Chapter 107 A Night Of Laughter

• The Kareem mansion was vast and cold tonight, but for Zara, it felt like a prison suffocating her every breath. The grand chandelier above cast shadows on the marble floor, but Zara hardly noticed. She sat slumped on the edge of the velvet couch in the living room, the dim light flickering like a wavering hope inside her chest.
• Two weeks had passed since the storm between her and Regan. Two weeks of icy silence, of walking in the same house but existing worlds apart. She had carefully avoided every corridor he might walk through, every room he might enter. Every time she heard his voice, it was like a knife twisting deeper in her heart.
• She hadn’t called her best friend Kemi. She hadn’t answered her calls or texts. Not because she wanted to be alone, but because she was drowning in a sea of shame, confusion, and anger.