The call to Fajr echoed gently through the early morning haze, a soft, sacred whisper stirring the city of Lahore awake. Minarets reached for the sky like silent guardians, while the sky slowly surrendered its darkness to a delicate wash of gold and lavender. It was a time of peace—a stillness between night and day that only a few truly appreciated.
Among them was Noor Fatima, who rose before the sun each morning with the same quiet discipline she had kept since childhood. Her room, small but pristine, smelled faintly of rosewater and books. A Qur'an rested on a low wooden rehal by her window, where the first blush of dawn touched its golden calligraphy. Noor pulled her beige shawl gently over her head, performed her ablution in silence, and stood to pray.
She was eighteen, but there was an ageless stillness in her presence. Not the stillness of someone tired or waiting—but the stillness of someone grounded, deeply at peace within herself.
Her father often called her "his calm before the storm." Her mother swore she had been born with light in her eyes. She was the youngest of three, the only daughter, and the apple of her parents' eye. Though her life was simple, it was full—woven with the rich, subtle joys of family dinners, evening storytelling, and the rustling of pages under a flickering lamp.
After her prayers, Noor sat cross-legged by her window, watching the world begin. She loved the early hours, where Lahore's usual noise softened into something sacred. A stray cat padded along the low wall of their courtyard. The neighbor's rooster crowed with dependable arrogance. A bicycle bell rang faintly in the distance.
And then, the world began again.
Noor folded her prayer mat and took up her notebook—a worn thing filled with poetry she never showed anyone. Today, she scribbled something she'd dreamt of the night before.
"A heart of stone met a whisper of silk.And didn't know it could feel."
She smiled to herself. She wasn't sure why the line had come to her. Her poems were never for anyone else. They were a secret place. A diary in verse.
By the time breakfast was on the table, Noor was already dressed in a simple cotton shalwar kameez, ivory and embroidered lightly at the sleeves. She greeted her parents with a kiss to their hands—her father with a quiet "Assalamu Alaikum," her mother with a warm hug. Her two older brothers were away for their medical and engineering studies, and their absence always left a soft gap in the house.
Noor didn't complain. She filled the space with books, Qur'anic studies, and small tutoring sessions for neighborhood children. Her mother often said, "Your rizq is in your hands and your dua is in your heart, beti." Noor believed it.
She taught children under the peepal tree in the courtyard, using sticks to draw letters in the dust, and sang phonics in gentle tones. She was especially good with the little ones—the shy ones, the stubborn ones, the ones with tears clinging to their lashes.
She never shouted. She only waited.
And they bloomed under her patience.
Yet, even Noor—ever obedient, ever thankful—carried quiet dreams in the folds of her hijab.
Sometimes, when the sky turned purple at maghrib, she would climb to the rooftop, holding her journal, and let the breeze lift the corners of her scarf. There, among the drying clothes and the hum of distant traffic, she would imagine a world she had never seen.
She had never left Pakistan. Her world was her neighborhood, her books, her masjid, and her family.
But her heart? Her heart traveled often.
She imagined walking through ancient streets in Istanbul, reciting poetry by the Bosphorus. She imagined sitting in a rose garden in Shiraz, her fingers trailing the verses of Hafez. She even imagined snow—cold and crystalline, falling on stone roofs.
One afternoon, while reading a book in the garden, she came across a name: Leonardo.
It was a name foreign to her tongue, but something about it intrigued her.
She read on.
"He was cold, merciless, and untouchable. But when she smiled at him, the ice cracked."
She closed the book quickly. Flushed. A character from a novel shouldn't leave a real heartbeat echoing behind.
Yet something had shifted. She couldn't name it.
Noor didn't know that thousands of miles away, in the burning streets of Italy's criminal underworld, a man with that very name stood at the edge of a different kind of war.
And that fate, in all its impossible cruelty and design, had begun stitching their destinies together.
Later That Week...
The day was hot, even under the shade. Noor sat in the garden behind her house, surrounded by hibiscus and lemon blossoms. Her sketchbook rested on her lap, half-filled with arabesque designs and lines of Urdu poetry. She was drawing the pattern of the window grill above her when she heard her mother calling from the kitchen.
"Beti, can you come stir the kheer for me?"
She tucked her pencil behind her ear, stood, and smiled. "Coming, Ammi."
She didn't notice the figure watching from behind the wall of the neighbor's abandoned guest house—the shadow who had arrived just an hour ago, bleeding from a bullet wound, hidden by a contact who owed him a favor.
He shouldn't have seen her.
But he did.
Leonardo De Luca, feared heir of the De Luca Mafia family, stood leaning against the cracked wall, blood-soaked and silent, watching the girl in the garden.
His world was made of cold metal, harsh men, and deals signed in death. His hands were not clean. His past was not light. He had never prayed, never asked for forgiveness, and never once believed in innocence.
Until he saw her.
He didn't know her name.
He didn't know the language of her books or the words of her prayers.
But the way she moved—soft, unguarded, untouched by violence—it was like watching something from another life. A life he never thought he'd deserve. A life he didn't believe existed.
For a moment, the pain in his shoulder dulled.
The shadows inside him went quiet.
And all he could think was—
She doesn't belong in my world.
But I already want to protect her from it.