by Lynn, Sophia
“It's deeper. Slower. Sadder, maybe, even when you are playing lighter, faster things.”
She could believe it. After Makeen walked away from her on the tarmac, never looking back, she had felt something in herself close off. Olivia had no idea if it was permanent, or if she would ever be able to get that part of herself back. At the moment, she didn't even care.
Olivia had an idea of how her life might move forward. She might get into a professional orchestra, or she might simply scrape by as she had been doing. She thought she would eventually pull away from her family, strike out on her own.
At the moment, the thought brought her nothing at all, so she simply existed. She earned money, she talked with her brother, and in her more lucid moments, Olivia was worrried that she might be like this forever.
***
One day, Olivia came home to find her parents packing frantically and her brother on the phone, talking with low hushed tones.
For the first time in what felt like weeks, she felt a spark of panic.
“What's happening? What's going on?”
Her mother spared her a look as she shoved clothes into an old duffle bag. “It's Stavros, who used to employ your brother. He's been on the war path since the raid, and now he's bringing it all to bear. Your brother got off not once, but twice, so of course that means he's a snitch.”
Mayellen glared at Olivia, and in that moment, Olivia could feel any bonds connecting her to the woman falling away. Instead, she turned to her brother, who had just hung up his phone, his face pale.
“David? David, what's going on?”
David's face was pale, but composed. “You heard the bulk of it from Mom. If Stavros catches me on the street, he's going to have me executed. I need to get out of the country and fast, but Sis, step into the hall with me. There's something I need to tell you.”
Mystified, still holding her violin, she followed him. In the airless stairwell of the building, her brother turned to her.
“I am so sorry for everything. I … I heard about what you did for me …”
She started to hold her hands up, because she didn't think that she could bear this, but he forged ahead.
“No, listen to me. I haven't asked you about this because … well, because it is private. It's your story, and you would have come to me if you needed something. But I think that one way or another, you need to know this.
“Stavros is a fucking madman, and he wants everyone who blew his organization dead from top to bottom. He's sending a man out to kill the Sheikh. That's the man you were staying with right?”
Olivia felt a cold claw of fear grasp her heart. Her eyes widened. “They're sending someone to kill Makeen?”
“Yes. Tonight, as he enters the art gallery showing. I'm risking my life just telling you this. Olivia … I don't care what you do with this information, but I need to get out of Zahar with Mom and Dad …”
She was already nodding. She set down her violin case long enough to throw her arms around him.
“I'm not sorry for anything I've done for you,” she whispered fiercely. “I love you.”
He held her for a moment, and she was painfully aware that this might be the last time that either of them said anything to each other. The last time she ever saw her brother.
Then he was gone, and she had a decision to make.
She didn't even hesitate. When David disappeared, she plunged down the stairwell, leaping down the last few steps to hit the ground running.
She didn't know what was going to happen tonight, but she knew that she would never forgive herself if she didn't do something.
***
Makeen hadn't expected the gallery opening to be particularly exciting, but he hadn't expected it to be this boring, either.
He supposed that the problem had less to do with the gallery than it had to do with him. Everything had felt as if it were covered in a fog of gray.
When he had gotten back from the mountains, he had ordered David's release and then threw himself into his work. At night, he went out to his favorite clubs, but nothing held the same kind of savor that it had once had.
He ended up at home, drinking and sleeping before starting the cycle over again. Makeen knew that he had to stop, but at the moment, he couldn't quite see a good reason to do so just yet.
His harried personal assistant was stretched thin with invitations for him, so he had her pick some at random. That was why he had ended up at the art gallery, something that the local arts papers crowed about. Makeen realized with some amusement that him showing up was likely one of the most prestigious things that had ever happened to them.
At the very least, it explained the hulking man who had introduced himself as Frederick almost directly after he arrived. He seemed intent on showing Makeen around, pointing out every piece of interesting art and hinting that there were other pieces in the private galleries that might need his attention.
So far, Makeen had been able to push him off, but he was dreadfully afraid that by the end, he would have to see some of those pieces, if only to make the man shut up.
***
“Please, I need to get in there!” Olivia begged. “Please, I need to talk to the Sheikh.”
The security guard in front of the musuem gave her an unamused, unfriendly look. In that moment, she felt every inch the grubby street orphan in her thin T-shirt and long calico skirt. She couldn't let that stop her, though, not when Makeen's life was on the line.
“Sorry,” he said for the second time. “Invitation only. You don't have one, so you're not going in.”
When she tried to walk past him, he pushed her back with a gentle shove.
“Get out of here, girlie. I don't want to get rough, but I will.”
She circled around the building desperately, but there didn't seem to be a way in that wasn't locked or guarded. Olivia was contemplating simply breaking a window when she spotted Makeen through one of the French doors leading to the balcony.
He looked so close, but so far away. It made her heart ache a little, and she wanted nothing more than to touch him in that moment.
Then she remembered her violin. She removed it from her case, laying the case carelessly on the sidewalk.
Olivia said a prayer to any higher power that was listening, and she started to play.
***
He turned his head towards the music with a frown. It fought with the gentle music of the gallery, overriding it with a kind of fervor that was discordant, jarring. Other people were beginning to notice, looking around in confusion.
“Such a racket,” Frederick said, and Makeen barely stopped himself from snapping at the man.
“I'm going to go see what it is,” he said, heading to the nearest window. He noted with irritation that the social climber was following him, and resisted the urge to tell the man to go.
Instead, he came to a pair of French doors that led out onto a small balcony, where he could hear the music more clearly, and right before he opened them, he recognized the music.
Olivia …
It was the same wild melody that she had been playing on that terrible night, that same music that had caused his heart to break into a thousand pieces. Now she was playing it wildly on the street in front of the gallery.
“Olivia? What are you doing?” he shouted.
The moment she saw him, she raised her head and lowered the violin. Even now, his heart clenched at how beautiful she was, how pure her loveliness was under the street light. Not all the models in the UAE could compare with her.
“Stavros is sending a man to kill you! Tonight! Your life is in danger!” she shouted frantically.
He frowned, not understanding what she was saying, but Frederick the social climber certainly did. With a guttural cry, the man exploded into motion, lunging forward with something undeniably sharp in his hand.
Makeen barely dodged in time, aided in part by Frederick overcommitting to his lunge and nearly bumbling past him. His attacker turned with alarmin
g quickness, and now Makeen had caught his knife hand, trying to force him back.
The man was enormous, but Makeen was fueled by rage and adrenaline. He smashed the man's hand into the iron railing, causing him to drop the knife to the street below, and then he forced him to his knees.
The crowd behind him had finally figured out that something was wrong, and now they came bolting out of the room to subdue the man.
Makeen tried to still his harsh breathing and his racing heart, ignoring the people who wanted to make sure that he was all right. He was dimly aware that he had skinned his knuckles and had somehow wrenched his elbow, but that wasn't important.
Instead, he twisted on the balcony, his eyes scanning the street for Olivia. Olivia, who had done what she could to save him. Olivia, who he knew had put herself at risk to come here.
She was gone, and the street below was empty.
Chapter Eleven
The airport was crowded and close. It reminded Olivia of the last time she had flown with Makeen, when his wealth and status won her past these crowds onto a private plane. The memories were still sharp enough to cut, but they came back with a rush, even as she settled herself into the coach seat waiting area.
The other passengers traveling to Berlin ignored her. She was just one more young woman in jeans and a T-shirt, a student, possibly traveling home after some time abroad. Unlike those students, however, the only things she owned were tucked into the backpack between her feet and of course, the violin case on her lap.
At the last possible moment, Olivia had found the message from the Berlin orchestra. They wanted her. They sent her plane tickets, there was a company apartment she could stay in for a short while, and then she would be on stage. She wouldn't be the first violin, but she would have her part, and she would have her place.
It was everything that Olivia had been working towards. She should have been elated.
Instead, she only nodded and began her preparations.
Her family had gone to ground. David was in hiding from Stavros, and who knew when it would be safe for him to appear again. She felt his loss far more strongly than she felt that of her parents, and sometimes she felt bad for that.
Instead, she was a woman leaving on her own. If Olivia thought about it for too long, she would start crying. She had loved Zahar, but it was more than that.
She was also leaving Makeen. She was leaving half her heart behind, and a part of her still couldn't believe that she was doing it of her own free will.
She stared up at the bright fluorescent lights, willing the tears back. It felt like she had spent the last few weeks crying. She didn't want to do it anymore.
“Please don't cry, darling.”
For a moment, Olivia thought she had finally snapped. The man sitting next to her looked too perfect, far too handsome. The last time she had seen Makeen, he had been fighting for his life. The time before that, he had stalked away with a life-ending anger in his heart. This man, dressed casually in a linen suit, watched her with a slight smile on his face. Somehow he had come to be sitting next to her without her awareness.
“Are … are you real?” she croaked, and he nodded.
She couldn't help herself. She didn't care why he was here. All that mattered was lunging forward even as she put her violin down, falling into his arms.
For several long moments, she simply rested in the protection of his embrace, letting the pain and fear of the previous weeks fall away from her. When she finally looked up, she gazed at him with some confusion.
“What are you doing here, Makeen?”
“You are an astonishingly hard woman to track,” he said, stepping back slightly. They took their seats again, but this time, he held on to her hand. Despite the casual look on his face, she could feel how tightly he was holding on to her.
“Am I?”
“After you saved my life, you disappeared.”
“I was just staying at a hostel,” she said in confusion. “Why were you looking for me?”
For a moment, she could see the hell he had gone through. His face was a perfect mask of misery and pain, the twin of her own. Then it was smoothed away when he touched her cheek gently.
“I deserve that, I suppose,” he said. “Olivia, I am looking for you because I love you. I cannot be apart from you. You risked your life to save mine … Getting me that information could have cost you everything.”
“I couldn't let you die,” she whispered painfully. “Not … no matter what happened between us. I love you.”
The words came out without her willing them to do so. They were the truest thing she had ever said, the finest, and she could have started crying again.
Makeen crushed her into a deep embrace. She could feel his heart beating hard.
“Olivia, little songbird, I love you. I love you to the sky and the sea and back again, and nothing should have convinced me that you did not care for me. I am sorry. I am sorry for everything that we have gone through together, and I am sorry for my part in bringing you so much pain. If you allow me to, I will spend the rest of my life making this up to you.”
Olivia murmured a protest as he pulled back, but it was only to reach for a velvet box in his pocket. As she stared with disbelief, he opened it to reveal a ring mounted with an enormous pale green pear-shaped diamond.
“Will you do me the honor of becoming my wife?” he asked, and as the airport erupted into applause, she sobbed out a barely coherent yes.
They kissed deeply, and to Olivia, it was perfect because it was only the first of many that would come after.
She pulled back after a moment, looking up at him with concern. “Makeen … I signed a contract for an orchestra in Berlin …”
With a grin, he held up his own bag. “The country can get by without me for at least a little while. There is a lovely townhouse that my family owns in Berlin, I think you will quite like it.”
Olivia started to laugh. She felt as light as the bird that he sometimes compared her to. She was in love. She was loved. She knew that it would be perfect no matter where they were.
EPILOGUE
Olivia was aware of the audience; in particular, she was aware of the presence of the man in the VIP box. She didn't let herself look towards them. Like the other members of the orchestra, she kept her eyes on her music.
Finally, the lights dimmed slightly, and the announcer came on.
“And tonight, in her first solo in Berlin, we have Olivia Majors al-Hamidiya!”
The applause faded as the first strains of the piece were plucked out of the air. She could hear the music weaving like a beautiful tapestry around her, and even as she started to play with the other violins, it made her think of the last few months.
The threads of her life were separate and strange. She was born to a family of criminals; she was a violinist who had sometimes gone hungry and begged for food when busking didn't cover the bills. Suddenly she had been plucked out of obscurity to fall in love with one of the most amazing men she had ever known, the one whose eyes she knew were upon her from the box.
They had come a long way in the four months since their airport reunion. During the days, she worked on her music, and he oversaw his country from afar. When evening fell, they came back together, meeting in a passionate embrace that never seemed to cool.
They explored the ancient city of Berlin, they found pockets and pieces of it that would always belong to their first years together. They talked. They learned about each other. They comforted each other, they loved, and they grew.
Olivia reflected that she had never thought much about love. There was nothing for her before Makeen besides her music. If she thought about it at all, she would have thought that love inevitably got in the way of music, but now she realized that that wasn't true.
The first time she had sat for the orchestra director, he had been wide-eyed. When she finally set down her violin, he shook his head.
“I was impressed by your tape, Fräulein, but this is something
else altogether. Something has happened to you in the months since. You have attained a greater understanding of your instrument. It is showing itself ingeniously.”
Not her instrument, she could have said. No, it was a better understanding of life, and of love. It was the man who waited for her outside the building, carrying a paper cup of coffee so that she could have it to settle her nerves when she got out. Before Olivia had gone in, Makeen had given her a kiss.
“You are amazing,” he whispered. “Now show them that you are.”
Now she played with one of the greatest orchestras in that region of the world. She listened to the other skilled musicians around her, wondering if they had their own passions, and if their love fed into their music as much as hers did.
She played in that sublime place between knowledge and power, and when she heard the last of the French horn die away, she brought her bow to the strings.
Her eyes were closed, but she could imagine Makeen's bright eyes, the way he leaned forward in the booth. He had heard her rehearse this piece over and over again at home, but hearing it played in concert would be far different.
The notes rolled out over her, a bright and glittering cascade that rang through the halls like a woman's voice, perfect and golden.
When her solo ended, the rest of the orchestra came in, and she rejoined them. She wasn't even fully aware of what she had done until the piece ended and the people began to clap furiously.
With a gentle hand, the conductor led her to the front, where roses were being tossed up on the stage. For a moment, it was too strange, too much. She was a girl who had busked for spare change. Now she stood on a famous stage, and they threw her roses.
“Well done, my dear,” the conductor whispered. “You deserve every bit of this.”
Somehow, the applause ended, and she stumbled backstage. Amidst the congratulatory calls of her fellow orchestra members, she heard her name being called in a voice she would always recognize.
She turned and saw Makeen beaming at her, his hands full of white roses.
“Perfection,” he grinned. “And of course, the music was wonderful.”