PEARLS AND POISON

For five years, twenty-three-year-old Khadija lived in a sanctuary of her own making. Far away from her father's sprawling mansion and the toxic shadow of her stepmother and stepsisters, she built a life filled with light, peace, and a thriving perfume business. She thought she had permanently escaped the golden cages of old money.

But when her powerful father (or so people think) snaps his fingers and demands her return, Khadija is forced to make a devastating choice: step back into the lion's den, or watch her mother break under the family pressure. Choosing her mother, Khadija walks back through the heavy black gates of her childhood nightmare. But she isn't the quiet, compliant eighteen-year-old they remember.

Armed with a cold resolve, Khadija plans to survive the hostile glares of her stepsisters and whatever calculated "plans" her stepmother has waiting for her. What she didn't plan for, however, was Hammad Aali.

Hammad Aali, relentlessly charming, permanently calm, modern businessman and a man whose family is constantly pushing a parade of elite cousins and high-society women into his line of sight. From desperate socialites to Khadija's own step-sister, who will do absolutely anything to claim his name, Hammad is a prize to be won. But he has zero interest in being trapped.

Untill he met Khadija. Sharp-tongued, fierce, and utterly unimpressed by his status, she is the one woman who has the audacity to ghost him. For a man used to women falling at his feet, her silence is a reckoning, a challenge he cannot seem to walk away from.