The morning sunlight slipped shyly through the curtains of Melati Ward, touching the cold porcelain floor that smelled of disinfectant. Syakira woke with a stiff neck after falling asleep sitting beside her father’s bed all night. She rubbed her eyes slowly, then turned to look at Mr. Hisyam, who was still sleeping with the help of an oxygen tube.
Fadhil still hasn’t contacted me, she thought uneasily.
Syakira reached for her phone lying on the bedside table. Its screen was still dark. Since yesterday afternoon, her messages had shown only one check mark. She tried to think positively; maybe the signal around the KUA office was bad, or Fadhil was so tired that he’d forgotten to charge his phone. Even so, the cold feeling she’d had in the parking lot last night still left traces of anxiety in her chest.
“Syakira, are you awake, sweetheart?” her mother’s hoarse voice broke the silence. She had just returned from the hospital prayer room after dawn prayers.
“Yes, Mom. I’m going to freshen up,” Syakira answered softly.
Just as she was about to get up, the phone in her hand gave a brief buzz. A message notification had come in. Syakira’s heart pounded. She hoped it was from Fadhil, but her brow furrowed when she saw a string of unfamiliar numbers that weren’t saved in her contacts.
The clock showed exactly seven.
Syakira opened the message. There was no text, only several photo attachments with fairly large file sizes. With slightly trembling fingers, she downloaded them.
For the first few seconds, Syakira could only stare. It was as if gravity had suddenly vanished from her world.
The first photo showed a man she knew very well—Fadhil—lying on a luxurious white bed. He appeared to be very close to a scantily dressed woman who was hugging him from the side. In the second photo, Fadhil’s face was clearly visible in profile, his eyes closed, while the woman appeared to be kissing his neck.
“No ... this can’t be,” Syakira whispered. Her voice caught in her throat.
She swiped across her phone’s screen, hoping it was merely an optical illusion or a trick of the light. But the third photo delivered the most devastating blow. Fadhil’s hand was clearly shown clasping the woman’s fingers. And around the man’s ring finger was a plain gold ring exactly like the one Syakira was wearing now.
Fadhil’s mother’s heirloom ring. The ring he had praised just yesterday as a symbol of the purity of their promise.
“Syakira? What’s wrong, sweetheart? You’re so pale.” Her mother moved closer, sensing that something was wrong with her daughter’s expression, which had suddenly gone stiff as a statue.
Syakira didn’t answer. She felt the oxygen around her suddenly disappear. Her chest tightened, as if an invisible hand were squeezing her heart with all its strength. She tried to find some way to deny it. They were edited. Someone wanted to bring Fadhil down. Fadhil was a religious teacher. He couldn’t possibly do this.
But the clarity of the photos destroyed every defense she tried to make. The dim hotel-room lighting, the veins on Fadhil’s hand, even the lipstick stain on the collar of his koko shirt—all of it looked so real. This wasn’t a crude fake. It was a scene that shattered everything she believed about his honesty.
“Mom ... Fadhil ....” Syakira held out her phone with violently trembling hands.
Her mother took the phone, and within seconds, sobs burst from the middle-aged woman’s lips. “Astaghfirullah! What is this, Syakira? Is this really Fadhil? How could he do this to you ...?”
Her mother’s sobbing sparked a small commotion. Syakira felt her head throb violently. The image of Fadhil reciting verses from the Quran the night before now felt like a cruel mockery. That gentleness, that calm—had it all been nothing more than a mask hiding the depravity she had just witnessed?
He said he was taking care of our marriage paperwork. He said he would protect me. And it turned out he’d gone to a hotel with another woman?
Syakira’s heart, which had been full of hopeful flowers, had now become a barren, desolate wasteland. This heartbreak felt brutally physical; her stomach churned, and her legs suddenly felt like jelly. She remembered how she’d defended Fadhil in front of that stranger at the bus terminal the other day. She felt so stupid. So naive.
“Syakira, calm down, sweetheart. Don’t let your father hear,” her mother whispered as she embraced Syakira’s trembling shoulders.
But what was done was done. The commotion had apparently disturbed Mr. Hisyam’s sleep. The old man slowly opened his eyes and turned toward his daughter and wife, his gaze confused.
“What ... what’s wrong? Why are you crying?” Mr. Hisyam’s voice sounded hoarse and weak.
Syakira quickly hid her phone behind her back, but her mother couldn’t hold back her emotions. “Fadhil, dear ... Fadhil isn’t a good man after all. He betrayed Syakira!”
“Mom, not now!” Syakira tried to stop her, but it was too late.
Mr. Hisyam furrowed his brow, trying to process what he’d heard. “What do you mean? Fadhil is an honest young man ....”
“Look at this!” Her mother snatched the phone from Syakira’s hand and held it right in front of Mr. Hisyam’s face.
Syakira could only close her eyes, unable to bear seeing her father’s reaction. An oppressive silence blanketed the room for several seconds before the beep ... beep ... beep ... of the heart monitor changed into a rapid, irregular roar.
Mr. Hisyam gasped for breath. His pale face turned blue. His hand clenched the hospital bedsheet tightly, while his eyes bulged as he stared at the phone screen in utter disbelief and overwhelming shame.
“Dad! Dad, stay calm!” Syakira screamed hysterically. She immediately pressed the emergency button above the bed.
“Liar ... he ... lied to me ....” Mr. Hisyam mumbled haltingly before his body convulsed violently.
Nurses and doctors on duty rushed into the room, pushing Syakira and her mother away. Syakira stood in the corner, watching the cluster of medical workers try once again to save her father’s life. Her world shattered into pieces.
She lowered her head and stared at the gold ring on her finger. Yesterday, it had felt like a promise of safety. Now, it felt like a burning coal scorching her skin. Every engraving seemed to scream of betrayal and lies.
Syakira felt overwhelmingly nauseated. She ran out of the ward into the deserted hallway and collapsed onto the cold floor. She hugged her knees.
Ya Allah, why would You show me this at a time like this? she lamented inwardly.
The trust she had spent years building in Fadhil was destroyed in a matter of minutes. Now there was no safe harbor left. There was no man she could trust anymore. Fadhil, whom she had believed to be a hero, was nothing more than a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Amid the turmoil in her heart, a memory surfaced of the man inside the luxurious black car—Kaivan.
That man had once said he would make Syakira regret everything. Was this part of his warning? Or was Fadhil truly a bastard?
Syakira ripped the ring from her finger, scraping her skin raw. She stared blankly at the piece of metal. To her, the ring was no longer a symbol of commitment, but a symbol of the shackles of humiliation that had dragged her father back to the brink of death.
She threw the ring onto the floor. The metallic clink as it struck the tile sounded unbearably sad and lonely before it came to rest beneath a waiting-room chair. Syakira covered her face with both hands, her shoulders shaking violently as her sobs refused to stop.
At the far end of the hallway, well beyond Syakira’s notice, a man in a sharply tailored suit stood silently, observing the scene. He didn’t approach, but a thin, cold smile curved across his lips. His plan had gone perfectly. The storm had destroyed everything, and now it was time for the savior to emerge from the fog.
Syakira was still sobbing, unaware that behind the ruin of her life today, demonic hands were preparing to pull her into a golden cage far more suffocating than death itself.