Prologue
They say Lahore never sleeps. The city is always alive rickshaws buzzing, street vendors shouting, neon signs flickering like restless hearts. But in that chaos, sometimes two lives collide in a way that changes everything.
I didn’t know it then. I couldn’t have.
One moment, I was just Areeba someone’s daughter, someone’s little girl, safe in her small world of books, tea, and late-night gossip with Ammi.
The next moment, I was his.
Zayan Khan.
The name that traveled through whispers, that made shopkeepers lower their voices, that mothers used to scare children into obedience. A man who didn’t ask. A man who took. A man whose shadow fell heavier than most men’s entire lives.
I wasn’t supposed to meet him.
He wasn’t supposed to notice me.
But fate doesn’t wait for permission.
Our first encounter wasn’t gentle. It wasn’t the kind of meeting you tell your friends about and laugh over later. It was brutal, like being thrown into a storm without warning. His eyes cold, sharp, unreadable — cut through me like I was nothing. And yet… something in them held me.
Fear. That’s what I should have felt.
And I did. My hands trembled, my breath caught, my world spun. But fear wasn’t all. There was something else, something dangerous, something I refused to name.
To him, I was just a girl who had crossed his path at the wrong time.
To me, he was a nightmare I wanted to escape.
But the truth was darker.
Because the devil doesn’t knock before entering your life.
He just steps in and once his eyes have found you, there’s no running.
And Zayan Khan had found me.
