6 Months Later

"You conniving witch," I breathe, a smile I couldn't make disappear rises on my face as I saw him.

His chest heaves. He closes his eyes, and I can tell that he's torn and that he will be of no use for me unless he is Ibrahim, that conniving witch that I knew that played life like a chess game.

I was looking at him from afar as he exits the prison ward after only six months of trying, he finally made parole. With a song in his heart, Yilmaz took off his orange prison uniform and put on his trousers and blazer, the same outfit he wore on the day of his arrest.

He seemed to look eager to see the outside world again. Yilmaz let the guard escort him through security. He walked out the door of the prison and into the parking lot. From there, he saw the familiar faces.

The little girls I held dear both gasps when they see their father emerge after six months of not seeing him but writing and sending images they captured to him by letters.

"Mama, it's Baba! It's Baba!" They jump up and down, trying to free themselves from my grasp. "I want to go to him!". Layan determined.

"He's coming right in, Darlings." I try to soothe them, running my hand down Layan's long hair as we watch him kissing his parents' forehead and giving Ahmad a long hug as his mother couldn't let go of him.

"Why don't we go near him?" Lila protested as we stood beside my grandmother's old car that I was now using.

I didn't want to tell the girls that his mother is going to kill me if she saw me approach even near his parameter since she had already warned me several times.

I sigh. "No, my love. Lets let his family greet him first-."

I was interrupted by an annoyed groan, "We are his family too,"

Layan even after spending just a short amount of time with her father, she seemed to be her father's girl. I never told them what happened exactly or what was going on because I was waiting for them to get a little older to tell them, but she only knew one thing that I was the cause of her father not being beside her.

After a few minutes, I saw him approaching our direction; his eyes found mine immediately.

For a split second, we hold each other's gazes, but the nervous and probably out-of-place smile I'm wearing falters when I see how furious he appears. Of course, he has. His photos were all over the newspaper. His reputation was beyond repair. He lost his job. His future ambitions. His time with his daughters.

"I won't let you break their hearts! And the alternative would mean you'd have to give everything up, Ibrahim! Everything! Stop and think about that and you'll see it as clearly as I do! Your future aspirations, any future research plans will be eliminated. All you have ever wanted will be taken away. Once everyone knows what you did, You will be fired from your job as a professor, may be sentenced to jail time because of the ethics you broke in gene manipulation,"

I warned him. I hinted to myself.

"Baba, Baba!"

"Baba!"

"Layan, Lila," he breathes while his daughters run to him. He kneels down and wraps them in his arms.

"I missed you, Baba. Mama said you would come out later. You came home early, but I still missed you very much!" Lila exclaims happily, still holding him tight.

"Nothing would've kept me away from both of you." He kisses their foreheads and runs a hand down the length of their hair much as I was just doing, but I do it out of habit, something I've been doing for years because I enjoy the soft, silkiness of their hair. When he does it...it's as if he's trying to reassure himself that they are real; all flesh and blood.

He reaches into his jacket and pulls a small notebook. The same notebook he was writing on when I was doing my presentation that day he got arrested. Layan and Lila see it, and their eyes grow wide before a huge smile erupts, and they squeals.

"You remembered," he grins at them.

I was confused at that moment.

"You wrote everything that you were doing, everything everything ?" Layan asks in awe.

He nods. "I wrote every day, what I ate, what I drank, what I felt. I told you I would as long as you take care of yourself, and tell your sister to drink orange juice for me, and you both pray for me."

"Did you take photos ?" Layan with her soft voice, asks.

"I can't take photos as good as you, so I stuck to writing," She giggles before they hug him again, "We missed you," Layan voiced.

I smile at their small interaction as he hugs them tightly, moving his eyes up to me, and breathes, "Yes, I miss you too."

After catching up, Ahmad suggests some outside play in the garden for Layan and Lila. Here we were back in Yilmaz's Mansion. Ibrahim and I sat on the same old coaches in the living room. His eyes never dropping mine except when he meets theirs.

"Yes, let's go play outside, Baba!" Layan grins up at him excitedly.

"Why don't you go get started with Uncle Ahmad while Mama and I talk for a minute, okay?"

"Alright, Baba."

"Bet you can't score one single goal past me, kid," Ahmad teases Layan.

She screws up her little face. "Oh, yeah? You're on, Uncle Ahmad!" And she runs to the back.

"Mama," Lila looks at me for a chance of approval to go play outside, and I nodded.

"Don't exhaust yourself," Ibrahim instructs when he sees Lila trying to follow.

Lila nods, then with a smile, she runs after them. "You're in for it now, Lila." Uncle Ahmad warns and she giggles.

We're left alone, Ibrahim and I. Other than the necessary logistics to keep the girls from thinking anything other than we were a happy family, we haven't spoken. He stares at me from where he sits. His lips pressed in a tight line, while I remain stiff on the opposite sofa. I'm nervous, and I don't know what I'm supposed to do or say now.

"Ibrahim...I...am, I wish yo-"

"Mr Black sealed all the cases. He was realised from prison three months after and he didn't even serve those seven years."

I nodded at the sorrow of the law.

"Since you are his only remaining Heiress, he wanted to reconnect so he has been giving you money." As he has been telling me the fact of my life, I started thinking if he had really spent those six months in jail as he continues "You got that money, and you decided to spend it on the education of Layan and Roya in university, as well as to keep this mansion for my parents and the Yilmaz's hospital. You returned the money your father stole from my father with extra profit," he hisses, "When Ahmad told me during his visits, I was astonished."

"I don't understand you, Wahaj." He sounds puzzled.

I shake my head. "I didn't do any of this for you, Ibrahim, the only thing I wanted is justice, and I didn't touch any of Mr Black money. This was the money given to me for winning the case against you and them."

"Justice wasn't served."

Mrs Chamberlain got a reduction in the time she will spend. Mr Black ended up sealing everything again after three months, and in doing so, he let Yilmaz and Mrs Chamberlain get a reduction. The only person who didn't profit from sealing the cases was my father.

My father was right, after all. Money allowed wealthy people to get away with anything. This only shows the injustice of a justice court and that the only court that we will find justice in will be in the Hereafter.

"Ibrahim," I sigh, "Why didn't you report me ?"

He leans forward, lips twisted in a frown. "I can't tell you I didn't think about it because I did. But I couldn't do this to our daughters." – he huffs – "...I keep telling you I care about you, but you won't believe me, so I did it for the girls-"

I watch him, the stiff set of his shoulders, the way he runs his hand through his hair continuously.

"Wahaj. I'm so sorry for anything I did to you."

He comes closer to me, and I drop my hands when he cradles my face in that way he has of doing, that way that melts all my defences, and I allow it, swallowing thickly as he holds me locked in his gaze.

Forgiving my father was hard, but I forgave him because Islam told us to forgive. Forgiving Mrs Chamberlain is something I did for my mental stability. Forgiving Mr Black is something I have done along time ago, but I didn't get the chance to tell him after he flee the country for the time being.

Forgiving Ibrahim was something I wasn't able to do no matter how many things I did to him or the amount of time he had given me, forgiving him was something I couldn't grasp it. Even if I voiced the forgiveness out loud, in my heart, it was something I wasn't able to do.

"Doubting me has become second-nature to you, Didn't it?" He doesn't sound angry when he says it, simply...disheartened.

I can't refute him, though I wish I could. Doubting him has become my go-to response. Yet when his thumbs caress my cheeks, when he comforts me in even such a small manner, my entire body hums. I can't refute that either – not anymore. I try to remain coherent though because there's so much we need to discuss.

"I kept a secret, Wahaj," he shakes his head, "a mountain of lies, a sea of deception and manipulation. I married Rosie because of spousal privilege. I was never with her. I trusted the wrong people and got into marrying you for my gain, and we were both deceived by the same people, and I know those aren't valid excuses. But Wahaj," he says in one breath, "they're all I have. You make me a better man Wahaj; I don't have to worry about blood in my hand anymore. I never had anyone read into me the way you do. I never stopped wanting that perfect girl that eyes sparkled every time she looked at me."

I don't know how to respond to that. He's quite honest; he has been for a while now, I realize, I just didn't allow myself to see it. The truth of that overwhelms me. I've been judging him for his past sins for so long that I've refused to let myself know the man honestly before me now, and he's not the same one that I left five years ago.

Once again, he wraps his hands around my face, so abruptly, I inhale sharply. "Don't say you don't feel it too," he demands, eyes burning. "We know what matters, Wahaj. I know who you really are," – he places his palm on my chest, over my quickly beating heart – "what you're really like on the inside beyond this mask that only a select few have access beyond." When his eyes bore into mine and that intensity he possesses fill his features, I hold my breath.

"That's... that's the Wahaj I fell in love with. That's the Wahaj I still love."

I gasp while I try to hold my breath, it's both exhilarating and terrifying. Just by the way he says my name, I know he was honest. Ibrahim was trying to let me meet him halfway, after everything Ibrahim and I been through, he was still trying.

A part of me still doubted, still thought it could be another one of his games. I'm overwhelmed and so scared of giving in because I know my heart won't survive a second break, yet I know that's where I'm headed – towards giving him my everything once more.

So I continue fighting because if I don't there'll be no turning back and I'll be lost just like I was five years ago.