The answer was whispered. But it rang with truth. Not that anyone in the Baloch household could know how to differentiate between truth and deception, if the current circumstances are considered. 

“If I… ever see….you anywhere near my territories… again.. I will personally…rip out your throat.”

It was a verdict. 

Exile. Permanent banishment. Not death. 

But betrayal to the Balochs have always been certain death. Death in painfully creative ways. Ways that have made greater men quake in their boots and demons shudder underground.

No one who had betrayed Rehman Dakait had been spared. 

Not even his own mother. 

A strange, unbelievable verdict and Yalina almost collapsed on the ground with sheer relief. She was half certain she would be widowed today. 

The men were gaping at their leader, faces blank with numbed shock. Ulfat shivered once but stood by her husband, taking most of his weight on herself without letting it show too obviously. Her face was broken and she had no strength left to hide it. 

“But Bhai! He betrayed us! He betrayed you! He.. he knows everything! All our plans, our routes, our contacts…the moles…. The freaking safety measures in the haveli! We can’t—”, Uzair protested horrified. 

“Last I… remember…. I was still… your boss… or did someone else take the position while I was out!”, Rehman thundered, the strength in his breathless shout palpable in the air. 

The men immediately lowered their heads, deference to their leader, automatic and undisputed. 

Uzair was clearly conflicted but he would not openly go against his brother. And especially not when he could see the toll it was taking on Rehman to even remain standing on his feet, in this condition let alone shout. 

“Bhai….”, Yalina whimpered and Rehman’s mask wavered. If only for a second. 

“And anyone… who….wants to go with him….leave now. Later….if I find anyone… in contact with him…you will face the same punishment….betrayers face.”

Yalina’s face fell and she clutched Hamza’s hand desperately. 

“Kuch bolte kyun nhi tum? Bolo na ye sab jhuth hain! Tell them it's all a lie! Tell them it was staged. Why are you not defending yourself!”

Yalina cried to Hamza, the agony in her voice like poison in the room. 

Meher wanted to reach her desperately, pull her back into their sphere but it was impossible now. She could see the chasm between them. A physical gorge drawn by a single treacherous act that no amount of blood could ever fill. 

“I didn’t want to kill you. At least not… not after—”

Hamza’s first coherent words and they seeped into the air like a prisoner’s last wish. He didn’t complete his sentence and Rehman didn’t ask him to. He coughed once, blood blooming at the corner of his mouth. 

Uzair’s punches had opened the scabs again. 

He turned with much difficulty and found Yalina’s small shoulder below his arm as she supported him. Even after all of this, she was standing with him. 

Hamza couldn’t feel anything. He couldn’t even breathe. 

He was numb. 

Like an ice sculpture. 

The men made a path through them for Hamza and Yalina to pass, their faces twisted in betrayed anger and Hamza knew they were holding themselves back with great restraint. Rehman’s words were law in the gang. And that was the only reason he still had his limbs attached to his body. 

Uzair had been easier on him than he had expected. Maybe the shock of his betrayal had broken some of the younger Baloch brother’s infamous strength. 

Hamza heard a small sound and a few gasps behind him and wanted to turn. Every single cell in his body wanted to turn and run and grovel and just beg till his throat hurt, till he could wipe that look from his… from Rehman’s face, from Ulfat’s eyes, from Meher’s countenance, from Uzair’s visage…

But he couldn’t. 

Not yet. Not ever. 

The game hasn’t ended yet. 

And one wrong move could bring the whole thing tumbling down. 

Even if Hamza felt his heart tearing itself into half, as his slow steps took him away from the man who had made him feel like he deserved to be protected, to have a family, to not feel so goddamned alone in the world. 

From the man he was sure now regretted giving Hamza any shred of affection he ever had, intentional or otherwise. 

__________

Rehman felt the world tilt and the edges of his vision go grey as Hamza and Yalina stumbled out of the corridor. 

He had felt the men simmering under the outrage. Uzair's conflicted flare of protective tendencies had surged. The audience’s bafflement was a whole presence in the hallway. 

Yet he couldn’t… he couldn’t do it. 

Couldn’t order the death sentence of a man his heart refused to stop considering as a son, still. 

Couldn’t see the light drain from those brilliant vibrant eyes. 

Couldn’t stop thinking about the strange dream where he had felt Hamza press his face inside his throat and wail like a child who had lost his father. It had enveloped his mind like a heavy milky mist. 

Yet seeing Hamza and Yalina walk away from him, even if it had been on his own orders, had felt like seeing a part of his soul tear itself apart savagely and fly along with them. And try as he might, he couldn’t catch it back. 

Rehman was left with a patchwork of his body and his heart, tattered and stitched and lacking. 

The next time he opened his eyes, it was dark outside and Uzair was curled like an overgrown house cat near his feet, fast asleep in the most uncomfortable position a human body can ever contort itself into. 

Ulfat was nowhere to be seen, much to his disappointment. 

He was sure he would be punished severely for the stunt he had pulled.

Another addition was Faizal. Also asleep. Curled into a ball inside Uzair, clutching his uncle’s kurta like a lifeline. His young face was pale and the tear tracks sliced Rehman’s mangled heart into further bloodied strips.  

He had forgotten about his youngest. 

The poor boy. All the hospital had probably reminded the kid had been the time when his elder brother Naeeim had passed away. 

Naeeim… 

Rehman would be lying if he hadn’t wished to pass on for one moment when he had been battling for his life, prone on the bed, under the surgeon’s scalpel. He would get to meet his firstborn, see his beloved moonchild’s lovely smile one more time and the pain would finally stop. 

But Rehman had never not fought for survival like a feral wild animal. It was bound in his bones. He couldn’t undo years of habitual action in one stroke. No matter the severity of the hurt. Or how badly his heart had broken. 

He couldn’t think of Hamza anymore. 

He shouldn’t. 

He should end that chapter. He didn’t want to know about the whys. He simply didn’t care anymore. 

“Baba!”

Faizal’s eyes were open the next second when Rehman’s gaze found him. 

“Hello darling…”, Rehman whispered. 

Faizal was out of Uzair’s death grasp the next moment, startling his cousin so violently the poor man almost took a tumble on the floor and was in Rehman’s arms the very next moment. 

“Faizal! Baccha, chot lgi hain apke abbu ko, dheere.. Dheere..”, Uzair countered gently as Faizal climbed atop his father, almost desperate. 

“Hush! It's okay Uzair, the day I can’t hold a rambunctious Dakait in my arms is the day I die..”, Rehman consoled while suppressing a cry of pain as Faizal almost elbowed him in the gut. 

“Bhai, you have already aggravated your injuries enough for a day.. No, a month. Please have mercy on my nerves and Bhabi and Doctor sahab and take it easy.”

Rehman grimaced even as he cradled his youngest as tightly as he could to himself, without ripping out his stitches or hurting the trembling boy in his arms. He pressed consoling kisses to Faizal’s mop of hair and hummed slowly. 

It was an old lullabye, Ulfat used to sing to both Naeeim and Faizal when they would fall sick and couldn’t sleep. 

“I thought you would never wake up! I was so scared!”, Faizal cried. 

“Forgive me, my love. I am not leaving you or your mother any time soon…hush hush…”

Rehman sang gently and kept at it till his throat was protesting and Uzair had almost fallen asleep, seated in the chair beside the bed now. Faizal’s soft snuffling sound of sleep broke Uzair from his doze and he woke up straight. 

“You look like shit”, Rehman said, voice low enough to not disturb his finally calm son. 

“Speak for yourself. You look like a truck had gone over you and backed up for good measure”, Uzair responded equally low, a small smile teasing his face after what felt like centuries. 

“Brat”, Rehman said affectionately.

Uzair was quiet. Rehman could see the self flagellation clear on his cousin’s face. 

Well, that won’t do at all. 

“Uzair, whatever you are thinking right now—”, his cousin cut him midsentence. His face blank and eyes staring into the distance. As if tracing every single incident that led to this point. 

“I left you alone with him. I thought.. I will collect the shipment order and by the time you are done with the ribbon cutting—”

“Uzair…”

“Do you know why I left?”, Uzair looked at him suddenly, eyes filling up with self recrimination more than guilt, “I left because I was bored!”

Rehman carefully moved one arm which had been wrapped around Faizal and caught Uzair’s trembling hand. He squeezed it with as much strength as his recovering body would allow. The younger Baloch curled his other hand to rest his forehead on, almost leaning over Rehman’s legs. 

“I was so stupid. If I had been there—”

“Both of us would have been shot. It wasn’t your fault Uzair—”, Rehman said calmly. 

“No! I wouldn’t have let you get shot! I would have fucking killed that motherfucker myself! I know you hesitated—”

Rehman felt his heart jump. Uzair was looking at him, almost ashamed of his own outburst but he didn’t shy away from his words, as was his habit. He would say what is in his mind, whether his older brother liked it or not. 

It was one of the reasons Rehman had kept Uzair as his second in command. 

He didn’t need to surround himself with yes men. 

They were only good foot soldiers. But made terrible partners. 

“You had a gun Bhai, I know. Even if he drove you all off the road, even if you were caught by that jackass Aslam, you still had a gun. I went to the spot. I saw the spot where you were shot… the blood stains..”, he stopped and swallowed once feeling nauseated. 

The amount of blood soaking the earth had made Uzair want to hurl. The hardened general of the Dakait gang and feeling puckish at the scent and sight of blood - should have been a joke. But he was only human too. 

One more squeeze from Rehman’s hand on his and Uzair shook the images away. 

“I saw the shell casings. You didn’t shoot. The gun was just a few centimeters away from your grasp. That means you dropped it when you fell. Hamza… shot you. But you didn’t shoot. Not first or even to retaliate. I have seen you fight Bhai… you never miss and you never hesitate.”

Rehman looked at the ceiling. 

What could he say to Uzair that wasn’t the truth? 

So he told the truth. 

“I couldn’t.”

And wasn’t that just sad. 

There was silence and only Faizal’s rhythmic breathing and the machines attached to Rehman’s body beeping were the only sounds in the chamber.

“You are letting your heart decide. It is dangerous. He knows Faizal’s security pattern Bhai..”

Uzair was talking sense. Rehman knew it. And he was letting his heart make the decisions he should have left to his cold hard judgement that had always led him on the right path. His heart on the other hand has only ever created nuisance. 

“Change the pattern then. Change the routes. Change everything. We were due for a change anyways. Can’t depend on one pattern for too long.”

“You are letting him go without punishment. The men will notice. They will think you have become weak.”

A beat of silence. 

“Maybe I have…”

Rehman didn’t know who was more scared with that admission. Uzair or he himself. 

“Bhai you are scaring me…”

Rehman patted his hand. 

“There is no greater punishment for a man who was ready to die for his mission and then see it fail. Tell me Uzair, why did he come back today even after knowing that I was awake. He could have run. Easily. Disappeared. The men were distracted. Busy. No one was keeping watch. Why come back to the lion’s den?”

The same question had been eating at Uzair, that was pretty evident. 

And no logical answer seemed to come to any of them at the moment.

“I still can’t believe…he betrayed us. Hamza… I would never have imagined it in a thousand years. I still can’t completely…”, Uzair stopped. 

Rehman looked outside the single window in the room. The night was gentle. The moon was a full circle. Almost mocking him and the darkness inside him. 

“Hamza, if Meher or Uzair have put you up to this, know that I can break a man’s wrist in seventeen different ways.”

Rehman didn’t even look up at his supposed attacker, his entire focus on the inventory list in front, lounging on his throne as usual. Hamza, who had been advancing towards his boss, steps as cautiously silent as a cat, bit his lips resigned. 

He sighed and came in front, even if his hands were still suspiciously behind his back. Almost like he was concealing something. 

“I don’t care what Uzair says, you definitely have supernatural powers. No one can hear me come, and by no one, I mean, no fucking one!”

“I couldn’t hear your steps idiot, but Yalina’s perfume is way too strong”, Rehman replied cooly. 

“Goddamnit.”

“By the way, who gave you the brilliant idea of sneaking up on me? Did you want to lose a limb by any chance?”

Hamza grumbled but came and stood in front of the monikered Bastard King. There was an almost hopeful smile on his face. Rehman looked up finally and raised an eyebrow.

“Was I supposed to give you any instructions? I thought Uzair had already divided the work.”

“Ah yes, it is evening Bhai. We are done with work”

“What? Evening already… goddamnit, I lost time, this fucking inventory is a mess. Tell Siyahi to meet me tomorrow when he finds the precious time.”

Rehman stood up wincing and found Hamza still standing in the same position in front. 

“Okay, now I am concerned. What is it?”

Rehman frowned. Did the kid have a fever? Did he forget anything? 

“I… had to give you something. Just, please promise me you wont rip my head off”, Hamza said quickly and thrust what he had hidden behind his back in Rehman’s hands even before the latter could reply. 

“What the—”

Rehman stared at the pack of glass marbles nestled inside his scarred palm. They were a little translucent, a rust color swirling a mesmerizing pattern on each one and they sparkled in the dim yellow lighting of the room. 

But most importantly, they were exactly the same ones Rehman remembered owning as the only thing he had ever bought for himself as a boy. 

They were his first and only toy, he could say. He wasn’t sentimental or nostalgic but he remembered feeling an acute sense of loss when he had been dragged to prison and on returning had found all his possessions gone, along with his precious marbles.

“How..”, Rehman asked - wonder coloring his voice. 

“Don’t be mad.. But I overheard you talking to Faizal last week and I found out this one artisan in Saddar who made custom toys and I just sort of explained to him about the marbles and he said he could make them exactly like this so—”

Hamza was babbling nervously and Rehman knew he should take pity on him and say something but the words were caught in a tight mortifying stone inside his throat. It was with a herculean effort that he swallowed it down. 

“So.. you brought me marbles after accidentally finding an artisan in Saddar?”

“That sounds incredibly suspicious when you frame it like that—”, Hamza muttered cautiously. 

Rehman couldn’t stop his face from doing that complicated thing he knows makes him look fucking stupid. But by the way Hamza suddenly started glowing like the sun itself on seeing his expression, made the small indignity worth it, he supposed. 

Stupid boy. 

And his stupid fucking heart. 

“Well, let's see if I still have it in me or not…”, Rehman said suddenly, giving in to the childish desire inside him and walked out of the room. 

Hamza whooped and sprinted after him like an overgrown puppy. 

“Let me warn you Sardar, I was the undefeated champion in my locality.”

Hamza warned playfully, holding the door of the warehouse open and Rehman just passed by him, a smirk twisting his lips almost mischievously. 

“I am going to wipe the fucking floor with you, son.”

Memories were painful whip lashes against his back. Carving out his flesh one strip at a time. 

Has any of it been real?

His mind was a trap on its own. A gluttonous cage for punishment. 

‘I did this to myself, Uzair. Me and my stupid fucking heart which still can’t stop screaming.’

Rehman thought almost viciously but didn’t have the strength to utter.