An Oath In Blood (Book #3)

Chapter 29: More Than Friends

TARIQ FALED

The house was unusually quiet when I walked in. "Assalamualaikum," I called out like I usually did, loosening my tie. I waited for my wife to respond, to walk out into the hallway and grin at me widely as she told me what she did today. I waited for her to swoon over the male lead of her romance novel that she had been obsessing over, which I wasn't too thrilled about. But a strange silence hung in the air as if the very life had been sucked out of the house.

"Noori?" An unease crawled down my spine, the feeling pestering me for the past few weeks returning in full force. "Em?" I tried again. Was she in our room?

Eman knew when I was about to come home and ever since we had been married, there was not a day when she didn't come to the door to greet me when I arrived. It wasn't something I'd asked of her; she did it because she liked to be there for me after a long day at work. And today had been one of those days.

A client of ours had almost pulled out of a deal we had closed a month ago because of incompetence and misconduct on the end of our design team. The manager had been disrespectful and impatient with the client, refusing to cooperate with him. The guys and I were at the office after hours to deal with the situation and decide our next course of action.

There was no room for incompetence in our company and anybody who tried to go against the set guidelines was asked to leave immediately. The manager had been fired and we were now actively looking for someone to replace him with Jace taking over the role temporarily.

And I needed to talk to my wife about it. I wanted to sit with her at the dinner table and rant about how angry I was, how disappointed I was in myself and the guys for having let someone so incapable into our company.

But where was she?

I walked into the living room to find her laptop tipped on the floor, the Google Doc in which she worked on her manuscript open and blinking at me. A frown pulled my brows together, the rotting feeling in my gut intensifying. Eman was never careless with her laptop. She always made sure to put it on the coffee table when she was leaving while working on the couch. The rumpled throw blanket told me that my wife had been here.

"Eman!" I called out, louder this time as a slight panic seized me. Where on Earth was she? Walking out of the living room, I made my way into the kitchen to find the lights turned off, two pots on the counter and what smelled to be chicken curry, the scent of freshly cooked food wafting through the room. The stillness scared me now. "Ya Allah." I rubbed a hand down my face, turning around and reaching the stairs.

I took them two at a time, sweat beading on my brows, not from the exertion but fear. A sour taste pooled on my tongue and I almost choked on my next breath.

"Eman? Noori? Are you in there?" I asked, entering our bedroom and knocking on our private bathroom. When there was no response, I turned the knob. It gave way and I pushed–slammed–the door open to find it empty. Everything was in its place but for some reason, I felt as if the quiet, the perfectly organized bathroom were taunting me.

I pulled out my phone as I checked our walk-in closet before reappearing into the hallway. I dialed Eman's number as I surveyed the two other rooms on the first floor. Making my way back down, I checked my home office even though my wife never liked to spend time in it. She said that it was too stiff and business-like for her taste.

The sound of her ringtone echoed off the walls of the house as my call went through finally. I hurried down the hall, toward the sound, finding myself back in the living room. I reached for the throw blanket and pulled it off the couch only for her phone to fall on the carpet.

I picked it up, staring at a picture of me and her from a few months ago. It was a selfie she took while we were sharing a matcha ice cream on a night-in. I had been trying to get her to like matcha so she would stop her insane coffee consumption. It didn't help.