Abbas struggled to regain control of the car, but the speed and impact were too great. Their car skidded, spinning wildly out of control. Emily screamed, reaching out desperately for Abbas.
For a fleeting second, their eyes met, filled with terror and love, as if they were both silently saying, I’m sorry. And I love you. Then the world went black.
When Emily regained consciousness, the first thing she noticed was the acrid smell of gasoline and the distant wail of sirens. Pain shot through her body as she tried to move. Her wedding dress, once immaculate, was now smeared with dirt and blood.
To her horror, she realized they were trapped. The car overturned at the edge of a steep drop. Abbas.
She called out weakly, her voice barely a whisper. There was no response. In the distance, she could hear frantic voices, footsteps rushing toward them.
Someone was calling emergency services, describing the scene in a trembling voice. There’s been a terrible accident. The car went over the cliff.
We need to get them out. The next few minutes blurred into a frantic flurry of activity. Rescue teams worked desperately to free them from the wreckage.
Emily felt herself drifting between consciousness and unconsciousness, her physical pain battling with the agony in her heart. Where was Abbas? Why wasn’t he responding? When they finally pulled her from the wreckage, the blinding desert sun momentarily obscured her vision. Through the haze of pain and confusion, she saw paramedics working frantically on another figure lying on the ground.
Abbas. No pulse, one of the paramedics shouted. Starting CPR, Emily tried to scream, tried to move towards him, but her body wouldn’t obey.
She felt herself being lifted into an ambulance, the shrill wail of the sirens drowning out her weak cries. Abbas. Please.
Abbas. The ride to the hospital was a blurry nightmare. Emily fought to stay conscious, clinging to the desperate hope that Abbas would be okay, that this was all just a terrible dream she would soon wake from.
But at the hospital, the chaos continued. Doctors and nurses rushed around, shouting orders, calling for equipment. Emily was quickly taken into surgery, her battered body in need of immediate care.
Hours later, when she finally awoke in the ICU, the first thing she saw was her mother’s tear-streaked face. Mama, she croaked, her voice raw and weak. Where is Abbas? Her mother grasped her hand tightly, tears streaming down her face.
Oh, my sweet girl, she sobbed. I’m so sorry. In that moment, Emily knew.
She knew before the words were spoken, before the cruel reality was confirmed. Abbas was gone. Her love, her future, her dreams, everything had been ripped away in an instant as quickly as the crash that had separated them.
The scream that tore from her throat was the sound of a heart breaking, of a soul being torn in two. It echoed through the sterile hospital halls, drawing nurses to her room with sedatives in hand, trying to ease the unbearable pain. But nothing could numb the ache in her chest.
Abbas was gone, and no amount of medicine could ever fix that. The days that followed were a blur of pain, both physical and emotional. Emily drifted in and out of a haze, lost in a sea of medication and grief, unable to fully grasp the magnitude of what she had lost.
Her body healed slowly from the fractures and bruises, but her heart remained shattered beyond repair. Abbas’s family, grieving their own tremendous loss, stayed close by her side. His mother, her eyes swollen from days of crying, would sit for hours at Emily’s bedside, holding her hand in silence.
No words were necessary. Their shared sorrow created a bond deeper than any language could express. Meanwhile, the tragic accident had made headlines, spreading across Dubai and beyond like wildfire.
Local and international newspapers ran stories about the young couple whose fairy tale had been abruptly cut short. Wedding photos from just a day before the crash were now painfully juxtaposed with images of the mangled car at the bottom of the ravine. As Emily’s physical strength slowly returned, so too did the questions about the accident, questions that hinted at something more sinister beneath the surface.
Dubai’s police launched an exhaustive investigation, but answers seemed elusive, slipping through their fingers like desert sand. It was during one of those long, sleepless nights in the hospital as Emily stared out the window at the shimmering city that had once seemed so magical that a detective knocked softly at her door. With a gentle demeanour, he showed her the security footage from the day of the accident.
The black car that had followed them and rammed into them, there was something chillingly familiar about it. Emily’s heart stopped. She recognised the make and model.
It was the same kind of car Mike, her ex-boyfriend, used to drive back in America. But no, that couldn’t be possible. Mike was thousands of miles away.
He was in America. Wasn’t he? Yet, as that poisonous seed of doubt took root in her mind, she couldn’t shake the thought. Could Mike have followed her all the way to Dubai? Could he have been so consumed by his obsession that he was willing to destroy not just her happiness, but Abbas’s life as well? These questions haunted her, refusing to let go.
Emily realised she needed answers, not just for her own sake, but for Abbas. For the life and the future they’d had stolen from them, fuelled by a mix of grief and rage, she made up her mind. As soon as she was strong enough, she would search for the truth, no matter how painful it might be…
