I tamp down the nervous feeling and tell myself that as Faizan goes over my duties. They’re pretty straight forward. Clean, cook, fetch when Faizan’s not available, and, “Only disturb His Excellency when necessary.”
Luckily for me, I’ve arrived just before lunchtime, so this is the perfect time to bring His Excellency his afternoon meal and pop my head in for a reintroduction.
Faizan walks me through the Rashid’s lunch preparations, and it doesn’t take long. Lunch is basically a smoothie filled with a variety of seeds, some veggies, protein powder, papaya, guava, and apple bananas with a slice of star fruit on top.
It’s very pretty, but, “That’s all he’s going to eat?”
Faizan gives me another somber nod. “I’m afraid that’s all he is willing to consume.”
Faizan said willing not able, I note as I carry the drink down a too dim hallway to his room to another teak door.
I knock.
“Come in.” The two words pierce the wood, sharp and rough.
Another deep breath and I open the door…
Darkness. I can’t see anything save the faintest outlines of furniture and a shadowy figure sitting behind the room’s only point of light: a glowing screen.
Whoa, had I complained about the hallway? This room makes it look bright. Which feels crazy, because who comes to Hawaii to block out all the sunlight?
I fumble on the closest wall for the light switch and push the first button I find.
More light than I’m expecting floods the room. “Sorry!” I call out, reflexively squinting against the suddenly too bright light.
“I did not give you permission to turn on the light!”
Eyes adjusting, I squint in the direction of the angry voice. “I’m sorry,” I say again. “I was just trying to see where to put…”
I trail off, my heart cracking at the sight of him rolling out from behind the desk to confront me, in what I can now see is a large garden facing bedroom with one simple wooden desk.
I knew it would be bad. Zahir told me as much and let me know that Rashid had only recovered to the point that he could move around in a wheelchair.
But he looks even worse than I imagined. Thin, bordering on emaciated. Sunken chest under a thin t-shirt, hollow cheeks, even hollower eyes. His dark wavy hair is now a lusterless mess and it’s easy to tell his tangled beard hasn’t been attended to since his accident. He looks terrible. So terrible, I barely notice the armless wheelchair he’s sitting on. Hints of his former beauty lurk underneath his ashen skin, but as for perfect?
No, he is definitely not that anymore. He looks destroyed, the handsome man I remember is completely ravaged.
I freeze, my army tough cheeriness abandoning me all at once. I don’t know what to do, what to say.
“Why are you here?”
His voice jolts me out of my vocal paralysis.
“Hi, I’m Mika,” I answer. “You probably don’t remember me but we met about a year ago after–”
“I remember you,” he says, cutting me off. His gaunt face darkens with what looks like barely-contained rage. “Why are you here?”
I swallow. “Oh didn’t anyone tell you?” I scamper forth with the glass and set it on the desk beside him. “I’m replacing your usual housekeeper until she comes back from Jahwar in late August.”
There comes a thunderous silence. Then: “No.”
The word hits me like a shove, and I blink, not understanding. “What do you mean, no?”
“I mean, NO!” he roars. “I will not allow this.”
Without warning, he brings a hand up and slaps the smoothie off the desk. I gasp, jumping back, but not before the dark red drink splashes on me and pretty much everything else within a one-foot radius.
“You’re fired!” His voice is little more than a feral growl. “Now get out!”
9
RASHID
I speak impeccable English, with barely a hint of an accent. But Mika gapes at me as if I told her she was fired in one of my native tongues.
“You can’t…you can’t fire me. I need—” she starts to say.
Does she really think I care about what she wants? What she needs? She’s standing there, an even more enchanting version of the woman I could barely resist a year ago. And I’m sitting here, a man who has lost everything. Grief and agony, raw and all-consuming writhe through me.
“Get out!” I yell again, this time so loud, Faizan appears and guides her away.
He reappears a few minutes later with several cloths and a spray bottle of cleaning solution.
“Why?” I immediately demand. “Why her?”
“My apologies, Your Excellency,” he says, as he begins mopping up the mess I made when I slapped the cup off the table with one of the cloths. “I am sure Sheikh Zahir had no idea his hiring her to cook and clean while Waseela is away would upset you.”
Sheikh Zahir….Faizan still calls my cousin by his royal title, even though he abdicated the throne a year ago. Just as he still calls me by my title, even though I am now a shell of what I used to be, broken and destroyed.
He peeps up at me, awaiting a response. One I’m sure he’ll report back to my cousin.
I’m seething but in the end, I make myself maintain a cold and neutral face. Zahir was not pleased the last time he visited me. “I thought moving you to this tropical paradise might help you. Pacific Hawaii University has one of the best spinal cord injury recovery programs in the nation. But according to Faizan not only have you refused to meet with your assigned PHU therapist, but you also have yet to leave the house. It is obvious to me that you are not thriving here, Cousin. So perhaps it is time to consider an alternative placement in California….”
Alternative placement…I’m not so far gone that I don’t know what that means. Zahir thinks my grief has turned to mental illness. And now, he’s most likely waiting for just the right reason to throw me in one of those Malibu “resorts” where rich families send their insane.
But I can’t let him put me away yet. Not when I’m so close to figuring out the code to the safe Faizan keeps hidden in the garage.
“I want her gone,” I say, struggling to keep a reasonable tone. “You can make my meals from here forward, and we’ll hire a cleaning service to replace Waseela until she returns.”
“Of course, Your Excellency,” Faizan answers. “I will let her know that she must vacate the premises.”
He finishes cleaning up the mess and offers several more apologies as he bows and leaves the room.
“And Faizan…” I say just as he reaches the doorway.
“Yes, Your Excellency.”
“Turn off the lights.”
“Of course, Your Excellency.”
Darkness once again encapsulates me, and my research project beckons on the laptop. I’ve tried all the passwords from Faizan’s personal accounts—at least the ones I got off of his computer’s password management system when I hacked into it. But most of those passwords are randomly generated. Ones suggested by the computer itself as the best possible defense against hackers like me. I’m assuming he would have set the safe code to something personal, something he could easily remember even if much time passed before he opened the safe again.
I roll myself back into place and open the laptop I closed when Faizan appeared to clean up the mess. Pushing thoughts of Mika away, I return to scouring my loyal servant’s palace employment records. I need emergency contacts, birth dates, personal information I can use to figure out the combination to that safe.
However, after just a few minutes of researching, the words start swimming in front of my eyes. I was so resolute in my mission before Mika came in, I’d barely looked up when I heard the opening of the door. But now it feels like a bomb has gone off in my head. Scattering my previously trained thoughts, clouding my analysis.
Also, my stomach is growling. I eat so little, it has already started cramping in protest over the denied lunch.
My pride keeps me from sendin
g Faizan an instant message with a request for another drink. Though I am not nearly the man I was before, I still have no wish to treat my staff poorly as my wife and so many other UAK royals were prone to do. Nor do I wish to be perceived as the kind of spoiled brat who destroys his meal then demands another one.
Besides, making Mika leave is a far more important mission. My heart stops again at the memory of looking up to see her, instead of Waseela standing there with my afternoon drink.
She’d looked just as I remembered her. An enchanting mix of unaffected beauty and warm friendliness with a welcoming smile on top. My body had awoken at the sight of her, like a device thought dead, lighting up after being plugged into a USB port.
The doctors in Jahwar had told me there was a chance I would never walk again, much less be able to achieve an erection. But I’d discovered at least half of that dire prediction hadn’t come true as soon as she approached with the drink.
No, I did not want to be perceived as a spoiled Jahwar brat, but thank goodness my splattering of the drink had made her look down. If not for that distraction, she would have seen how much her unexpected reappearance affected me…as the long dormant piece of flesh between my legs came to sudden life.
In fact, just the thought of her has it swelling again…
I close the laptop on that thought with a vicious snap. No, the drink I get at dinner will have to suffice. And meanwhile, I need another nap. I took one earlier in the morning, but the general hunger fatigue makes the need for them more frequent throughout the day.
Without the laptop’s light, the room is nearly pitch black, which means I have to be extra careful as I roll over to the bed. But I make it without hitting any of the other furniture, and it feels like the darkness is welcoming me home as I use my arms to haul myself and my no longer working legs onto the adjustable bed.
I close my eyes. Hoping not to see Aisha again when I do…her hand inside my grandfather’s, looking up in confusion after a loud, unearthly scream rents the air above us. Not a human scream, but metal we all discovered, when the first beam came crashing down.
But it’s not Aisha I see when I close my eyes. It’s something even worse.
The Big Idea has returned, calling out to me in my mind’s black, all but glowing with its urgency now. I curse Mika for this too.
Before The Big Idea had been little more than a germ, a rough sketch of something someone else might do if they could come up with the right mind-machine integration. But Mika’s unexpected appearance reminds me of something...
That bioHelmet of Barron Calson’s...
After hearing about my unusual fan from Mika, I’d done a little research into the boy prodigy after he and his nanny left Jahwar. I’d been so impressed with what little I’d dug up about his bioHelmet, I’d called Go Rodriguez myself. “I don’t know what kind of child labor laws you’ll have to circumnavigate to offer this kid an internship at GoBionics,” I’d told him, “But whatever it takes, he’s worth it.”
Obviously, I hadn’t done any follow-up on whether Go had taken my advice. But could Barron Calson’s bioHelmet be the missing piece of integration The Big Idea needed? Indeed, a helmet with that kind of cortical array might take The Big Idea out of the rough sketch stage and turn it into something I—I mean—some other robotic engineer at GoBionics might actually start working on.
My heart surges with excitement as coding and engineering ideas start flooding into my mind…
Only to get cut off when I remember; it’s not for me to imagine what could be anymore. Now there was only darkness inside of me, and memories of the daughter I failed. That man I used to be, he’s dead now. Or at least he should be. I remember the vow I made to myself when I woke up from my coma to discover I’d lost the little girl I’d sworn to protect with my life when she was born. It wasn’t fair that she was gone and I was still here. I had to make that right.
Which meant making the opening of Faizan’s safe my sole mission. That and nothing else.
With that thought foremost in mind, I will my brain to stop spinning and give into the darkness. But I soon find that I’m too hungry to fully fall asleep, yet too fatigued to go back to my laptop.
And several hours of simply lying there, I’m grateful, when I hear the door open earlier than usual for my dinner time drink.
Faizan must have predicted that I would be beyond starving by now. Good man. I sit up in bed, but before I can reach for the lamp, I’m blinded by a flood of overhead light.
What the devil?
I rub my eyes, and blink, not believing my eyes for the second time today.
For it’s not Faizan who has entered the room, but Mika. And instead of a drink on top of a saucer, she’s carrying a tray with what looks like a full plate of food.
Looks and smells like…the fragrant aroma of the eggs, toast, lomi salmon salad, and that odd Hawaii staple, poi hits my nose, making my stomach crave things it hasn’t wanted in a very long time.
“Don’t worry this won’t be what dinner looks like every night,” she says, setting the tray down on my desk. “I’m usually not the breakfast for dinner type, but I had to make do with what I found in the fridge. Hey, let’s open this room up. You know, I’ve heard of blackout curtains but I’ve never seen them in real life.”
“What are you still doing here?” I demand, my fatigued mind struggling to keep up as I watch her yank open the heavy curtains I had hung over the retractable window wall. “You’re fired.”
“Yeah, see I was thinking about that, and I decided, nanh…” Mika claps her hands together when she sees the garden beyond the window. “Whoa! You’ve got a retractable window wall in here, too? And your own lanai? How awesome!”
“What do you mean, nanh?” With a new surge of energy, I haul myself out of bed and roll myself over to the desk to confront her in the now, much too bright room.
“I fired you. That means you have to get out.”
“Does it though?” She scrunches up her face. “I mean, one of those things is kind of true. You definitely said I was fired. But does that mean I have to get out?”
She steeples her hands as if giving that thought serious consideration. “I’m not so sure about that. This is America, after all, not Jahwar. And you know, it’s your cousin, not you, who paid me half up front already to be here. So I’m not even sure you have the authority to tell me to get out.”
Rage consumes my mind at her audacity. “I am the authority here! You will get out now!”
I have never used this dangerous of a tone with anyone, especially not a servant. But she merely smirks at my thunderous expression. “Like I said before…nanh.”
“GET OUT!” My hand comes up like an automatic extension of my fury, and the tray of food goes flying, sending it everywhere.
But this time instead of jumping back or gasping, she folds her arms and regards me with a disappointed shake of her head. “Looks like you made another mess. Tell you what? We’ll try again tomorrow morning. I make a terrific, I mean, seriously to-die-for Hawaiian French Toast. Hopefully, you won’t throw another tantrum and make poor Faizan clean up that mess too.”
That said, she finally exits the room, leaving me there in the midst of the ruined dinner.
And indeed, when Faizan arrives about thirty minutes later with profuse apologies and several cleaning supplies, I feel somewhat like a petulant baby as I watch him clean up my second mess of the day.
“What is she still doing here?” I demand anyway, after reminding myself that she and Faizan are the servants, and I am their boss. “I told you I wanted her gone.”
“Yes, Your Excellency, but I am afraid, she is somewhat tricky. First, she said she would not leave until her son got a chance to play for a bit in the ocean…”
“Her son is here?” I jolt at the idea of her son staying in the house as well. I haven’t seen a child up close since my accident, and now there’s one on the premises?
“Yes, it would seem that was a condition of hiring her f
or the entire summer while Waseela is out. But before you fired her, I made it clear to them both that he was not allowed to disturb you. And she promised he would not. However, while he was out swimming supposedly for one last time, she asked if I could keep an eye on him, while she packed their things and booked a hotel. Of course, I agreed. But when I came back to the house with him, prepared to drive them and their luggage to whatever lodging they’d reserved for the night, I found several things amiss.”
My former Pakistani commando attendant shakes his head as if recounting a war story of a mission gone wrong. “Not only had she made you this dinner, but she also hid the Ninja Food Processor somewhere I cannot find it. She has not packed or booked a hotel for herself and her son. In fact, she asked me if I could give her a list of anything I wanted, claiming she plans to make a grocery store run tomorrow. I’m not quite sure what to do, since like she told me, she is technically Sheikh Zahir’s hire.”
Again, Zahir is no longer the ruler of Jahwar, but Faizan’s torn expression tells me he still considers him such.
I grit my jaw, rage coursing through me like lava. “Bring me my phone,” I command. “I will talk to Zahir.”
Faizan’s eyes widen. Most likely because I have not requested to use my phone since Zahir deposited me here months ago, in the hopes that the tropical setting would speed my recovery. “Yes, Your Excellency, right away,” he says.
And a moment later, my long-unused smartphone is in my hand. The screen is jam-packed with notifications of missed calls and texts, including a recent one from Keane about his wife being pregnant with a third child. I swipe up, ignoring them all, and go straight to another name near the top of my old Favorites list.
Zahir picks up on the first ring. “Rashid? Is that really you?” he asks, his voice filled with shock.
RASHID: HER RUTHLESS BOSS: 50 Loving States, Hawaii Page 7