I met Zainab when we were five. She was small, with thin arms and the kind of smile that made people feel warm inside. But she wasn’t like the other kids. She got tired faster, missed school often, and sometimes, when the pain came, she would disappear for weeks.

She had sickle cell disease.

“It’s like my blood fights itself,” she told me once, her voice light, as if it wasn’t a big deal.

But it was.

I saw it in the way her mother, Aunty Aisha, hovered over her, watching for signs of a crisis. I saw it in the countless hospital trips, the medication she swallowed like candy.

Yet, Zainab never complained.

She loved life. She loved her parents. She loved me.

I never knew that love would be the thing that destroyed us all.

The last time I saw Zainab, she was laughing.

She had just gotten out of the hospital after a bad crisis, and I had come over with her favorite mango juice. She had hugged me tight, her arms bony but strong.

“You act like you thought I was going to die,” she teased.

I didn’t laugh. I always worried.

That evening, she left home for a short walk.

She never came back.

Her parents called me, their voices shaking. “Have you seen Zainab?”

My heart dropped. “No… isn’t she home?”

She wasn’t.

The search began. Days turned into weeks. Posters with her face covered the streets. The police did nothing.

Then, a call came.

A man’s voice. Cold. Unfamiliar.

“We have your daughter. Bring five million or she dies.”

Five million. Aunty Aisha and Uncle Bello didn’t have that kind of money. They sold everything they could. Neighbors helped. Strangers donated.

But time was slipping.

Zainab’s sickle cell attacks could come at any moment. Without her medication, without warmth, without proper care—she was already dying.

I barely slept, my mind haunted by thoughts of her in some dark room, scared and alone.

Then, a second call.

“Money ready?”

“Yes,” Uncle Bello whispered.

A location was given. An abandoned warehouse outside town. They were told to come alone.

But they never made it.

I will never forget the sound of the crash.

A truck ran them off the road. Their car flipped three times before slamming into a tree. By the time people got to them, it was too late.

They had died trying to save their daughter.

And Zainab?

She was still with them. The kidnappers.

I felt something inside me break. Her parents were gone, and she didn’t even know.

Two days later, a body was found.

I prayed it wasn’t her.

It was.

Dumped in a ditch. Starved. Weak. The pain had taken her before the kidnappers could.

I stood at her funeral, my hands shaking, my heart shattered.

She had fought so hard to live, only to die at the hands of monsters.

And just like that, a whole family was gone.

Only silence remained. The kind that never truly leaves.