#hamza

A sharp gust of chill wind accompanied the thudding of a pair of boots, slicing across the thick ambience of the room where Mahnoor was. The war had subsided into an eerie silence of the night now, broken only by a very distant, low hum of the factory generators. Mahnoor turned around, to face her accomplice, Hamza. Her gaze swept over him in quick assessment, he looked different now in the all black attire he had donned.

Mahnoor stood just next to the ornate, high-backed throne chair that once belonged to her bhai. The air around them still felt charged with the faint, lingering smell of cordite and gunpowder, clinging to the room like a ghost. Her eyes followed Hamza’s movements as he shrugged off his leather jacket onto a stack of guns kept in a corner in the room.

“Rehman is gone now. Aur Uzair bhi ab raaste mein nahi aane wala.” Mahnoor spoke out about her supposed brothers, trying to diffuse the suddenly growing thick tension in the room. Her hands crossed over her chest and her eyes darkened with resolve as she continued to speak. “Ab jaake mission start hua hai humara.”  

Hamza hummed in agreement from across the room, the low, grave sound making an involuntary shiver run down her spine. “Ab Lyari aur fir Karachi ki hukumat ka waqt aa gaya hai.” Hamza rasped, and then, with an almost deliberate slowness, he started to unbutton his shirt, then dropped it to the ground, letting the fabric pool around his feet. The fabric’s rustling sound vibrated loud in the otherwise silent room. Mahnoor’s gaze betrayed her for a moment and she overtly stared at his half naked body, the expanse of his bronzed skin, the map of silver scars stretching over those corded muscles and the dark, prominent trail of hair that travelled somewhere down to— “Chaho toh kareeb aa kar chuu sakti ho” Hamza said with a smirk plastered on his face, as he strolled towards her in slow strides, like a predator cornering its prey. “Bilkul bhi nahi!” She snapped. Her response was too quick, too frantic, like she was afraid he’d see through the walls she had built in between them to avoid having those filthy, amorous thoughts about him. “Aur ek minute… kapde utaarne ki kya zaroorat thi tumhe?” Mahnoor said, her tone grimacing, as she turned around to prevent herself from visibly swooning over his firm build.

Barely moments later, she felt the heat of his bare skin through the thin fabric of her kurti. His chest was a solid wall of heat against her back, as he snaked his arms around her waist, pulling her body flush against his. “Kab tak bahane maarogi, biwi?” he whispered in her ear, his breath a steady, hot flame against her face and neck. She shivered at the rasp in his voice and his hands tightened just a trifle on her waist.

Yes, they were married, it was a masterpiece of accidental irony, something that was nowhere in the plan of their mission and yet, it had happened all because their hushed whispers laden with venom were mistaken for love confessions. 

Mahnoor had infiltrated this foreign land when she was just twenty-two, posing as an orphaned, eighteen year old in Balochistan, where she had weaponized her fake passion for medicine to befriend Shirani’s grandson. She was the only girl among the other Baloch kids who were being sent to Karachi for that medical coaching under Rehman’s guidance. 

A perfectly well curated lie about getting harassed one night had been the final hook, as it forced Ulfat to demand Rehman to bring her home. It was only easier for her then onwards, as she didn’t just blend in into the family with her inescapable charm, she literally became akin to blood for them. A younger sister in Rehman’s eyes and a confidante for Ulfat, even the constant bickering with Faizal, Uzair and Naieem had stitched her deep into the family. And by the time she attained her medical degree, she had even become the gang’s personal doctor, patching up the men at the most random hours. 

But then came Hamza, into the gang as a result of the fallout in the wedding reception of Naieem’s friend, and her life became ten times more miserable due to the constant clash of ideas between them. What were arguments under gritted teeth and narrowed eyes between the two spies, seemed like murmurs of two lovers in Uzair’s eyes from a distance. And he relayed this information to Rehman, who thought binding his beloved sister to the most loyal Baloch lieutenant from his own gang in the bond of marriage was a masterstroke. 

Four months of being trapped in his kabootarkhana and sharing food and a bed with him, had definitely aroused unprecedented feelings in both of them, the accidental touches and lingering eye contacts sending sparks of electricity through them that were strong enough to blur the lines of professionalism in their minds, which seemed completely vanished today.  

“Dekha hai maine tumhari aankhon mein wahi sab kuch, jo mujhe tumhare liye mehsoos hota hai.” He murmured. His voice was a low vibration, dripping with smugness of having figured her out. Then, he pressed a deliberate kiss where her jaw and neck met. “K-kya bakwas kar rahe ho tum?” She fumbled with her words in the wake of his actions, her mind being thumped by the heavy, rhythmic bass of her own heartbeat. She was feeling absolutely caged in this situation and still made no attempts to break free from his grasp. The feeling of his big, warm hands squeezing her waist was rapidly clouding every rational thought of her mind. 

He turned her around in one swift movement, and her palms landed flat against the hard planes of his chest on instinct. She could feel his heartbeat beneath her fingertips, mirroring her own in intensity. He leaned over hers till their breaths mingled and their lips only a whisper apart, gazing into her eyes with an intensity that was piercing her soul. “Push me away…” His voice had dropped to a soft murmur now, almost like he was pleading her to not push him away. “Aur main vaada karta dubara kabhi itne paas nahi aaunga.” He knew the dangerous ground he was treading in doing this, but it was as if something was physically holding him back to not do this, which is why he offered her a final chance of exit, putting the responsibility of being professional onto her.

“You don’t have to do thi—” 

His voice was cut off in an instant when she reached up to crash her lips onto his in a rushed attempt to shut him up. Her fingers tangled violently in his tresses as his hands tightened on her waist, not wanting to let go of this moment. There was not even a sliver of gentleness in the kiss, it was just months of buried tension exploding onto them. They clashed teeth to teeth, tongues fighting for dominance in a hungry struggle, neither wanting to yield an inch of ground to the other. 

When they finally parted from the kiss, both of them gasping to inhale air, she shoved him in a sudden movement—a solid, hard force against his chest that sent him stumbling back onto the black chair behind him. At that moment, Hamza was sure that she did this out of spite, as a final rejection to his advances—or maybe she did it in ruefulness of the kiss they had shared, which was initiated by her—but then she did the unexpected.

She dropped down to her knees, occupying the space between his spread legs. Hamza’s breath hitched, his fingers digging into the leather armrests of the chair at the sight in front of his eyes. “Don’t you think this is a night to celebrate?” She asked with a mischievous glint sparkling in her eyes, replacing the nervousness from moments ago. Her hands were already reaching for the waistband of his pants. His eyes widened at her audacious actions but a surge of raw elation at the turn of events followed close behind. 

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Hamza tried to confirm, his deep voice filling the space between them. Instead of answering him with words, she pulled the fabric down his beefy thighs, leaving him exposed in nothing but his boxers. The air between them grew thick in that moment, charged with the tension of their forbidden desires. “Very sure, Hamza.” Her voice was a low, honeyed drawl in his ears as she dragged a single fingernail along the covered taut muscles of his inner thigh, making him shiver in anticipation. Hamza threw his head back against the chair when she palmed his cock through the thin fabric in slow, teasing strokes.

Her lips curled upwards seeing his breathless state, before she peeled away the last piece of clothing from his body too, freeing his veined length from its confines. He was already glistening with arousal when she wrapped her fingers around his base, stroking him and then smearing the pre cum around his tip with her thumb, before she leaned forward to press a kiss there. Hamza’s restraint snapped at her actions and his hands fisted in her hair, gathering her wild curls in a makeshift ponytail. His grip was rather tight as he guided her face forward and her lips parted to take him, almost on instinct. 

He was entranced by the sight of her plump lips stretching around his girth as he pushed her head deeper onto him. He nudged her hands away from his cock, and they came to rest on his thigh, her nails sinking deep into his skin as he pushed in till he felt his tip touching the back of her throat and a muffled, gagging sound escaped her lips at that. He held her like that, unmoving, for a few moments, letting her feel the heavy weight of him against her tongue. She pressed her thighs together, heat pooling in her core, at the feeling of the fullness in her mouth.

She hollowed her cheeks in an attempt to suck him when Hamza started bobbing her head on his length, saliva pooling in her mouth. Her scalp burned under his harsh grip as he set a steady rhythm, pushing her down till his tip touched the end of her throat, holding her there for a hot moment before pulling her back. One of her hands moved on to fondle with his balls, squeezing and kneading them together, forcing out a guttural groan from his chest.

Mahnoor swirled her tongue around his tip, and licked the underside of his cock, feeling the veins and ridges on it. His hips bucked slightly at her maddening actions, and he pushed deeper into her mouth. She moaned at that movement, the sound reverberating through his whole being. She was now incessantly rubbing her thighs, desperately trying to find some relief from the ache through the friction between her skin and the fabric. 

Hamza pushed her deeper, till her nose brushed against his navel—and her hands moved to dig her nails in his thigh again, her eyes tearing up at the pressure in her throat. She looked at him, her eyes glassy and pleading, as drool ran down the corners of her lips. The room was heavy with the sounds of his jagged breathing and her choking gags around him each time he pushed himself all the way in her mouth. She tried to breathe through her nose but it was getting difficult with his ever increasing rough movements, his balls now slapping against her chin every other moment. 

She worked him up sloppily, spit glistening on her chin as he moved her head in faster movements, he was now fucking her face with deep, frantic thrusts. Lewd, wet sounds filled the quiet throne room with every downward push as she lapped him up with borderline sincerity. Her throat fluttered desperately around him when he pushed in really deep and then kept her unmoving for long moments and she barely had any time to catch her breath when he finally let her up, before he repeated the same thing, umpteen times.

He finally pulled away completely when he felt his cock twitch in her mouth, he didn’t want to release just yet, strings of saliva dangling in the space he just created between them.  A small whine escaped her throat, her jaw hung slack when he deprived her of the fullness he was so relentlessly pushing in mere moments ago. He took in her condition—eyes brimming with unshed tears, lips red and swollen, tears coating her cheeks, and chin covered in her own spit and his leaking pre-cum—she looked absolutely ruined and he loved seeing her like this. 

His fingers wrapped around her arms and he hauled her up with him, her chest slamming against his, and before she could do anything, his mouth was on hers. The kiss was a collision, the acrid taste of his last cigarette mixing with the lingering salty taste on her lips. He tilted her head back, his thumb bruising her jawline to keep her in place throughout the kiss. It was a sloppy, wet kiss as he strived to absolutely devour her mouth, drawing out the very air from her lungs.

It was all a blurry motion as he broke the kiss and then shoved her down onto the chair, his knee wedging her legs apart in the very next moment. Her eyes widened and she let out a shocked gasp when he clutched the fabric of her salwar and tore it off to shreds with a savage jerk as if it was parched paper, exposing her limbs to the dim light in the room, before he did the same with her kurti, only to find no bra underneath it. She moaned when he tugged hard on her nipples, delivering a slap to each of them before he shifted his focus. Hamza ran a finger along her damp, clothed core, making her shudder in anticipation before he hooked his fingers into the waistband of her last layer and snapped the elastic, baring her fully to his expectant gaze.

He kneeled in front of her, his face now level with her glistening heat. His eyes burned with a feral hunger as he did not waste even a single second to dive his face in, lapping her up as if her slick was the elixir of life itself. His tongue was a torture device for her as he alternated between giving a slow kiss to her clit and circling her entrance in deliberate, teasing motions, only to watch her unravel in desperation, as she tried to push his face deeper using her grip in his hair. When she tried to guide him into doing that for the third time, despite his resistance to her wishes, he wrenched himself away all together. A cocky smile embellished his face, when he looked at her—sprawled out for him, eyes pleading at him, her lower lip jutting out in an adorable pout and cheeks flushed with the heat surrounding them—he felt like he could have an orgasm just at the sight of that.

Without wasting any more time, he buried two of his long fingers knuckle deep inside her core. The striking contrast of the cold metal of his rings against her warmth made her keen out. He pumped his fingers fast and rough, his rings dragging along her slick walls too. He curled his fingers, stroking that spongy spot inside her that made her mind spin. Mahnoor held onto Hamza’s wrist that was moving against her, trying to drown in the pleasure he was rewarding her with. She was gushing around his thick fingers with every curl and thrust, her arousal dripping down his fingers and onto his palm now. 

He couldn’t hold himself back from latching onto her pearl, sucking it with filthy, noisy pulls that were filling the room. His tongue swiped against her folds to collect her leaking juices, and he groaned against her at the heady taste of it. The vibration against her core made her hips jerk violently, but his calloused hand pinned her down firmly, pressing her lower abdomen gently to keep her in place. The feeling of his fingers moving inside her, his beard scratching her thighs, the cool of his rings and the warmth of his mouth—it was all driving her crazy and she could feel that she was right on the periphery of her inevitable release. 

Mahnoor moaned his name out loud when he added another finger, and now she could truly feel the biting, hard edges of his rings rubbing against the burning heat of her core. His pumps gained speed as his tongue got busy in lapping up the fresh wetness in between her folds and flicking her bundle of nerves. Pleasure coiled deep in her core at his actions, her walls fluttering around his digits and she finally shattered, a sharp cry tearing from her throat in the moment as her thighs quivered with the intensity.

His eyes locked onto hers as he pulled out his fingers and licked them clean, releasing each with a wet pop. She was still reeling from the after effects of her violent release when he dived in again. His coarse beard was chafing at her delicate skin and his nose bumped against her swollen bud repeatedly, as his tongue tried to gather the remnants of her release in his mouth. Mahnoor’s hand flew to his hair, her fingers tangling desperately in his dark strands, tugging it hard, unsure whether she was trying to pull him closer or push him away from the overwhelming sensation. 

Her hips were grinding helplessly against his mouth as he devoured her. His beard was now coated in slick as she dripped down onto the leather beneath her. She was close, again. Her release was creeping up to her, she could feel the tingling sensation in her very bones. He brought his free hand to her core and pinched her clit, squeezing it between his thumb and index. That was all it needed for her body to convulse in pleasure once again, screaming as the sensations wrecked through her. Her thighs squeezed around his head almost involuntarily as he drew out her orgasm, licking off every last drop before he finally detached himself. 

She could only peek a glance at him—lips shiny and beard glistening with drops of her cum, eyes dark as the night at this moment, lips curled in a satisfied smile as he watched her struggle to catch her breath—before he flipped her over such that her upper body was now draped on the top part of the chair. The cool leather bit into the feverish heat of her skin as she let out a gasp at the sudden movement, her mind still hazed from her previous highs. The raw strength, the effortless way in which he tossed her around sent a fresh rush of heat through her body. 

One of his hands pinned her head down against the leather, his fingers tangled in her silken locks. Her breasts were smushed against the throne, nipples pebbling at the cold texture rubbing there, her hands holding onto its edge as her ass was canted high in the air, exposed to him. Hamza’s free hand found her waist, holding onto it as he lined up the thick head of his cock against her dripping entrance, dragging it across her weeping folds in an attempt to tease, and her patience was already fraying to a breaking point at the blatant goad in his actions. 

“Muhurat nikalwau tumhare liye?” Mahnoor’s voice an agitated rasp, making her husband tsk in the dark lilt of his voice, before he drove home in one brutal thrust. The air left her lungs in a sharp cry as her walls clenched at the sudden, stretching invasion that burned her with a stifling intensity. In a heartbeat, he withdrew until he was nearly all out, only to slam back in, setting a punishing and relentless rhythm that turned all her protests into heavy gasps.

The ancient frame of the throne creaked loudly under the force of Hamza’s resolute pace, when he yanked her back onto his cock with every savage, forward snap. Mahnoor could feel the weight of his possession in every fibre of her being as the position had left her utterly helpless, upper body pinned and ass up, taking every inch of him as he fucked her like he was claiming his throne and his queen at the same time. 

The room was filled with Mahnoor’s loud, uncontrolled moans each time skin slapped against skin, shooting sparks of pleasure in both their bodies. She let out a startled yelp when Hamza’s palm cracked on her rear, his rings leaving behind a scorching sensation, her muscles tensing instinctively as she clenched harder around his cock at that action, her fingers scrambling against the cool leather for purchase. 

“Fuckkk, you are so tight…” Hamza growled low, lost in the sensations of her warmth as he leaned over her back, crushing her beneath his heaviness and pushing her deeper into the leather, teeth grazing the curve of her shoulder before he bit down hard enough to leave indents on her skin. He picked up his pace, fucking her harder and faster, her moans now turning into desperate, broken sounds as she neared her third release of the night. 

Hamza’s grip on her tightened as he straightened up again, using the leverage to pound into her relentlessly, his balls slapping against her clit with every deep stroke. The cool air of the night did nothing to ease the burning heat between their bodies. She was absolutely lost in the feeling of his harsh thrusts wrecking through her whole body, when Hamza withdrew from her warmth completely. 

Mahnoor’s hazed mind barely registered the sudden emptiness before she was already being moved around with a raw strength. He lifted her up from her position and took his seat on the throne, immediately pulling her straight onto his lap to straddle him, her hands flew to his shoulders to hold them to regain any semblance of balance as her knees sank into the leather on either side of his thick thighs, her dripping core hovering just an inch above his throbbing cock.

His large hands came to grip her ass, fingers digging hard into her soft flesh and then he slammed her down onto his cock in an animalistic move. A sharp cry of his name tore from her throat as her nails dug deep into his skin, hard enough to draw blood. Hamza groaned at her wildness, and at the new angle he had found—he could feel how much more deeper he was this way, pressing right against her cervix.

He didn’t waste much time before he started bouncing her on his lap with unrelenting force, using his grip on her ass to lift and drop her onto his thick length over and over again. Her breasts bounced, nipples brushing against the firm planes of his chest, as her head fell backwards, slipping out broken moans with every downward thrust. He fucked her from below with absolute control over the pace.

Soon enough, he could feel the trembling of her body, and how her moans had turned louder and more frantic. “Hamza, I think—I think I am about to—” Mahnoor had gasped out between heavy breaths, her vision whitening around the sides as she teetered on the edge.

Hamza growled in disapproval. “Not yet!” He rasped in her ear, his one hand slid up to grip her jaw, forcing her glassy eyes to meet his, “Hold it in for me, Noor…”. He slowed down his movements manifold, now just dragging his cock in and out of her warmth in lazy, torturous strokes, making her feel every thick inch of him. She whimpered, her entire body squirming with the effort of holding back her release, as her head fell down onto his shoulder. Hamza was lost in the pleasure of her fluttering walls, pressing wet kisses on the curve of her clavicle, biting the skin there occasionally as his own orgasm inched up to him with every fleeting breath, his thrusts losing rhythm as a result of it.

“Hamza, please—” She sobbed, her hips pushing back against his thrusts, desperate to be reduced to nothing but a set of excited nerves, wanting to reach the other side of this tempting edge. Her fingers tangled in the dark threads of his mane, pulling at them with an unrestrained intensity that made him wince. His hips snapped up too, to meet every drop of her body, picking up the vigor with which skin slapped against skin. 

“Cum with me, baby.” Those four words rasped by her husband was enough to fade out the world beneath her eyelids. Her walls convulsed around him in a frantic, vice-like grip as her third orgasm of the night crashed through her in violent waves, her mouth wide open in a silent cry of pleasure, and he felt that it was the perfect moment to capture her lips in an ardent kiss. 

A low, feral growl left his throat and into her mouth as he pushed into her one final time, spilling hot pulses of his release inside her, filling her up as her walls clamped around him in an attempt to milk him completely, his vision blurring at the sensation, their bodies still absorbing the aftermath of their violent release.  

He released her lips with a soft pop, their foreheads still resting against each other, breaths mingling in this moment of hazy warmth. His fingers released her waist from the harsh grip and instead, came to wrap around her, holding her in a tender embrace, as her body limped against him like dead weight. 

Moments passed and they stayed like that, till Mahnoor decided to press a lingering peck on Hamza’s lips, a small and tired giggle escaping her lips right after. Hamza’s own lips curved upon hearing that soft sound, his chest rumbling with a chuckle as he pressed a deliberate kiss on her forehead. “Kaisa lag raha hai?” Hamza asked her, looking into her eyes almost lovingly.

A very sated yet mischievous smile graced her serene face. “I feel like we are four months too late.” She closed her eyes and pressed another kiss, to the tip of his nose this time.

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one more a/n: the og dialogue by hamza was "aap zara kentrol karein" and not "hold it in for me".... bahut mann tha mera and i had even written it, but fir mujhe laga ki smut ke beech zyada komedi karne ki zaroorat nahi hai😔✋🏻 hope y'all enjoyed this!!! like aur comment krow plij🤧🙏🏻

Hamza ran onto the road.

His knees were shaking under the weight of the man in his arms. 

Rehman’s eyes were closed, his breathing laboured, his body feeling unnaturally fragile in Hamza’s bigger arms. His black clothes were soaked through, the rags Hamza had cursorily tied around the gunshot wounds on his abdomen and chest were drenched and warm blood was spilling everywhere. 

So much so that Hamza was half certain he would never be able to clean the stains off himself. 

“Rukh bhenchod rukh!”

Hamza yelled at the auto driver, undoubtedly looking like a maniac, desperation turning him near delirious with panic and pain. 

His limbs were trembling so much one would think he was going into shock from the bloodloss. It was not as if he hadn't easily lifted weights twice as heavier as the smaller and much slender man in his arms, but for some reason, this time, he was struggling. 

Maybe because of his own state. 

He hadn’t even registered his own wounds. 

“Rehman Bhai! Ya Allah ye kya hua?”, the auto driver, recognizing the uncrowned King of Lyari even in that pitiful condition, gasped in dismay. 

“Hospital… right the fuck now!”

Hamza bellowed at the poor man, shocking him into almost falling off his seat and turning back. The vehicle was tearing through the road now, at the highest speed that was physically possible. 

Hamza was chanting prayers he hadn’t spoken in years under his breath. Calling a ruthless God Who has never heeded his pleas. 

“Aankhe khuli rakho bhai, kuch nhi hoga, main hoon… main…”, his voice choked, the hypocrisy in his own tone twisting his stomach into nauseating knots. 

Every single turn, every stone, every crack and gravel on the road was like fire breathing through his innumerable wounds. 

But more than that, he could feel Rehman jerk in pain against his curled body weakly, no strength left to even wince properly, as the auto jumped even slightly. 

His face was blood crusted and bruised to hell. 

Hamza could feel the echo of pain bursting on his knuckles from the way he had punched Rehman in the face, the sound of that chiselled cheekbone snapping - a sickening crunch in his mind. 

“Bhai ko goli lagi hain, jaldi aa Uzair! Hospital aa abhi!”, he barked into the phone, not bothered about hearing Uzair’s response and cut the call, the phone dropping on the floor of the auto carelessly. 

Rehman, flitting in and out of consciousness, had slinked a hand towards his face by then, a touch brushing his neck and years of training and impeccable reflexes mired in untreated trauma had Hamza almost jump in his seat, grab those broken fingers in a vice grip and rip the arm away from himself - terrified. 

The motion had been unexpectedly violent. 

Rehman whimpered, no doubt from the pain of being jerked away, the innumerable wounds on his body screaming in protest at the cruel handling and Hamza felt it curdle his insides immediately. 

He curled over the battered figure on his lap, hands still frantically trying to stop the bleeding through the soaked rags and pressed his forehead to the older man’s, guilt burning so vicious inside that it almost scorched his entire body. 

“I am sorry….so sorry… please…please… don’t die… don’t die. Bhai..”, his words were so low they were inaudible to his own ears, so thick with unshed tears and pulsating with pain that he could barely breathe them out. 

The road seemed endless, the hospital an impossible destination and Hamza’s life bleeding out incessantly all over him and the thrice damned auto, blanketing him in a sickly cloying fluid that will probably never come out of his skin again. 

The vehicle jumped over a bump and Hamza swallowed a cry of pain as his back flared into white hot agony. He covered Rehman’s broken mangled frame with his own in an effort to somehow stop the former from slipping away through sheer will and kept begging  to whoever would care to listen. 

Hamza gasped into consciousness as the van jerked to a stop. 

His body was littered with bruises and blooming cuts. 

“Uth jaa laale. Your work is still not over.”

SP Chaudhary Aslam. 

That fucking fucker—

The events came back to Hamza in a flash. 

Yalina, pointing at him towards the chaat stall. A small moment of peace in the hurricane his life had become. The sudden gunshots, the people screaming, the police sirens and the men pouring out, rifles steady. 

Hamza had tried to fight back. 

But this time, he had no backup. No men shielding him, covering for him, falling in line beside him like brothers in arms. No Donga and Siyahi flanking him immediately, positions so ingrained in them that not a single word had to be spoken. 

No Uzair shooting with the deadly precision of a trained fighter, moving beside him like an extension of his own body. 

No Rehman standing in front of him like an immovable impregnable wall, wrapped in obsidian, eyes so hard that they could rip through stone boulders, a single predatory look - enough for their enemies to stumble apart in confusion or drop to their knees in deferred terror. 

They had covered him from all sides. 

A bullet grazing through his side had splattered his blood on Yalina’s pretty canary yellow suit. His wife had screamed in terror, holding onto him in a death grip as he stumbled back. 

Aslam had literally hauled him up to the van, pushing Yalina away in a cruel move. 

The last thing he had seen before darkness had claimed him was the SP putting his phone to his ears, as if calling someone. 

“Get him out”, Aslam ordered his men and Hamza was dragged out of the van, hands bound tight and then they started marching into the forest. 

“So much preparation for killing me, SP sahab? I am almost flattered.”

Hamza spat at Aslam as they neared a cleared off area, a broken down stone structure in the middle with an open ceiling and towering yet ancient looking pillars. It oddly enough resembled a roman colosseum. 

“Damn. He really did a number on you eh? You have even started to sound like him—”, Aslam muttered, more to himself than anyone else. 

It was evident who he was talking about. 

Hamza felt his stomach roil all of a sudden. A half formed conclusion was slowly clearing in his mind. 

“Arre itna ghamand accha nhi hain beta.Ye sab tamjham tere liye nhi hain…”, Aslam informed, smirking like a leopard on a hunt, before gesturing at his officers. 

Hamza found himself being dragged to the center of the open floor of the structure. Towards a single broken stump of a pillar. The LTF chief went and sat on a bigger stone, settling in like he was readying himself for a long wait. 

“Ye sab toh tere baap keliye hain”, Aslam snarled, eyes flashing in repressed fury as it always did whenever Rehman Dakait’s name would come in anyone’s mouth. 

Hamza stared at him through his dishevelled locks, as his arms were pulled harshly and tied back, around the stump of the pillar with a ziptie. The officers were wrapping a chain around him with efficient hands. 

They were not taking any chances, it seemed. 

Then Hamza spat a glob of blood on the floor in front and started laughing. 

It was a raucous painful mirth which wrung out of him, hilarity and disbelief swirling in an unmistakable desperate churn. 

Aslam was scowling at him by the time Hamza was left heaving in tearful gasps as the pain from his wounds forced him to finally stop barking like a lunatic and take a breath. 

“If you think Rehman Baloch is going to come for me, you are a greater fool than I had believed. You have only made his job easier”, Hamza responded coolly. 

Aslam tilted his head at the side, plumes of smoke blowing almost thoughtfully from the cuban clenched between his teeth. 

“You really believe that, huh?”, he said finally. 

Hamza raised a sharp eyebrow, another mannerism he didn’t know made him look almost like his former mentor and boss. 

“I have known that little bastard since he had been picked up from beside his mother’s dead body, hands covered in her still fresh blood. I know how Rehman Dakait thinks, Baloch. Trust me, if the man wanted you dead, we would have needed a bucket and a shovel to scrape you off that hospital corridor.”

Rehman’s pale face, staring at him unblinking, expression cast in stone and diamond eyes so unreadable it was almost painful to behold, came to Hamza from all those months ago in that thrice damned hospital hallway. 

“Rehman Dakait doesn’t forgive and he doesn’t forget. You have wasted your time and given away your location too”, the younger man responded, conviction running quiet yet immovable in his tone. 

Aslam stood up and started circling his prisoner, hands behind his back. He came up to the front and then lifted Hamza’s face with a cruel twist of his fingers under the latter’s chin. 

“I saw both of you that day in the forest. I saw his hands shake. He let you shoot him. Didn’t even retaliate. I heard your scream, Baloch.”

There was something so nauseatingly sickening in his tone that Hamza almost gagged on it. His insides were recoiling in wrathful terror. 

Aslam leaned closer to his face and the next words were almost whispered on his skin. 

“I have finally found Rehman’s weakness, the chink in his armour and I am going to plunge my fucking fingers inside his fucking chest and rip it apart in two and watch him die screaming like the worthless piece of dogshit he is.”

The silence in the fast approaching dusk in the forest was a palpable noose around the neck. The SP’s words were venom against open wounds. Salt rubbed on flayed skin. 

Hamza looked into Chaudhary Aslam’s beady vengeful eyes, expression sharpening like a blade against iron and promptly spat on his face with all the spite he could possibly gather. 

Aslam left his chin, jerking back and stared at him, eyes wide, but just for a second. Fury darkened those heavy lines disappearing into the beard, expression contorting in an ugly rage before his lips split in an almost amused grin. 

“You really are his son, huh.”

He turned around and made an off handed gesture at his men. 

“Prepare him for our esteemed guest, gentlemen. The night is young and the party is only about to start.”

Hamza kept his gaze locked onto the older man who had gone back to his seat, wiping his face with a white handkerchief matching his all white ensemble as some of the officers closed in on him. 

When the fists and the feet rained, Hamza kept his mouth shut and his eyes open, for as long as he could. He only hoped that when he would be dead and the police would dispose of his body in some ditch, the LTF Chief would be especially mad - all his meticulously laid out plans drowned into the drainwater. 

The man was really insane, thinking Rehman Dakait would come to the rescue of the man who had betrayed him so humiliatingly.

Hamza closed his eyes at a particularly vicious kick to the gut and let his mind take him back to that winter afternoon, rolling on the garden floor of his home, Uzair’s roar of laughter and Faizal’s giggles interspersed with Meher’s cheers and Yalina’s teetering chuckles. 

Rehman’s gaze looking down from his office window, eyes crinkled in suppressed warmth falling like a protective shield over them. 

A lion watching his cubs play in a kingdom of his making. 

He wished he could go back to that late afternoon sunshine and stay there forever. 

______________

Yalina remembered the first time she had seen Sardar Rehman Baloch, the undisputed King of Lyari, one of the most feared gangsters in Karachi and supposedly her father’s ally in all his underhanded dealings in the city. 

She had been six. 

And too rebellious for her own good. 

The town had been up in arms about some corrupt scheme that had been unearthed before the latest election season and Jameel Jamali had been up to his neck, trying to put out the ensuing fires set all around. 

Yalina had been told to sit quietly in the car while men with angry eyes yelled in unison, holding fluttering banners and her father’s supposed party friends tried appeasing a slowly uproarious crowd. 

Yalina was bored. Also a little scared. But mostly bored. 

She had easily opened the unlatched door of the car and slipped out before anyone could see and toddled off in search of her father, in the hope that he would take them home and she could play with her new dollhouse. 

Alas, her father had been swallowed behind some security enclosure and the tempo of the crowd had reached a violent frenzy. 

A hand had come from nowhere and grabbed her arm. 

“Oh what have we here? Isn’t she, that pig Jamali’s daughter? Looks like we’ve struck gold, fellas”, the man had sneered, dragging her towards himself violently. 

Little Yalina hadn’t liked him. He had been squeezing her hand too tight and he had smelled really bad and her arm had been hurting and she had been scared and she had just wanted to go home. 

Before Yalina could have screamed the man had been wrenched away from her so fast that she had almost toppled onto the ground herself. His face had contorted in a terror so fierce that the little girl had never seen on anyone's face before. 

“Sardar! Maafi… rehem karein huzoor..”, the man had been on his knees, back bowed painfully, face almost pressed to the ground, whimpering pitifully. 

Yalina had looked up to the shadow which had suddenly fallen on her from behind. It had blotted out the sweltering heat of the Lyari midnoon sun and it had been almost like the temperature had dropped a few degrees. 

The men who had been screaming bloody murder till now had become deadly silent, eyes lowered and hands shaking in mute petrifaction. 

Yalina had seen the towering figure move from behind her and come in front. 

He had been wrapped in pitch black, the muted gold buttons on his short vest, glittered like bullet casings, over a kurta which had fallen straight and sharpened his silhouette dramatically, somehow making the man appear taller than he probably had been. 

Yalina had come up to his knees at the most. 

And even if the child hadn’t understood the reason for the fear that had been heavy in the air, hadn’t been able to grasp the aura of danger and shadows clinging to the figure in front like condensation to ice in an inferno, she had felt a strange sense of safety. 

Like when she would wrap herself in her favourite princess printed quilt in winters and tuck her cold feet under the pillows on her bed. Like the nasty cold air couldn’t permeate through her self made fort of comfort. And the ghosts underneath the bed couldn’t reach her at all. 

“A child, Ashfaq? Have you stooped so low now?”, the man’s voice had been silk dragged over gravel. 

A hint of a restrained yet savage strength, that only the unforgiving streets of Lyari could build, yet an artfully practiced poshness that years of cultivating power in the murky lanes of the so called elite of the city could procreate. 

The bad man who had grabbed her, Yalina hadn’t known, had been one of the local ticket distributors of her father’s own party - had just kept offering fearful yet deferential apologies, cradling the hand he had used to hold her against his own chest, nose still pressed to the ground. 

The man had broken the bad man’s wrist in one clean snap. 

“If I even hear you breathe near the girl again, they will find you smeared from Agra Taj to Chakkiwara.”

The words had been quietly delivered. 

None of the hot headed wrathful shouting that little Yalina had generally heard her father and his cronies do when particularly frustrated or enraged. 

Yet this controlled, almost repressed wrath was what had silenced everyone into such terror that they couldn’t even breathe too loudly let alone interfere or even speak. 

Forty men strong, cowering like infants in front of one man. 

Yalina had been a little starstruck. 

The bad man had cried grateful entreaties, crawled on his knees up to the figure in black and pressed his lips to those polished leather shoes and had taken off, like a bat out of a cave. 

Only then had the imposing figure turned and stared at the little girl looking up at him, her eyes saucer wide on a moon shaped face, curly hair framing it softly. 

She still remembered it - the first time she had seen Rehman Dakait’s eyes soften from that brilliant almost cruel hardness, glinting like igneous rocks to an almost liquid graphite like the darkest night sky, a soft rain of volcanic ash. 

And was exactly how he had been looking at her now, her body trembling in his arms, face a mess of tears and snot, knowing in her heart that if there was anyone on the planet who could save her husband, it was this man. 

This man whose mere name was enough to scare people into doing his bidding. This man whose name closed deals in rooms he hasn’t even had to step in. This man who defined power and restraint in a way that she has never seen been done. 

Who had once stood in front of her in the middle of a blood lusty crowd and silenced everyone with just his presence, shielding a silly six year old who had always been more audacious than has ever been for good. 

Maybe it was this audacity that has had her run straight into the Devil’s haunt, knowing that she was about to beg for a man’s life to someone who has faced the ultimate kind of treachery from the former. 

A man who is notoriously known for never forgiving traitors. 

Who has killed his own mother because she betrayed him. 

Who has killed his father when he did the same. 

Can he forgive a man who isn’t even bound to him through blood, only if out of love for her?

Because Yalina knew that Rehman loved her. 

Like an exasperated older brother most times and a helpless father for the rest. 

Knew it deep in her bones in the way she had slept in the crook of his neck, blissfully unaware of the jaws of a wolf near her throat as he whispered deals which could make or break the entirety of Lyari’s power structure under his breath. 

Knew it buried under her skin in the way he had once mended her broken bangles with meticulous care with scarred fingers that had ripped through weaker limbs like claws through paper. 

Knew it settled in her lungs in the way that he had cupped her face in one calloused palm, almost like a blessing, with hands that had snapped bones like they were dried twigs, all those months ago, on her reception night.   

She had seen him lounging on the wicker chair, limbs sprawled in a way which seemed deliberate, loose yet coiled with enough tension to spring into a fighting stance within a second. His silver cane resting against the chair. 

Healing scars and bruises made a tapestry over his chiselled features and she knew, by the way everyone else had been half turned towards him that the fragility of his injuries hadn't subsided completely. 

Yet even in that state, Rehman Baloch was still the most powerful person in the city. 

And Yalina had thrown herself at his feet, at his mercy, like that whimpering bad man on the street all those years ago, hoping that he would find it within himself to help her, if only out of a memory of love if nothing else had sustained the weight of Hamza’s betrayal.  

“Who took him, Yalina?”, he had asked. 

And she knew, somehow suspended in that moment, that this time, the Gods of fortune had been looking down on her with grace. 

___________________

“SP Aslam”. 

Rehman swore like a sailor piled on rum on the first night of the voyage. 

The wounds on his chest and stomach ached as if in sympathy. 

The LTF Chief had become a fucking problem he couldn’t get rid off since the past year. 

If he closed his eyes, he could still hear the bark of his sadistic laughter when he had been choking in a pool of his own blood, chest broken from betrayal and a rifle shot on a dusty forest floor, all those months ago. 

“Where did he pick him from?”, Rehman asked again, his voice so completely devoid of emotion that it very well may have been the sound coming from an automaton. 

He knew that he tended to get frightfully inanimate when trying to control himself and his immediate impulses. It was a hard habit to break for a man who had lived on the edge of survival for the majority of his life. 

“Dolphin mall ke aage, hum shopping karne—”, Yalina’s voice broke and Ulfat shushed her gently, a maternal hand rubbing her back. 

“Bhai, din dahare utha raha hain ye toh? Himmat toh dekho iski! Humare ilaake se humare hi—”, Uzair’s furious rant stopped midway, his eyes turning flat and expression cold, as if gauging the slip in his own words. 

Hamza wasn’t theirs anymore. 

Sometimes Rehman thought Uzair had been the most hurt out of all of them. 

His little brother had perfected loyalty into an art. The ferocity in his devotion has equally scared his older brother and made him want to wrap his younger cousin in a goddamned bubble wrap. 

The boy loved too hard. 

And when that trust eventually broke, he splintered into pieces so dreadfully that it usually took an entire village to put him back together again. 

And Uzair had loved Hamza like Rehman had loved them both. 

The way only an older sibling can love a younger one. 

The way Rehman would always love Uzair a little bit more than the latter can love him.

But at the moment, the older man had other concerns. 

As far as Lyari knew, Hamza was fair game now. 

Not only to SP Chaudhary but also to Arshad Pappu and any Tom, Dick and Harry who had started dreaming about building their own kingdoms. The streets were unforgiving and the younger Baloch had no more protection to fall back on. 

No one left to threaten people to rip their eyeballs out if they looked at his boy wrong. 

Panic and fear were useless emotions and incredibly dangerous as a cocktail. And no one knew it better than the man who has led people into impossible battles and dragged most of them out with all their limbs intact. 

Chaudhary Aslam had taken a lot from Rehman. 

He wouldn’t take anything else. 

Rehman could see his men shifting their feet. Their eyes, hard and unforgiving. Their fingers wrapped around the triggers, unnerved, angry and confused. They were waiting for his command. 

Always deferring, yet their eyes narrowed, judging, balancing, some of them, just waiting for a single weakness. 

Something to exploit. 

Something that would expose the infamous impregnable unmovable Badshah-e-Lyari.

His family was waiting too. 

Bated breath. Nervous twitch. Shifting eyes. 

Yalina’s sniffles were like gunshots to his ears. 

Rehman’s eyes found her. 

Ulfat. 

His queen. 

The one person in the entire world whom he deferred to. Her intelligence, a testament to her razor sharp intuition, had always helped him navigate potential landmines in a way no one would ever believe. 

She was his other half - the better one. Always the better one. 

He knew what he wanted. 

But can he make it stick so that it doesn’t crumble the entire foundation? 

He didn’t have time to spare. The ever present fatigue lingering in the back of his mind was an added crutch. 

Ulfat’s eyes met her husband’s almost as if on cue. 

Like she knew the very moment he would seek her out. The expression on her beautiful face, a muted sign. Her eyes bored into his, a forge forming out of that shared conviction only parents can feel for their children. 

She closed her eyes and when they opened, the light in them was clear. 

She would back him. 

Like she always has. Through thick and thin. Through sunshine and downpour. Through mercy and cruelty. Through every good and bad decision. 

“Get me the details of the location of the task force. We need to move fast”, Rehman ordered, voice clear of any hint of doubt and the same force which made most men, lesser and sometimes even greater, scramble to obey him. 

“Bhai! Are we really going to risk ourselves trying to save a traitor?”

Siyahi growled. An outrageous question of this proportion had clearly not been expected. Uzair glared in disbelief at the other man. Rehman stared the younger man down till he was squirming in his place, but still that defiant gaze was level. 

Just what he had feared. 

“Tell me something, Donga—”, Rehman drawled laconic, suddenly the sharpness giving way to boredom in a way his men knew only pointed at someone’s impending damnation. 

“Yes boss..”, Donga said immediately, eyes alert.

“Do you all think I am a fool?”

The silence was ominous and the men shifted unnerved. 

“Bhai.. main toh bass..”, Siyahi stuttered. 

“Tum madarchodo ko kya laga? Hamza aaya, maine usse gang me leliya, usne mere aankho mein patti bandhke mujhe— Rehman Baloch ko dhoka dediya, fir SP Aslam jiske saath usne haath milaya usi ne usko pakad liya aur ab main waha khud chal ke jaa raha hun bali ka bakhra banne?”

The way he enunciated the words, lips snarled just right and the cadence biting enough to chill everyone’s spines had the desired effect. 

When laid out like that, it sounded like the most ludicrous thing to have ever happened. 

Rehman crossed his arms and stared all his boys down, hard eyes drilling into every one’s gaze, with enough time spent that they had to lower their own eyes in shame. 

“I am Rehman Dakait. I cannot be fooled. I cannot be outsmarted. I cannot be defeated”, he spat with such brutal conviction that everyone flinched back. 

Even Uzair, who had been steadily getting even more confused. 

“Bhai, are you saying..that this was all planned?”, Donga asked tremulously. 

“What do you think, idiot?”

“But… but he shot you! He…..you…we saw the video!”

“It was staged. The gutshot was not fatal. We hadn’t expected Aslam to catch up so soon. Now do I have to give you all the entire picture standing here or will you do your fucking jobs!”, the last words were barked almost virulently. 

It was more the ebullient joy in the faces of his boys than the unintentional laughter spilling out in sheer relief that fractured something in Rehman’s chest. 

He had never lied to them before. 

Not like this. 

When it was about marching into battle, he had only ever told the truth. If they were ready to bleed for him, they deserved the truth - bitter, repulsive and all encompassing. 

But today, at this very moment, Rehman couldn’t think straight. Couldn’t hold himself to his own selective yet painfully rigid morality. All he could see was the blood on Yalina’s dress. All he could remember was the almost meticulous way the SP of Lyari wielded violence against someone. 

The brutality of his beatdowns had broken more of Rehman’s bones in the three times he had come close to killing him than the cumulative efforts of hundreds before and thousands after. 

Aslam, if he had indeed captured Hamza would not be remotely kind to him. 

Rehman could feel Meher and Yalina gawking at him from the grass. Could feel Ulfat’s calculative gaze brush past him in the usual non intrusive yet cautious way. 

But the worst part was perhaps, Uzair. 

He was staring at Rehman like he has never before. A piercing look of disgusted wrath on his sudden whitening face before it turned into an achingly familiar and practiced nonchalance. It was a knife twisting inside his healing gut. 

“Suna nhi Bhai ne kya bola? Gaadi nikaal!”, Uzair bellowed through the cheer and whipped around to storm towards their armory with such violence that it made Rehman’s teeth ache. 

The shame was a startlingly new feeling coiling beneath his plated ribs. 

He ruthlessly squashed it down. 

There would be time to savor the whiplash later. 

Maybe. 

If it was actually… if he survived another brush past mortality again.  

He had to… he had to—

“You lied to them”

Ulfat was beside him and it startled him out of his furious internal battle. He looked at her and found himself focussing on the small nearly indistinguishable black dot below her lips. The scent of her perfume enveloped him like a lover’s embrace. 

“Your hands are shaking, dearest”, Ulfat whispered almost inaudibly, eyes impossibly sad, almost empathetic. 

Rehman locked his jaw and closed his fists hard enough to dig his fingernails inside the palms in an effort to stop the faint tremors. 

“Rehman..”, her eyes were pleading now and he had to meet her gaze. He could never unhear his wife’s beseeching. She shouldn’t have to beg. Not to him. Not for anything. 

“Is it really necessary for you to be present there?”

There it was.

“I have to, meri jaan. SP sahab wants me, not him”, he straightened his cuffs. The silver bracelet caught the setting sunrays. His voice, a barren desert under the night sky. 

“You are still healing. I.. what if it’s an ambush? What if this is just another—”, Ulfat stopped herself, an expression of pain catching her pulchritudinous features only for a second before smoothening. 

“Then so be it”, Rehman said simply. 

Dusk in Lyari was always a riot of colors in the sky. It was almost beautiful if one can ignore the pollution and the general bloodshed on the streets. 

“If it’s a trap. I might die”, Ulfat’s grip on his forearm was a reflexive action and a warning both, but he had to say it. 

For his own sake, this time. 

“But if it’s not. And he doesn’t get to live because of that, then…”, Rehman stroked a stray curl of Ulfat’s mahogany hair off her cheek and heard his little brother’s shouting commands to their men, preparing for battle and then whispers the truth which had been gnawing into his ribs since that fateful day—

“...then I definitely will.”

____________________

Hamza threw up a bout of blood on the feet of the now visibly tired officers.

One of his eyes had swollen shut. The other one was barely catching anything in the dark, even if the LTF had their car headlights switched on at full beam. 

Pain had always been his longest companion. 

Even now, it was clinging to him, wrapped around his broken ribs, plunging into his abrasions and rubbing against the violent tapestry of bruises all over his battered body. He was leaning mostly on the stump for support now, his legs unable to hold onto his weight at all. 

The ropes had cut into his skin with the continuous snapping force with which his tied body had swung with the dull impacts of the batons. 

The moon was luminous in the sky. 

“I think, he might not come after all, boss”, the deputy officer braved the fire to say to Aslam who was visibly frustrated by now. 

Hamza had taken their beatings with a stoic face and minimal noise. 

He had been a mute statue. 

No matter how many times Aslam had tried provoking him into answering questions about the Baloch gang, he had been unsuccessful. 

Hamza was ice. 

“I really don’t get this, kid. Why aren’t you just telling me what I want to know? During your stint inside the gang, I only ever got crumbs and here I was labouring under the impression that Rehman hadn’t let you close enough.”

Aslam walked towards him, voice dull with a feigned nonchalance. 

“But that evidently wasn’t the case. So why not just tell me? Not that you will ever win their confidence again, so what is the harm? The point was dismantling the Bastard King, wasn’t it?”

Hamza looked up, one eye staring deep into the SP.

“That was before… you shot… him you… motherfucker”, he whispered through gritted teeth. 

“So what? You shot him too. Or did you forget?”, Aslam’s voice was poison on his already flayed wounds. As if he would ever forget that sight. Barrel shaking, Rehman dropping his own gun in shocked reflex, the burst of red, his body caving in. 

Flashes of a nightmare he would never be able to unsee. 

Rehman’s vacant gaze, chokeful of that confused anguish. 

Never. 

“Mujhe laga tha tujhe badla lena tha usse. Par tu toh beta chamelion nikla. Kya rang palta bhai. Isliye bolta hun, saap aur Baloch se kabhi dosti nhi karni chahiye.”

The SP slapped him across the face, almost bored. The back of his palm making the younger man’s head snap aside with bruising force. 

“But maybe I am being too harsh. A destitute ill fated orphan like you. Couldn’t resist the temptation of the Devil, am I right?”, the words were taunts ingrained inside his skin. 

Hamza bared his teeth at the LTF Chief. 

He wished the man would kill him already and be done with it. He doesn’t need any more of his buried wounds scraped out time and again. 

He had had and then he had lost. And it fucking hurts. He wished he could go back in time, listen to his mother’s soothing voice as she sang him and his sister to sleep. Her hand, a gentle affectionate touch on his brow. 

The memory didn’t swim in like a slow river tide on the floodbank, as has been usual these past few months, it hit his mind like a fully loaded truck, a white magma over his blurred vision. 

This Walima would perhaps go down in the records of the parties conducted in the high society of Karachi as one of the biggest celebrations ever. 

The reception of Meher Zarvari and Uzair Baloch. The daughter of one of the most respected politicians in the country with the brother of perhaps the most dangerous power broker in all of Pakistan, in recent times. 

Rehman had spared no expense for the wedding. It would be the talk of town for a long time. It had made people wonder, considering his own wedding had been a much smaller, much more intimate occasion, even if his wife was the daughter of a very powerful feudal lord of Karachi.

There were rumours that Ulfat Baloch’s family came from old money and hadn’t approved of the match. 

Well, Lyari knew that her King got what he wanted by hook or by crook, no matter how powerful or well connected the other party was. 

Hamza was so tired he could barely keep his limbs from turning into limp noodles by the time night had rolled in. 

The bright lights and sounds were hammering his exhausted brain like determined beatdowns. He had been running, arranging everything and managing the whole marriage ceremonies and other events for the past week, single handed, almost. 

As much as he had quite guiltily enjoyed the cheer in the Baloch household for the entire week, seeing more laughter and merriment in a place usually governed by cruel logistics and cold bloodshed - he would be the happiest for the days to return to their normal sombre slow pattern. 

Uzair had been such a nervous wreck since the wedding day that it had taken Ulfat and an hour long pep talk to calm the nerves of the Lieutenant of the Dakait gang, somewhat. 

Now he was standing beside his glowing wife and accepting gifts from the nth person, eyes twinkling in a strange contentment that Hamza had never seen before. 

Somedays he wondered whether he will ever get his happily ever after. 

Or will his mission chew him up and spit him back out, a used wrung out refuse. 

“Hmphh! It's a damned shame. Getting your daughter married into that family. Rehman Dakait, a petty street rat who has crawled out of the gutter and now dares to reach for the stars. Power or not, money or not - Its dirty blood I tell you—”

Hamza turned towards the sniggering coming from the gathering at his side. 

Three men, political aides, all feudal and landed. The so-called aristocracy of Pakistan. 

They were teetering towards the edge of being completely hammered, if their slightly tipsy laughter was anything to go by. Or the sheer audacity of insulting a man and his lineage behind his back knowing fully well he could rip out their faces with a single hand and no hesitation. 

Hamza would have ignored their drunken rambling, no matter how vicious. 

But they decided to take it a step too far. 

They had all been staring at the gangster king, who was completely unbothered by the back bitching of plebians not worth his time, talking with Mir Abdul Zarvari, the patriarch of Meher’s family and her grandfather, surrounded by the most affluent and powerful men in Karachi’s current social circle. 

They were all seemingly hanging onto his every word. 

Power moved silently here. No noise, no fanfare. It was the way the very air had displaced to accommodate the space where the men stood at the other corner of the hall. 

Rehman Baloch didn’t speak much. 

It was common knowledge. 

So when he did, even the silence waited to hear. 

Because his words usually carried the consequence of an entire town, especially to the people who knew how to distinguish between shallow hogmouthing and calculated strategy. 

Hamza had learnt the art of manipulation from the maestro himself. 

So he could gauge what was happening there. 

The only anomaly in the entire picture was perhaps the reason what had drawn the attention of the three men standing beside him, to the other side. 

Rehman was enveloped in his usual obsidian ensemble. The only festive look, perhaps the subtle gold embroidery at the collars and the cuffs of the heavy material of the vest and the lion shaped brooch pinned to his chest. He had a muslin shawl wrapped around his neck. Black like the night before dawn approaches. 

A picture of power. 

The only break, the child attached to his hip. 

Faizal was fast asleep in his father’s arms, face buried in the crook of his neck, arms limp around those broad shoulders. Rehman’s arms were deliberately placed to hold the nine year old’s weight against him. 

Firm. But gentle. 

Hamza knew the boy wouldn’t feel the press of his father’s beastly strength even if it was wrapped around him like an uncrossable moat. 

It was a strange picture. 

People of Rehman’s stature would not be holding a sleeping child, even if their own, while they talked business with men twenty times more influential than him. It would usually be the woman’s job. As was socially acceptable. 

Ulfat was probably busy navigating her own social circle like a master of subtle manipulation as she also has always been. 

But there was nothing comical about the sight. If only a weird kind of endearing. 

There was no gentleness in Rehman’s cadence, no break in his posture, no softening of the chiselled lines of his face, no loseness in his limbs. 

Just a boy, wearing a yellow and white dress, looking like a tiny sunflower against the backdrop of his father’s silken inky expanse. 

Something ached fiercely in Hamza’s chest. 

And then the man standing beside him spoke again, disdain dripping from his tone like gunk from an infected wound. 

“I pity the kid sometimes. His father is that pedophilic Babu Dakait’s son after all, who knows what he does with—”

“I would suggest you think carefully before completing that sentence, sir”, Hamza had turned fully towards the man, blocking his sight, back to Rehman and Faizal, tiredness forgotten in a wildfire of fury. 

“Wha… who the fuck are you? Do even know who I am—”, the man spluttered even if a nervous sweat had broken on his forehead. 

Hamza knew he could look pretty monstrous if he tried. Extending himself to his full height, his lion shaped eyes sharpened like steel blades and his muscled figure splitting to its expansively veiny peak. 

“And do you know who you have been spitting utter bullshit about? You stand in the jungle and dare to insult the Lion. Either you are suicidal or a complete idiot. I will bet on the latter.”

The man squawked indignantly, spluttered some more and took an angry swig of the alcohol in his hand and decided to go with his better judgement and slink away, his friends muttering curses under their breath as they followed him out. 

Anger was still swirling like magma in his veins. 

“Hamza.”

Rehman’s voice brought him back to earth and his feet obeyed before his body could command. He was beside the older man before the call of his name had materialized till completion. 

“Take Faizal back to the house and stay with him. The party will extend longer. The boy is out like the light and I can see you are about this close to start murdering people”, his tone was dry as he handed out the sleeping nine year old to Hamza in one fluid unhesitant move. 

Hamza’s arms moulded around a sleeping Faizal like it was innate in him. Something natural and ingrained so deep that it had become instinct at this point. Rehman didn’t even check to see whether he had taken his son fully before turning back.

As if he knew that Hamza would not let the child even nudge to a side let alone drop. 

This was not carelessness as one would think. 

This was trust. 

A kind of trust, Hamza had never believed he would ever achieve to this level. 

He is holding a piece of Rehman Dakait in his arms, unsupervised, unbothered. Maybe the most vulnerable piece of the invincible gangster. His heart. Wrapped in the fragile body of a peacefully slumbering child who hadn’t even stirred. 

‘You will earn his trust. So much that he would walk in front of you blind. Till you can drive your sword through his chest and rip it through his spine and he would feel it only after it has already shredded him from inside out’

Chaudhary Aslam’s icy words settled like acidic boils on his skin. 

Trust. 

So fragile. 

Faizal’s steady breaths against the crook of his own neck. His natural baby scent mixed with the hint of Rehman’s virile oud and Ulfat’s floral attar. 

Hamza went to the haveli, mind scattered like dandelions in the wind and heart so fucking tight inside his chest that breathing was a liability and stayed awake the entire night, watching Faizal sleep, till dawn had broken out the next day. 

Rehman hadn’t even come to check whether he had taken the child back home or was he holding him hostage in some dank warehouse. 

Some would call that foolish. 

Hamza only felt sick to his core, the rest of the night, watching over Rehman Dakait’s heart beat in blissful sleep, unaware of the decaying shape of treachery seated half a foot away from him. 

“You should kill me now SP Sahab….looks like….your brilliant plan…has failed”, Hamza snarled slowly. 

Aslam sneered and punched him hard in the gut, making more blood flow up and collect behind his gritted teeth. He spat it on the police chief’s shoes, mucous and blood and bile making a nauseating splatter. 

“Fucker!”, Aslam roared and slapped him again. 

“You motherfucking viper! Tu kisika kaam nhi aaya! Na mera, na Rehman ka aur nahi apna! “

The truth has a rotten ugly face. 

Aslam continued, wrath finally breaking out of the fraying control he had had since the time he had dragged in the younger man inside the forest. 

“Baap chodke bhaag gayaa tha naa tera! Saale behaya! Ek chota sa kaam nhi hua terese! Bewakoof kahika! Tujhe kya lagaa, woh Rehman Dakait tujhe apnaa lega? Tu hain hi kaun? Another stupid foot soldier to squash beneath his boot.”

Hamza wished Aslam’s words didn’t affect him. Wished he could lose consciousness at the very least. Wished the man would kill him already. 

The LTF Chief seemed to be on a roll now, his officers shifting nervously at the edges. 

“Illiterate, treacherous, useless of a fatherless bastardical idiot! Tera hain hi kaun—”

A sound tore through the deathly quiet forest like a roar. It was blood curdling. Chilling in its full bellowed capacity. Not because of the volume or the pitch or even the impact which hit the broken stone walls of the colosseum like structure. 

It was the vibrating anger which had rooted the startled task force officers to their place. 

The wrath in those words were familiar. 

Too familiar. 

The declaration of the Devil. 

And they had woken up the sleeping monster inside.  

“He is mine!”

The words had ripped through Aslam like a rifle shot. Hit his ribs with the certainty of a kick by a stallion. Adrenaline was nothing new in his line of work. Yet this time, a strange fear jumped at the back of his mind. 

Hamza, shocked into jerking his heavy blood clotted head up, saw him before the rest could. 

Rehman Dakait, illuminated by a silver light, standing at the top of the staircase that was embedded on the opposite wall, the full moon casting a deadly long shadow which had fallen over Hamza and the broken stump he was leaning against. 

No one would say this man had been near dead only six months ago. 

The new scars, a mess of thin livery lines on his hard expression, the same strands of raven hair on his forehead and wrapped in a shroud of shadowy wrath. 

The wolf was out tonight. 

And the sheep in front will be his prey. 

The words hadn’t yet registered yet in Hamza’s mind as the vision in front had. For a long minute he was convinced that he had hallucinated him. It was his fractured mind trying to ease his passing, by showing him the visage of the man he has wronged. 

His broken mangled heart trying to somehow conjure up a watery image of the man he has hated and worshipped. 

But Aslam’s sudden bark of laughter broke his muddled grateful musings rudely. 

“Rehman Baloch? Nikal aaya apne bill ke bahar? Ab ise bewakoofi kahein ya dillagi?”

“Apni maut ka farman samajh SP. Bohot ho gya ye chupan chupai. Aaj ya toh tu marega ya main.”

Rehman was walking down the staircase, unperturbed about the barrels being pointed at him, uncaring about the broken steps he was navigating in almost complete darkness of a dilapidated structure if anything. 

“Your overconfidence is amusing”, Aslam sneered infuriated. 

“Your habit of breaking into a soliloquy at the most opportune time is convenient”, Rehman drawled bored. 

As if on cue, the headlights of the cars were shot at, almost simultaneously. And then it was complete chaos. Gunfire and men jumping into the fray, only the yellow lights of the few kerosene lamps had given a dim glow in the space. 

“Don’t hit the boy by mistake you idiots!”

Uzair’s shout ripped through the air as the LTF officers started returning fire like possessed. 

Rehman neatly dodged the bullet fired by Aslam and ran outside the colosseum and started towards the forest. Darkness welcomed him like an old friend. His hawk-like gaze feeling the shapes before they could hit him, the razor sharp sixth sense that has always helped him in combat, now was his sole vision. 

“Rukh saale rukh!”

Aslam’s voice came from behind, the police chief gaining ground quickly enough. 

Good. 

Rehman stopped suddenly and turned back, his gun pointed straight at the SP who had come to a staggering stop behind. The older man had been so engrossed in running to catch up with him that he had not had the time to point his own gun at him. 

And now, it was too late. 

“You shouldn’t have taken him”, Rehman retorted cooly. 

“You shouldn’t have come after”, Aslam replied, unwavering in front of certain death. 

“You should have gone for the head that day.”

Rehman pulled the trigger before his hand started to shake again, the half healed wounds on his chest tight and pulsating painfully by the effort of running through pitch dark, face snapping against the branches he couldn’t avoid. 

The bullet tore through Chaudhary Aslam’s throat. 

A bright sound of gurgling followed the gunshot. The recoil was absorbed by the Baloch leader’s expert aim and the LTF Chief and Rehman’s nemesis for nearly two decades was on the forest floor, choking. 

Rehman breathed deeply. 

The coiled tension unwrapped from his aching limbs as sickness pooled low in his gut. 

He walked towards the now still body and kneeled beside. 

Aslam’s eyes were open. The burning bubbling derision in his gaze finally voided out. 

Grief was a familiar annoyance at this point. A long estranged friend whom you kept bumping into at the most inappropriate places despite your best efforts. 

Rehman closed Aslam’s eyes, almost respectful. He considered the older man, images and memories a sickening wrathful punishment swirling in his overburdened mind. 

He sighed, tucking the smoking gun back in the folds of his grey kurta and pressed a kiss on the dead man’s forehead. 

“In another life then, SP Sahab. When we are both a little less angry and a little more good.”

He whispered against icy skin as a crow started cackling like a freaking witch abovehead. 

“Bhai!”

Donga’s shout broke his trance and Rehman stood back up immediately as his trusted aid rushed into the clearing, a gun pointed at him in one hand and a torch light in another. 

“Oh good fucking riddance!”, Donga breathed out, seeing Aslam on the ground and Rehman standing over him, unhurt, sombre, unreadable. 

“The men?”

Rehman asked storming past Donga to walk back towards the colosseum, mind already calculating damages and casualties trying to push back the bubbling guilt somewhere beneath his ribs. 

“None. Ismail took a hit. Ashar took him to the hospital. The rest are battered but okay.”

A small relief. 

“Uzair?”

His brother hadn’t spoken a word to him since they had driven out.

“He is fine Bhai. I think he has a graze on his arm, but okay otherwise.”

They had reached the clearing now, his men stationed with their guns pointed at the heads of the LTF officers who were still alive, kneeling on the ground in front. 

He barely gave them a glance. 

“Get Aslam’s body from the clearing and let the LTF guys go.”

“Bhai?”

“Sunnai nhi diya ek baar mein?”, Rehman snapped. His people have started questioning his decisions too much nowadays. He had to gain back the little control he had lost as fast as possible. 

“Nhi main toh bss… thik hain Bhai”, Donga muttered and walked back. 

Hamza was still tied to the stump, kneeling. 

Uzair was standing in front, his face dispassionate, his barrel pointed at the ground but his finger was still curled around the trigger. As if waiting to start shooting at a second’s notice. 

Rehman checked his brother over in one quick glance. No tenseness trying to hide injuries. No unintentional posturing to show he is alright. 

He was okay. 

Relief was a sweet release in his burning chest. 

Then his eyes fell on Hamza. 

And his heart twisted immediately, without even stopping for a breath, without even waiting for his explicit permission to start acting up like an impulsive idiot, yet again. 

Instinct was a hard thing to unremember. 

The blood coagulated on the floor below, the straining muscles bright with sweat and tears and filth. The hair matted and stuck with dark maroon and dust. The boot prints were clear to Rehman even in the dark. 

His body moved before he could command it. 

Goddamned instinct will get him killed one of these days. 

He was kneeling on the stone in front, his hands on the younger man, unhesitant. He kept his touches brief and as clinical as possible, turning the face towards him, his mind scrambling furiously to take stock of the innumerable wounds and each one’s severity. 

“Shit, kid. What have you done to yourself?”

The words came out before he could strangle them inside his throat. The cadence was too soft, the tone too close to how it used to be before… before everything. 

Too much.. Too much. 

Hamza’s one functioning eye was wide yet cloudy on his face. 

It took some time to focus on him. 

But when it finally did, the sudden contortion was lightening fast. 

Hamza’s face cracked open like an egg smashing against marble. Tears streamed down that one eye pitifully. He looked absolutely miserable. Like the last thread of sanity that had kept him upright had snapped by the sheer force of the moment. 

“Bhai..”, he whimpered like a lost child. 

Rehman felt his heart break. 

A physical tearing sensation just like it had when he had realised that Hamza wouldn’t stop the fucking car. Just like it had when those fists he had cleaned with unintentional care often, had cracked against his face. Just like it had when the first bullet had torn his intestines to shreds. 

The loud screaming questions he had tried to forget all these months, languishing in bed, trapped in his fortress with his broken family to keep company, dissolved in the air. 

Hamza looked like Naieem at the moment. 

Like Uzair. 

Like Faizal. 

When they would intentionally do something he had explicitly forbidden them to do and then get hurt, scare a few years off Rehman’s life and come to him crying, split lip, bleeding knees, scratched elbows. 

And he would sigh and clean their wounds, kiss their bandages and wrap them up in his arms. 

“Oh you idiot..”, Rehman whispered, affection wringing out painfully from his rotten heart, and he cradled his face gently. 

“Get him out. He needs a fucking hospital.”

Uzair was behind Hamza now, waiting. Rehman nodded his head and he started cutting the ropes and the chains, silent and efficient. Not cruel but not gentle either. 

Rehman gathered him up in his arms the moment the last chain snapped and the boy fell over him, like his body could no longer keep himself upright. He dragged him up with him, unperturbed about the blood staining his clothes. 

Uzair was beside him again. 

Still quiet but the question was clear in his shuttered gaze. 

Rehman let his cousin take Hamza’s weight. He might be strong but he was still healing and Hamza, even bleeding like a stuck pig, was as heavy as a tank. 

The sirens coming from the distance announced the backup for the police before their scouts could have. 

Rehman looked at the blood stained coloseum, the broken stump, SP Aslam’s cooling body and the dead officers lying like puppets with snapped strings and his boys gathering around Uzair and a subconscious Hamza. 

The night seemed to stretch over him like a strangling blanket. 

The weight pressing against his chest would not lift so easily. 

But then, when has anything in his life ever been easy?

_______________

The hospital lights were flickering intermittently. 

Rehman was sitting on the waiting chairs lined in the hallway. The OT lights were on and Uzair was walking in such tight and violently rapid circles in front, cigarette dangling from his lips that it was making his head spin. 

“Did you call Yalina?”, Rehman asked finally, exhaling a drag of smoke quietly. 

“Yes.”

A single word. Efficient. Flat. 

A nurse suddenly burst out of the OT doors, her green uniform drenched in blood, a suspiciously familiar sound rang horrendously inside the room. 

Rehman knew what that sound indicated. 

He had been in hospitals far too often to not recognize it. 

His heart jumped to his throat. 

No.. no please..not again. 

“What is happening?”, he barked, standing in front of the harried nurse in one fluid move. 

“The patient is coding. Sir please, let me work”, she snapped at him, not bothered about sniping at the most feared man in the city, in the face of her duty. 

In a different time, Rehman would have applauded her spine. 

Now he just wanted to wrap his hand around her throat and yell on her face. 

Uzair had stopped pacing. 

The nurse disappeared inside the room.

“Fuck I can’t do this! I am going home. Donga and the boys are here. Call me if you need me”, Uzair spat and crushed his cigarette, throwing it inside a bin and stormed off before Rehman could open his mouth. 

He must have looked like an idiot, gaping in the middle of the corridor, as his younger brother walked away, without even waiting for permission or even a word. 

Donga looked at him anxious. 

Should he stop the younger man or not? Was this insubordination or a temper tantrum? 

Terror was nothing new. The sudden vicious desperation was like a whip cracking against his back, layering over his decades long scars. It stung. It twisted and squeezed and wrapped deadly fingers around his throat. 

Another time. The same hospital corridor. 

Another boy on a cold metal slab, skin frozen and eyes vacant. 

Bile rose in Rehman’s throat and turned towards the exit so fast it startled Donga and Basheer into reaching for their guns. He had to slow down and stop after a moment, blinking dark spots away. He swayed in place and Donga hurried towards him, terror stark on his otherwise ever jubilant expression. 

“Bhai! What happened? Should I call a doctor?”

“No..”

Rehman looked towards the OT once. The light was still on. That sharp ringing in his ears just won’t stop. Naieem’s pale blue tinged face haunting him like a spectre. Like a fist through his chest. 

“I need some air. Stay here. I’ll be back.”

He strode as fast as he could without making it too obvious and sensed Basheer following him, but at a respectful distance, as always. 

The cold night air hit his face like a pitiful semblance of relief. 

He stopped just outside the hospital entrance, moved to the side and took out a cigarette. The lighter was a lost cause as his hands were shaking too damned hard to even hold the fag properly let alone light it up. 

“Goddamn!”, he cursed under his breath and dropped the cigarette in irritation. 

The moon was so full abovehead, it was almost mocking him. 

The sudden melody of a qawwali coming from the far distance, somewhere beyond was like a tremor through his spine. The words were devotional, the tone slightly melancholic, the message so brutal that it was almost funny. 

Almost. 

Rehman looked towards the distance and spotted the top of a mosque. 

Of fucking course. 

The sounds of the hospital behind were indistinguishable. The flavor of grief and regret was so potent, it was like an added layer of soot inside his mouth. 

Memories were a torture and the desperation which had seized him on hearing Hamza’s heart stop inside the OT, the sound of the ECG flatlining, the way he had felt it inside himself like he had all those years ago, for his oldest, had suddenly given him the clarity his mind had been searching for since the past few months. 

And maybe finally, when everything was lost, a man like him who has always relied only on himself, for whom power had always been the endgame and deference had never even been in the checklist, helplessness was the biggest punishment. 

He couldn’t fight this. 

The green gilded pillars of the mosque were inviting. 

Yet Rehman stood rooted to his place. 

He just closed his eyes once, fists curled tight at his sides, feet slightly apart but steady. 

He had forgotten the words of ablutions. The wording of prayers has been crushed out of his soul and wiped off his mind. He didn’t know how to beg anymore. 

Yet today, standing at the mouth of the hospital, the ghost of his older son pressing his spine into the ground, he begged. 

‘Ya Allah, rehem kar. Mujh pe rehem kar. Phirse nhi hoga mujhse. Iss baar bardaash nhi hoga mujhse…rehem kar rehem kar..’

‘Oh God have mercy. Have mercy on me. I can’t do this again. Not again, not another one. I wouldn’t be able to bear this… have mercy, have mercy.’

Pleading to the same God, yet again, Who hadn’t even bothered to spare him a single glance. 

But the truth was simple. 

This time, he wasn’t sure he could survive the loss. 

Not another one. 

Not another son. 

“Bhai… the doctor—”

Donga’s worried words had Rehman snapping his eyes open. He swallowed the rest of the humiliating grovelling he was about to do, even if it had been in his mind just, and turned back. 

_______________________

Hamza’s body remembered before his mind did. 

The waking up was a torment better left unsaid. He has had painful awakenings many times to have believed that he would have become immune to it. Maybe to some extent, he has. 

But this time, he did not want to wake up at all. 

Did not want to open his eyes and get thrown back into the dreary reality his life has become.

He had been seeing a dream. 

Rehman had come to his rescue. 

The Leader of the Balochs, the most dangerous man he has ever met, standing like a sentinel, a beast wrapped in silk and warmth, his spiky wings large enough to encompass them all under its coarse leathery protection. 

He had touched him after. 

Kneeled in front of the broken stump, those decisive yet gentle fingers mapping Hamza’s body for wounds, holding his his face up, those volcanic eyes softening despite the wrath, despite the treachery, despite the fucking sword he had run through the older man’s back. 

Despite the betrayal. 

“What have you done to yourself…”, he had asked.

Tone so absentmindedly fond like he hadn’t even thought before speaking. 

Hamza hadn’t been able to stop himself then. The pain had been excruciating. The guilt - such a tidal wave of shameful pressure over him that he had been slowly suffocating. 

He had just wanted the ache to stop. 

He had wanted Rehman to look at him with that easy warmth only parents can at their children, yet again. 

He wanted those bony arms around him again, unmistakable affection masked as irritation at his apparent stupidity, that had been the perennial expression on that serious yet beguilingly beautiful face. 

At that point, Hamza would have happily accepted a punch to the face if that meant the older man would touch him with anything other than disgust or worse, indifference. 

But he had only managed to utter one word. 

“Bhai..”,

Rehman’s face had softened. The expression of glacial calm from those months ago in that hospital corridor had given way to the mangled heart he had always kept hidden under that scratched armour and rattling ribs. 

“Oh you idiot…”, he had whispered, pain splashing beneath the hint of an uncharacteristically rueful smile. The way warmth had curled over the insult which has always been an endearment had ripped inside the younger man savagely. 

Hamza had wanted to curl inside Rehman’s leaner frame and sob. 

He didn’t remember much after. It was like a fog had fallen over him. His delirious brain may have conjured Rehman cradling him in his arms and then dragging him up with his inherent monstrous strength. 

He thought he had felt Uzair’s arms around him for a moment too. A sudden squeeze, a muttered curse in that beloved voice and then stillness. 

“Shh shh.. Its okay Hamza. It’s me.”

Yalina. 

She was stroking his hair. 

He opened his eyes slowly and then took some time to adjust to the light in the room.

“Are you…okay? Did they hurt you?”, Hamza rasped. He had been terrified that Aslam would have hurt his wife out of anger as well. 

“No. I am fine. I… oh god.. I was so scared”, Yalina cried, tucking her face on the pillow, against Hamza’s, her tears staining his temple. 

“I am….okay, sweetheart.”

“You almost didn’t make it. The doctors said you flatlined on the table. But they brought you back so..”

“Hush hush.. It's okay. It will be okay.”

The next few minutes there was only an almost comfortable silence in the room. Hamza could feel Yalina shift nervously against him. He held her hand and squeezed it weakly. 

“Rehman bhai, got you out. He.. killed SP Aslam”, Yalina said suddenly. The words landed like an explosion in the room. In a way that Hamza felt all the air had been sucked out of his lungs. 

“He.. he did what? He killed Aslam? Are you sure?”, Hamza asked, disbelief and shock making his already fractured voice more raspy. 

“Yes. They are showing it on the television. Of course it's been shown as the LTF task force overreaching, working as a private mercenary group. The political pressure for turning this to the PPP’s favour has been immense.”

Sometimes Hamza forgot that Rehman was about to fight for the seat of Lyari next. 

His circle of power has almost reached its zenith. 

Yet what he couldn’t get out of his mind was his rescue. He was so sure, he was going to die. Had even accepted it. 

Why?

Why would—

‘Oh you idiot..’

Tears burned in Hamza’s eyes so viciously that he had to turn his head away on the opposite side so the liquid didn't stain Yalina’s cheeks anymore. 

‘Oh lord.. Oh lord, what a goddamned fool have I been—’

____________________

Rehman was sitting on the chair by the bed. 

His gaze fixated on the opposite wall of the hospital chamber. 

He sensed Hamza waking up before the man’s own body could. The machines hooked to him started beeping alarmingly when the younger man almost jerked awake, eyes darting everywhere in suppressed panic. 

A nightmare in all likelihood. 

“Calm down. You will rip your stitches”, he said dryly. 

“Bhai…”, the younger man gasped, scrambling up like an idiot and then wincing when it pulled at his wounds. 

Rehman sighed and called the nurse. 

He understood the feeling. He wouldn’t want to stay lying on his back when a man such as himself, who can, in all probability, tear your throat out is beside you, looming over. 

The nurse adjusted the backrest to a comfortable position, checked his vitals and went out. 

Rehman waited patiently. 

He can wait all day. 

He has not conquered empires by being impatient and ready to attack. 

Hamza was looking at his own feet, eyes lowered and hands clasping and unclasping on the bedspread. 

“Why did you save me?”, he asked finally. 

Idiot stupid boy. 

Has he learnt nothing? 

Well, two can play this game. 

“Because I could”, he answered. 

“That is not an answer”, Hamza retorted, frustrated. 

“No. But that is all you are going to get if you decide to be deliberately obtuse.”

Hamza looked at him finally. His eyes were moist, the expression bespoke of naked vulnerability. The boy had always shown his heart on his face, quite unobtrusively. It was concerning. 

‘Well maybe not always’, his mind reasoned as the barrel pointing at him in that thrice damned forest came to him unbidden. 

“Why did you do it, kid?”, he said finally. Exhaustion had sunken into his marrow. And the questions circling his mind were vultures who would not be quietened unless they were satisfied. 

Even if the answer destroys whatever is left inside him. 

Even if the truth shatters him. 

He needs to know. 

He had thanked the cruel Gods of Fate a thousand times since last night, since the moment the doctors had declared Hamza to be out of danger and Rehman had felt something loosen inside his chest. 

His prayers finally answered. 

Even if he realises that nothing had been real. 

Even if the entire thing, seven years of devotion and loyalty and love had been a farce. Even if Hamza still wants to curl his fingers inside Rehman’s wounds and rip them apart again just so he can see the older man bleed out—

Even then.

Because for him it has been real. 

He has loved this boy to death. Loved him like he loved Uzair and then Naieem and then Faizal. Loved him still. Will love him always. With whatever was left of his rotten decaying heart. 

Because you always love your children. 

Even if they kill you. 

Even after they kill you. 

Hamza looked at him beseeching. As if pleading with him to let it go. But he remained quiet. His gaze steady, his face hard. His fingers are loose on the bed, tension suppressed with violent force inside his skin. 

Hamza closes his eyes. 

Rehman’s patience breaks. 

Words spill like blood spilling from a gaping laceration taped together with plastic and glue. 

“Was it the throne? Power? Money?”

Hamza flinches like he has been struck.

“Was it leverage? Was it anger? Was it punishment?”

A whimper escapes the younger man and Rehman wants to stop. Wants to hug him to his chest and tell him it's okay. Wants to shake him by the shoulder till his teeth rattle and scream why. 

He doesn’t do either. 

“All I have has always been yours…”, Rehman breathes the words out and Hamza opens his eyes, tears clear in those aching depths, “arre tujhe kuch chahiye tha toh maang leta mujhse! Paise, jayzaat, taakat… sab! Dhoka kyun diya!”

Rehman closed his eyes and leaned back in the chair, the burst of energy sapping the rest of his strength by the force of his own words. He hadn’t intended to sound like that. But the truth had wrung it out of him. 

He would have given Hamza anything if only the boy had asked. 

Anything. 

“I wanted revenge.”

Hamza’s words were almost inaudible and yet it fell like a landmine in the room. 

Rehman opened his eyes and looked at him, his mind working a mile a minute. The air was suddenly tight in the space between them. The younger man turned his gaze at him finally. 

The wetness filmed over a sudden burning hatred which twisted Rehman’s gut like a snake coiling over its prey. 

“I wanted to kill you.”

Rehman’s fingers shook and he clasped them together on his lap, shoulders straight. 

Time to take the bullets. 

“I wanted… to see you choke in your blood in the same way my sister did when your men shot through her”, Hamza spat, wrath burning through his pain like a tsunami which once unleashed cannot be taken back. 

“I wanted you to realise who it was that had betrayed you as you lay dying in the same way my mother had when your men entered our house and—”, he stopped and swallowed. 

“I wanted to pound my fists into your face till you couldn’t even see straight in the same way my trainers did to me when I made a single mistake, so that they could turn me into a perfect weapon”, Hamza said through gritted teeth. 

If Rehman had been a lesser man he would have clutched his own throat and begged Hamza to stop. He couldn’t breathe. The air was venom inside his crushed lungs. 

But he stayed still, eyes wide and face pale. 

Hamza laughed then. It was a pathetic sad thing. Tears rolled down his sunken face. 

“I wanted to kill you so badly that I wanted to kill myself too”, he stuttered. 

Rehman’s chest stilled at the severity of the desperation in his words. 

“Hamza…”, he finally managed to utter. His throat had dried up. Hamza looked at him again, this time the hatred was gone, replaced with shame and he was openly crying. 

“But no one had ever told me how it would feel to find a father again.”

Rehman felt his mind screech to a halt. 

Hamza was still speaking. Tears clogged his voice thickly. 

“You are my father and I love you. I hate you and I love you and I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t…”, he buried his face in his hands now, bending over the bed. 

“Why did you do it? Why did you make me feel so loved? Why!”, his accusations, a rope tightening across Rehman’s throat. 

“I was supposed to kill you and then find my peace. But instead I found another family and the ghosts of my mother and sister, tightening the noose around my neck. You didn’t even have enough pity to let me die.”

The younger man whimpered. 

“Enough!”

Rehman gasped and stood up, he had to ram his own fist once, tight on his chest for it to start moving again as it was supposed to. The bullet wound hurt like a bitch but his lungs had started working again. 

The next few seconds were spent in trying to compose himself. The silence in the room was punctuated by their heavy breaths and Hamza’s convulsing sniffles. 

“Kharottabad… Quetta”, Rehman said finally, once his voice could work again without cracking, “you all were in the village that night…”, his mind was rapidly connecting the dots. 

The visions of that night would never leave Hamza’s mind. 

“Yes..”, Hamza whispered. 

Rehman closed his eyes, pain detonating like a bomb inside him. 

‘Oh God…this was his reckoning then. The punishment of his sins.’

He dropped back into the seat, his legs no longer willing to hold his weight. He leaned at one side, a curled hand against his forehead. His entire skeleton had decided to desert any form of structure it seemed. 

Or maybe the slowly building disbelieved regret had broken all his joints in one go. 

Hamza wasn’t crying anymore. Only silent tears. 

“I was… young. Too reckless in my rage. Too impulsive. Too much fire. I would burn anyone down to ashes who would stand in my way, irrespective of the collateral damage”, he whispered. 

“So my mother and sister were collateral damage?”, Hamza asked, dismayed. 

Rehman looked at him, eyes broken, “No. They paid the price of my youthful foolishness and the treachery of the men of your village.”

“Treachery?”

“Balochs, all of them. Ate our salt, stayed under my protection and gave information to the ISI behind our backs. Sold their fucking souls for a few extra bucks.”

Rehman closed his eyes and remembered the screams of the women in the BUF camps.

“They gave the ISI the location of a school well, where the children of the BUF members studied. Those motherfuckers mixed poison in the water and—”

Hamza gasped, eyes wide and a new layer of pain. 

Rehman sunk into his chair further, as if he could disappear into it through sheer will. 

“I was… infuriated. I saw red. Here I was bleeding for them, eating bullets and they… I was too young, my authority hadn’t extended over the men like I had expected. I told them to kill the men of the village. A public execution. Drag them out of their homes and shoot them in the face and hang them from the trees.”

Rehman laughed, no delight, no sadistic glee as one would expect. Only a bitter resentment for himself, choking his throat. 

“Only the men, I had said. Those motherfuckers didn’t listen… They killed everyone. Women, children…”

“I couldn’t find any of them, when I started searching two years later”, Hamza said quietly. 

It was not a question. 

“I had killed them all with my bare hands. No one ever questioned my authority again.”

The reply was dull. The words - a mere string in a sentence. No pride in them, no remorse too. 

“Why didn’t you kill me?”, Rehman asked finally, turning his eyes towards the boy sitting on the bed, face a mess of tears and snot, eyes swollen and tired. 

“Because I couldn’t”, Hamza replied exhausted, “I tried to, believe me. I tried so hard to hold onto the pain, to the anger and the resentment. But it slipped away from my fingers like sand. Till I could only justify myself by trying to dismantle your network.”

“And Aslam?”

“He was an ally. At least that's what I had thought. The deal was that he would hold back the men and I would injure you enough that..”

“That the election seat would go by me. And they would get time to undo my kingdom”, Rehman completed for him. 

Hamza didn’t reply but that was an answer enough. 

“You killed him”, Hamza said quietly. Almost a whisper. Like saying it, even a decibel louder would break the fragile tension in the room. 

Rehman looked at him and saw the bandaged wounds on the younger man’s body. 

“He crossed a line. He shouldn’t have taken you.”

The quiet was unnerving now. The cacophony of the machines hooked to Hamza were grating on the nerves. It seemed like the aftermath of a verbal massacre had ravaged the room and both the men sitting inside. 

“You still didn’t answer me. Why did you save me?”, Hamza asked again, voice trying desperately to sound neutral. Yet the wavering in his tone was unmistakable. He was teetering on the brink of an abyss. 

Rehman smiled ruefully. 

Whatever was left now, except the truth?

“Because you are my son. And I love you.”

‘He is mine!’, the words that he had missed earlier came clear to his mind now. 

Hamza sobbed dryly and curled into himself like a kicked caterpillar. 

Present tense. Not loved. Love. Still. 

Still?

“Will you ever be able to forgive me?”, Rehman asked, clearing his throat, dignity woven in his words as clear as remorse. 

Only Rehman Dakait can make an apology sound like a sonnet. 

Hamza spoke before he could even think, “I don’t know. You didn’t intend for it to happen but that doesn’t absolve you of the consequence.”

It was harsh. 

But so was the truth. 

“It doesn’t”, the older man said quietly. 

Hamza couldn’t take it anymore. 

“But.. will you ever be able to forgive me?”, a pause, “Even if I never can?”

Hamza was looking into his eyes now, his own gaze tearful again. His hands wrapped around his own waist. A decidedly defensive position. His hair was falling all over his face and his shoulders, dishevelled and free. 

He was looking like a man awaiting judgement. 

Or a child awaiting punishment. 

Guilt. Anguish. Bereavement. Grief. Anger. Hatred. Love. 

Shirani Sahab’s words came to Rehman before he could instinctively even recall them. 

“You always forgive your children for the same sins that you cannot forgive your parents for.”

The words came easy on his lips. A cord loosening itself from around his cracked ribcage. A truth so very light that it was a feather amongst the piling weight in the room. 

“I forgave you the moment you shot me, bacche.”

Hamza stared at him in shock. 

Then promptly burst into tears. 

‘Shit.’

Rehman got up from his chair and sat on the edge of the bed, beside Hamza, who was trying desperately to not tear himself apart with the sheer force of his gut wrenching weeping. 

Rehman cupped the side of his neck gingerly and squeezed once. Hamza gasped, shifted and then burrowed himself into the older man’s neck, when he felt the warmth he had been missing since the past six months inviting itself to wrap around him like a blanket. 

Hamza grabbed the silver bracelet clad hand rubbing his arm and pressed it to his stuttering chest as if the touch would automatically soothe his hammering heart into behaving. 

Rehman stroked his hair and let the boy sob himself into a stupor. The younger man convulsed in his arms, mumbling aggrieved and breathless apologies against his calloused skin, trying to meld himself into him. 

“Bhai maanf kardo.. Please.. Aap sazaa dedo…par..maanf…kardo… mujhse nhi ho raha aur…ye…please..”

Hamza whimpered, shivering like in fevered delirium, against Rehman’s chest. 

“Shaant ho jaa, beta. Bass bass. Kardiya toh maanf. Ab shaant ho jaa warna tabiyat aur bigad jaegi, meri jaan. Bass..”

Rehman stroked his hair, his back and rubbed his arm, his heart breaking further with every stifled sob and agonized whimper ripping through Hamza like a tearing force. 

Having to watch your child cry into unconsciousness had to be a special kind of torture. 

When Hamza had finally calmed down, he was near unconscious, curled like an overgrown lion on Rehman’s lap, his hair spread over the latter’s knees like ink, sleep was heavy on his eyes and the fingers caressing his face and temple had been a sweet dream he couldn’t figure out, was real or not. 

“Will we ever be alright again?”

He whispered the question against Rehman’s grey kurta, eyes sore and throat hoarse.  

The hand in his hair stilled for a second. 

Then it started moving again, the rhythm never broken. 

“I will make it alright”

Rehman promised with that quiet conviction that has won him kingdoms. 

Then bent down and sealed it with a press of his lips on Hamza’s temple. 

You were standing before a modest cart draped in velvet cloths, glittering with cheap, brilliant glass bangles. The vendor was an old man, his hands shaking, but your hands were steady. Uzair watched, mesmerized, as you slid a dozen emerald-green bangles up your wrist. The glass caught the harsh Karachi sun, fracturing the light into green shards across your skin. The contrast was agonizingly beautiful—the delicate, fragile glass against the soft pulse of your wrist. A pulse he suddenly, violently, wanted to measure beneath his own thumb.

Then, as if feeling the sheer weight of his attention, you tilted your head.

Your gaze swept past the cart, past the crowd, and traveled up to the dark balcony.

For one breathless, suspended second, your eyes locked onto his.

Uzair did not blink. He didn't move a muscle. In that single glance, he saw no submission, only a fleeting curiosity before you looked away, dismissing him as just another man in the crowd.

But the trap had already sprung. The air in his lungs shifted. He felt an immediate, psychotic certainty that you had been stolen from him before you were even born, and he was simply going to take you back.

He didn’t descend into the street. A man of his stature did not chase. He merely tilted his head to the side, a silent signal to the shadow standing behind him. Find out everything.

The next three days were a slow, psychological drowning.

You didn't see him, but you felt him. You felt him in the way the air grew heavy whenever you walked down your street. You felt him in the dark-tinted windows of the black SUV that seemed to idle just a little too long at the corner of your lane, its engine a low, predatory purr.

Once, while hanging laundry on your roof, you looked down and saw a man in a crisp white shalwar kameez standing by the alleyway. He wasn't looking at the sky. He was looking directly up at you, his face cast in shadow, smoke rising from a cigarette between his fingers.

A chill, sharp and instinctive, scraped down your spine. You rushed inside, locking the door, the glass bangles on your wrist clinking together like a frantic warning bell.

The invisible noose was tightening, pulling you into his orbit, and you had no idea that the world you knew was already gone.

The dark did not fall over Lyari; it bled into it, thick and heavy with the smell of incoming rain from the Arabian Sea.

You woke to the absence of sound. In a city that never truly slept, the sudden, absolute silence of your alleyway was a physical pressure against your chest. The ceiling fan spun sluggishly overhead, cutting the humid air with a rhythmic, metallic sigh.

Then came the splintering of wood.

It was loud, arrogant, and entirely unbothered by the concept of permission. Your bedroom door was thrown open, the cheap frame cracking under the weight of a boot. Figures—heavy, broad-shouldered, smelling of tobacco and sweat—moved into your space like ink spilling across a clean sheet.

Fear was a hot, sudden spike in your throat, but rage followed it so quickly it tasted like copper. You didn't cower. You scrambled backward against the headboard, grasping blindly until your fingers curled around a heavy glass water carafé on the nightstand.

"Get out!" your voice rang out, sharp and trembling, a desperate weapon in the dark. "Get the hell out of my house!"

A man lunged. You didn't hesitate; you smashed the carafé against the side of his head. The glass shattered, water spraying across the floorboards as he grunted, stumbling back. But there were too many of them. Hands like iron clamps seized your wrists, pinning you down. You kicked, you bit, you screamed until your throat scraped raw, the emerald-green glass bangles on your wrists shattering one by one against the floorboards, leaving tiny, burning cuts on your skin.

A thick cloth, sweet and suffocating with chemical fumes, was pressed over your face. The world tilted, the shadows swallowing your fire until there was only grey, heavy nothingness.

Consciousness returned in pieces, dragged back by the scent of burning amber and expensive rosewater.

You were on a bed, but not your own. This mattress was vast, sinking beneath you like a gilded trap, draped in sheets of heavy, dark silk. The room was massive, illuminated by the warm, amber glow of a crystal chandelier. High ceilings, intricate plasterwork—a fortress disguised as a palace.

"You have a fierce spirit," a voice remarked from the shadows near the balcony. "My men are bleeding because of you. I find that... admirable."

You bolted upright, your breath hitching. Your body ached, your wrists were bruised, and dried blood from the broken bangles had crusted on your skin.

Uzair Baloch stepped into the light.

He had discarded his waistcoat, wearing a soft, charcoal-grey linen shalwar kameez. He looked grounded, human, yet entirely terrifying in his lack of urgency. He wasn't a monster from a fairytale; he was a man who had simply decided the laws of the world did not apply to him. He held a small silver bowl containing a cool, translucent paste.

"Who are you?" you demanded, your voice a ragged whisper, though you already knew the answer from the whispers that ran through the veins of the city. You forced yourself to stand, your legs shaking, but your chin held high. "Let me go. If you think I’m going to beg you, or cry, you have the wrong person. Send me back."

Uzair stopped a pace away from you. Up close, his eyes were the color of stagnant river water—deep, murky, and impossible to read. He didn't look angry at your defiance. If anything, a faint, ghost of a smile touched the corner of his mouth.

"I did not bring you across Lyari to send you back," he said softly, his voice a low baritone that vibrated in the quiet room. "And I don't want your begging."

He reached out, his large, calloused hand surprisingly gentle as he caught your bruised wrist. You tried to wrench it away, but his grip was an immovable velvet vice. Gently, deliberately, he dipped his fingers into the silver bowl and began to apply the soothing sandalwood paste over the cuts on your skin, his thumb smoothing over the pulse point that had captivated him days ago.

"You belong here now," he murmured, looking down at your wrist, then lifting his eyes to meet your furious, burning stare. "You will have everything you ever desired. But you will have it with me."

The sandalwood paste was cool against your torn skin, but his touch was a brand. You yanked your arm back with every ounce of strength you had left, wiping the excess cream onto the rich silk of his bedsheet—a deliberate, petty act of defiance.

"I don't want your things," you spat, your voice shaking with a volatile cocktail of terror and fury. "I want my life. You think you can just buy a person? You think because people whisper your name like you’re some kind of god, you get to decide who I am?"

Uzair looked down at the smear of white paste on his pristine sheets, then back at you. He didn't flinch. He didn't rage. The sheer, immovable mass of his patience was more terrifying than a raised hand would have been. He simply set the silver bowl down on a carved wooden table, the metallic clink echoing like a gunshot in the silent room.

"The world outside this room is a slaughterhouse," he said, stepping closer, crowding your space until the scent of tobacco and expensive oud filled your lungs. "I didn't buy you. I took you. There is a difference. Out there, you are prey to a thousand lesser men. In here, you are mine."

"That is the same thing!" you shouted, your chest heaving. "A cage is a cage, Uzair!"

Hearing his name tumble from your lips, raw and unfiltered by the usual stuttering terror of his subordinates, did something to his eyes. A dark, predatory heat flared behind the murky green of his irises.

"Then let us build you a grand one," he murmured.

Before you could process his words, the heavy double doors of the chamber groaned open. A procession of women entered, their eyes fixed firmly on the marble floor, carrying heavy, gold-embossed boxes. They moved like ghosts, laying their offerings across the chaise lounge.

When the lids were lifted, the room seemed to ignite with color.

A bridal jora of deep, bruised crimson silk, heavily weighted with real silver thread and intricate zardozi embroidery that must have taken months of human eyesight to complete. Beside it lay velvet trays cradling heavy, antique gold chokers, violent red rubies, and ropes of freshwater pearls.

And then, the final box.

It was filled to the brim with glass bangles. Not the cheap ones from the dusty cart in Lyari, but finest glass from Hyderabad, glittering in every shade of emerald and forest green, catching the amber light of the chandelier.

"The Nikkah is tonight," Uzair stated, his tone as casual as if he were commenting on the weather, though the finality in it crushed the remaining air from your lungs.

"No," you breathed, stepping back until your calves hit the frame of the bed. "No. I won't sign. I won't say the words. You can bring a hundred priests, Uzair, but I will spit on the paper."

Uzair walked over to the velvet tray of bangles. He reached in, his large, scarred hand lifting a dozen of them. They chimed together, a delicate, fragile music that sounded exactly like the afternoon you lost your freedom.

"You will sign," he said softly, turning to face you. He didn't threaten your family; he didn't threaten your life. He didn't need to. The sheer, suffocating weight of his absolute certainty did the work for him. He walked back to you, stopping so close you could feel the heat radiating from his chest.

Gently, almost reverently, he took your hand again. You tried to pull away, but he held fast, sliding the green glass over your scratched skin, burying the evidence of your fight beneath a layer of glittering green.

"You will sign because you want to live," he whispered, his breath brushing your ear, a terrifyingly human intimacy. "And you will sign because, deep down, you already know that nobody is coming to save you from me."

The grand hall of the Baloch estate was a theater of absolute power.

Hundreds of candles flickered in wrought-iron chandeliers, their wax bleeding down like slow tears onto the polished marble below. The air was thick with the suffocating sweetness of crushed jasmine and the sharp, metallic tang of gunpowder that clung permanently to the men guarding the exits. To any outsider, it was a royal affair. To you, it felt like being paraded to the scaffold.

The crimson silk of the bridal dress weighed heavily on your shoulders, the intricate silver embroidery scratching against your skin like a hundred tiny needles. Your hands, still stinging from the cuts of the broken glass, were hidden beneath a veil of sheer red gauze.

They sat you on a carved wooden bench, a gilded throne that felt like ice.

Uzair sat beside you. He had changed into a deep black sherwani, the fabric absorbing the candlelight rather than reflecting it. He sat with his legs slightly apart, relaxed, one hand resting casually on his knee. He looked terrifyingly human—not a myth, but a flesh-and-blood man who had remade reality to suit his desires.

The old Maulana sat across from you, his eyes strictly fixed on the thick, cream-colored Nikkah-nama laid out on the low table between you. His hands trembled slightly as he smoothed the paper. He didn't look at your pale face, nor at the fierce, trembling rage vibrating through your frame. He knew better.

"Do you, Uzair Baloch, take..." the old man’s voice cracked, clearing his throat quickly before continuing the Arabic vows.

Uzair didn't hesitate. His voice was a low, resonant hum that cut through the soft rustle of the crowd. "Qubool hai." Three times, without a stutter. Absolute. Final.

Then, the Maulana turned his eyes to you, though he still couldn't look you in the eyes. "And do you..."

The silence that followed was a physical entity. It stretched, taut and fragile, like a wire drawn too tight. In the back of the hall, the faint, distinct click of a rifle safety being disengaged echoed through the quiet. A subtle reminder of the world you were trapped in.

You clenched your fists beneath the veil. The emerald glass bangles on your wrists chimed, a small, defiant rebellion in the stillness. You looked at Uzair. You wanted to spit the refusal into his face. You wanted to tear the veil from your head and walk out into the Karachi rain.

Uzair turned his head slowly, meeting your gaze. There was no anger in his eyes—only that same, devastating patience. He reached out, his large hand sliding over yours, covering the green glass, silencing their chime. His thumb pressed firmly against your pulse point, feeling the wild, panicked hammering of your heart.

Nobody is coming, his eyes told you. Choose to live.

The tears you had fought so hard to hold back finally burned hot against your cheeks, wetting the red silk of your veil. It was a suffocating defeat, a capitulation of your very soul, but the human instinct to survive—to live and fight another day—clawed its way up your throat.

"Qubool hai," you whispered, the words tasting like ash.

You repeated it twice more, each syllable a drop of blood spilled.

When the pen was forced into your trembling fingers, you signed your name. The ink bled into the heavy paper, binding your life to his.

As the hall erupted into muffled congratulations and the forced smiles of terrified guests, Uzair did not celebrate. He leaned in close, his lips brushing the edge of your veil, his breath warm and terrifyingly real against your skin.

"Welcome home, my life," he murmured, his hand tightening around yours, locking you into a paradise built entirely of iron.

A/N: Please give me feedback, as I am new to writing.

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