Make My Heart Believe a Lie

Chapter 56

✨The Weight of Ends.✨

Nasir Pov

Reluctantly Nasir crawled out of bed leaving his fiance in a tangle of silk sheets.

The warehouse breathed like a living thing when he walked in full combat mode.

Concrete, oil, old iron—Nasir knew the smell the way some men knew prayer. It clung to him the moment he stepped inside, the echo of his boots swallowed by the vastness of the space. Lights hummed overhead, harsh and white, revealing rows of stacked crates and the scars of a night that hadn’t gone the way Victor intended.

Rafe waited near the center, jacket off, sleeves rolled, tablet in hand. He didn’t look up at first. He didn’t need to. He felt Nasir’s presence the way he always did—like pressure shifting in a room.

“How bad?” Nasir asked.

Rafe exhaled through his nose. “Worse for Victor than for us. Better than we hoped.”

Nasir moved closer, eyes scanning the space. Crates split open. Burn marks along the far wall. A forklift tipped on its side like a fallen animal. This had been one of Victor’s arteries—quiet, profitable, meant to move product without noise. It would never move again.

“Losses?” Nasir asked.

“Material,” Rafe said. “Nothing we can’t replace. No men.”

Nasir nodded once. Relief didn’t show on his face, but it settled somewhere deep, beneath the anger that never quite cooled anymore. He turned, finally looking at Rafe.

“And Victor?”

“Spooked,” Rafe said. “Confused. He’s blaming ghosts. Thinks someone inside his circle sold him out.”

Nasir’s mouth curved—not quite a smile. “Someone did.”

Rafe tilted the tablet so Nasir could see. Lines, names, routes, redacted notes layered over satellite images and transaction logs. Nasir absorbed it all quickly, his mind already arranging the next moves.

“The mole’s holding?” Nasir asked.

“So far,” Rafe said. “He’s scared. But fear makes people careful. He’s feeding us what we need.”

Nasir’s gaze darkened. “Good. Keep him alive.”

Rafe hesitated, just a fraction. “There’s more.”

Nasir stilled. “Say it.”

“We traced the buyer,” Rafe said. “The one Trump arranged. Not Victor himself—Victor was the bridge. The man on the other side… he’s real. Dangerous. Operates under three names. Likes quiet ownership. Girls disappear into houses that don’t exist on paper.”

Something in Nasir snapped into a colder alignment.

“Where?” he asked.

“Not here,” Rafe said. “Outside the city. But he’ll surface when Victor realizes his operations are bleeding. He’ll demand answers.”

Nasir looked away, jaw tight. For a moment, the warehouse blurred—not into memory, but into something sharper. Flora’s hands. Her quiet laugh. The way she trusted him without knowing the half of what that meant.

“They sold her like inventory,” Nasir said softly.

Rafe didn’t interrupt.

“They thought she was small,” Nasir continued. “Breakable. They didn’t think anyone would come looking.”

He turned back, eyes lethal now. “We end Victor. Completely. No spectacle. No warnings.”

Rafe nodded. “Alive?”

“Yes,” Nasir said. “I want him breathing when he tells me everything.”

Rafe’s voice dropped. “And the buyer?”

Nasir’s silence answered first.

“Then,” he said, “we erase him.”

They walked deeper into the warehouse, past men quietly repairing what could be salvaged. Nasir acknowledged them with a glance—no speeches, no reassurance. They knew their role. They trusted him.

Rafe followed, matching his stride. “Timeline?”

“Two weeks,” Nasir said. “Maximum. We tighten the net. Let Victor believe he’s regaining ground. Then we pull.”

Rafe studied him. “And Flora?”

Nasir stopped.

The name landed differently every time now. Not weakness—never that. Purpose.

“She stays untouched by this,” Nasir said. “No leaks. No shadows near the house. I want her world clean.”

Rafe hesitated again. “She’s smarter than you think.”

“I know,” Nasir said quietly. “That’s why I won’t lie to her. Not yet. But she doesn’t need the weight of this until I’ve broken its spine.”

Rafe nodded. “Your father’s men are asking questions.”

Nasir’s lips thinned. “They always do.”

“And Leila?”

“She’ll distract Flora,” Nasir said. “Spa days. Laughing. Life. Let her remember what normal feels like.”

Rafe softened slightly. “You’re different.”

Nasir didn’t deny it.

“I won’t let this touch her,” he said. “I won’t let what they did follow her into the future I’m building.”

Rafe looked at him for a long moment. “You’re going to burn the city down for her.”

Nasir met his gaze. “No.”

He turned toward the exit, the light catching the edge of his face.

“I’m going to clean it.”

As they stepped out into the night, phones already lighting up with incoming intel, Nasir felt the shape of the end forming—clear, sharp, inevitable.

Victor didn’t know it yet.

But every move he made now was already his last.

---

Nasir sat alone in his study, the late afternoon sun slicing through the blinds. His fingers drummed lightly on the edge of the desk, but his mind wasn’t on work. It was on her. Flora.

He look back at her small frame, tense and fragile, the way she used to flinched at even the gentlest touch. He had felt it himself—the invisible weight pressing down on her, the memories she couldn’t quite let go of. And worse, he couldn’t stop thinking about the things she had endured, the cruelty that had been planned for her… the way she had been sold like a piece of property.

Anger boiled quietly in him—not loud, not violent, but sharp enough to taste. How could anyone do that to someone so gentle? So alive inside despite everything? The injustice clawed at him, making his chest tight, his thoughts restless.

Yet beneath the anger was a heavier, more unsettling feeling: guilt. He had not been there. He could not undo what had been done. And now, the responsibility of being near her, of being the one she trust, weighed him down. Every careful touch, every restrained gesture was a reminder of how delicate she truly was—and how easily the world could break her again.

He clenched his fists, then let them fall. He had to protect her. Not just from the world, but from the shadows of her own fear. He had to be steady, unwavering—but the thought of what she had suffered made that harder than anything he had ever done.

Then he remembered that night.

The Shape of Old Fear

Nasir had begun to learn the sound of Flora’s calm.

It was different from her laughter, different from her nervous silences. Calm Flora spoke softly, moved slowly, asked questions instead of apologizing. That night she had been sitting cross-legged on the sofa, wrapped in one of his shirts, telling him about the puppy’s newest crime against a pair of slippers. Her hands moved when she talked, her eyes bright in a way he still wasn’t used to being allowed to see.

He had been listening, half smiling, half pretending he wasn’t memorizing every expression she made.

The conversation drifted the way evenings with her often did—from small things to larger ones. She asked about his mother, about Italy, about whether he ever imagined a life that wasn’t built on steel and shadows. He answered more honestly than he usually did with anyone.

“You look tired,” she said suddenly, tilting her head.

“I’m fine.”

“You always say that.”

He huffed a quiet laugh and leaned back. “Because I usually am.”

She studied him the way she did when she was trying to be brave. “You don’t have to be fine all the time, you know.”

Something in his chest tightened at that—at how easily she offered gentleness as if the world had not punished her for it.

He felt the weight of the day in his shoulders and, without thinking, lifted his hand to rub at his face, to drag his fingers through his hair the way he always did when he was restless.

The movement was careless. Ordinary. Nothing at all.

Flora flinched.

Not a small startle—an instinctive, full-bodied recoil. Her shoulders jerked up, her breath caught, and for a split second she looked at him the way a person looks at thunder when it has already decided to strike.

Nasir’s hand froze in the air.

The room went unbearably quiet.

“Flora,” he said softly.

She blinked as if waking from somewhere far away. “I—I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”

The apology hit him harder than the flinch.

He lowered his hand slowly, placing it on his knee where she could see it, harmless, empty. His heart was beating in a way he didn’t recognize—too fast, too angry, too wounded.

“You thought I was going to hit you,” he said, not accusing, only naming the truth.

“No,” she whispered, and then her face crumpled. “I don’t know. My body just… did it.”

The pain in her voice cut deeper than any blade he had ever known.

Nasir looked at her—really looked—and saw the fear she was trying to hide. It wasn’t fear of him, not truly. It was an old tenant in her bones, a ghost that had learned her name long before he ever did.

He felt something savage rise in his chest, not toward her, never toward her, but toward every hand that had taught her to expect harm from a simple movement.

“I would never,” he said quietly. “Flora, I would cut off my own arm before I used it against you.”

Tears filled her eyes. “I know that in my head. I do. It’s just… sometimes my body remembers things I don’t want to.”

He swallowed, hating that there were memories inside her he could not fight with his fists.

Nasir shifted closer, careful with every inch, giving her time to stop him if she needed to. When she didn’t move away, he rested his forearms on his knees, keeping his hands visible, unthreatening.

“Look at me,” he murmured.

She forced herself to meet his eyes.

“You don’t ever have to apologize for surviving what was done to you.”

Her lip trembled. “But I hurt you.”

“Yes,” he admitted. “You did.”

The honesty surprised her. He saw it in the way her brows pulled together.

“But not the way you think,” he continued. “You didn’t make me angry. You made me understand how much you’ve carried alone.”

A tear slipped down her cheek. He wanted to wipe it away, but he didn’t move without permission anymore.

“I hate that it’s still inside me,” she whispered.

Nasir exhaled slowly. “Then we’ll teach it something new.”

She gave a watery laugh. “You make it sound simple.”

“It won’t be. But I’m patient.”

The silence that followed was fragile, like glass learning how to be water.

After a moment she reached for his hand herself, tentative, choosing. He let her take it, let her feel that his palm was only warm skin and steady pulse.

“You’re safe with me,” he said, not as a promise but as a fact he intended to prove every day.

Flora nodded, squeezing his fingers. “I want to believe that without shaking.”

“You will.”

He lifted their joined hands slowly and pressed them to his chest so she could feel his heartbeat. “See? No monsters here.”

A small smile found her mouth. “Just one very stubborn man.”

“Guilty.”

The tension eased, thread by thread. She leaned her head against his shoulder, and Nasir closed his eyes, memorizing the weight of her trust.

Inside, though, something hard had been carved into him.

He had always known she was wounded. Tonight he had seen the exact shape of the wound—and he swore, silently and without mercy, that he would spend the rest of his life proving her fear wrong.

Even if he had to unteach it one gentle movement at a time.

Nasir exhaled slowly. He couldn’t change the past. But he could change what came next.