Jaan-e-Azlan❤

42

Azlan had spent the night in the study, the door open so he could see the hallway leading to Mantasha's room. He had watched the shadows, checked the monitors, and only allowed his eyes to close at 4:00 AM when the first hint of gray light touched the horizon. He figured the "danger zone" of the night had passed.

He was wrong.

The kidnapper hadn't come through the woods or the front gates. He had used the one thing Azlan hadn't accounted for: the old servant's passage, a narrow crawlspace behind the library's mahogany shelves that led directly into the wall cavity of the master guest suite.

While Azlan sat just thirty feet away, the intruder had slipped into Mantasha's room. He didn't use a struggle; he used a specialized surgical sedative spray.

Mantasha had only enough time to gasp, her hand flying to the platinum bracelet Azlan had fastened onto her wrist hours before. She had tried to press the diamond—the panic button—but the sedative hit her blood like a wave of lead. Her hand fell limp. The intruder, dressed in silent tactical gear, had unclipped the bracelet, crushed it under his boot to kill the signal, and carried her out through the same dark passage.

By the time the intruder's black van was clearing the estate's secondary service road, Azlan's head was snapping up from his chest.

At exactly 5:15 am, Azlan woke with a start. The air felt too still. He stood up, his heart rate accelerating for no reason he could name. He walked to her door and pushed it open.

"Misha?"

The room was bathed in the pale, sickly light of dawn. The bed was empty. The sheets were slightly rumpled, but there was no sign of a struggle.

Then he saw it.

On the white pillow, the shattered remains of the platinum bracelet lay like a broken promise. Beside it was a small, hand-drawn note: "You built a cage, Azlan. But you forgot to lock the secret door."

Azlan's vision went white. A sound escaped him—a low, guttural growl of a man who had just lost his soul.

"JAWAD! SECURE THE PERIMETER!"

His voice tore through the house. Within minutes, the household was in an uproar. The cousins—Sarim, Ghazan, Izhaan, Shahmeer and the others—stumbled into the hall, seeing Azlan standing in the middle of Mantasha's room, his hands shaking as he held the broken jewelry.

"What is it? What happened?" Arif Khan asked, his voice cracking with a father's intuition.

Azlan turned, and the look on his face made Arif stumble back. It wasn't just anger. It was the look of a man who was ready to watch the world burn.

"She's gone," Azlan said, his voice terrifyingly flat. "They took her. Misha... they took her while I was sitting right there."

"How could this happen?!" Bushra wailed from the doorway, clutching her chest. "Azlan, you said there were guards! You said we are safe!"

"They used the service tunnels," Jawad reported, his face bruised and ashen. "They bypassed the electronic sensors by staying inside the wall cavities. It was an inside job, Sir. Someone provided the architectural blueprints of this estate."

Azlan didn't yell. He didn't throw things. Instead, he walked over to the wall where the hidden passage door was. He looked at the dust disturbed on the floor.

"They've had her for an hour," Azlan whispered. He looked at Sarim. "Seal every exit within a fifty-mile radius. Call the transport ministry. I want every CCTV feed from the highway on my desk in ten minutes. If a single car moved on that road, I want to know who was driving it."