And there it was. The history I could never speak aloud. The secret the twins had never known was in their kitchen sink.
“Oh, my God!” Sasha gasps. Her voice trembles as she looks at me to confirm whether or not Darius is speaking the truth.
And that’s fucking it. I stop pushing at the twins, and my riding boots crunch in the glass as I rapidly switch directions and cross the small space between me and Darius Ross.
“You shut your fucking judgmental face,” I yell, bending down to confront him. “Our mothers were beautiful and broken. Guys like you and my dad took advantage of that. You take girls’ dreams and you twist them and manipulate them and drug them until they don’t know which way is up. And then when they do what you want, exactly what you want, you call them sluts! No, fuck that…!”
I rise to my full height, defending my mother in a way she could never defend herself. Against my father or men like Darius. “You’re the slut, Darius. And a user. And yeah, maybe my mother agreed to it, but you hurt her! You beat her because you thought she was just a thing. But she was my mother. So, FUCK YOU, you little snitch-ass BITCH.”
I am screaming and crying hot tears of rage by the time I’m done. And so are the twins, but for a much different reason.
I never lied to them. And I didn’t think twice about whether or not to become their legal guardian after I discovered their mother’s Orthodox Jewish family had no interest in raising the mixed-race spawn of their prodigal daughter’s many mistakes.
No, I didn’t lie about that. However, I did hide things from them. The fact that my father’s name isn’t on their birth certificates. The fact that their blood type is AB, while their mother’s was A, and mine and my father’s is O.
But I never lied about wanting to protect them, and I never lied about being their sister, even though we were never related by blood. The girls grew up on his reality show after my dad’s serious era of vice. They’d been there for the parties, but they also had nannies and producers with stakes in the show to keep them safe. They were like me., but not like me. And I would have done anything to keep them from ever knowing the truth. I never wanted them to have to live with the dark non-televised bits of their mother’s life in the aftermath of her death like I had to live with mine. I didn’t want them to turn out broken, like me.
But the secret is out now. It’s out…
I walk back across the shattered glass to gather the twins close, winging them in like a mother bird. I hold them as they cry, just like I did when their mother died. Willing them strength. Willing them comfort.
They sob and Darius Ross bleeds and eventually, Zahir calmly asks, “Do you want me to end him, habibti? For the disrespect he has shown your mother?”
I look over at Zahir in amazement. That in the face of all that has just happened, he’s still calling me habibti. Even though I’m sure many of his countrymen would, like Darius, blame my mother for all that befell her.
“Baby…” I say with a sigh. “Put the gun away.”
Zahir regards me for long seconds. The king who can’t be commanded. And then with a tender look, he does just that.
Chapter Twenty-Two
“Are you really not our sister?” Kasha asks once we are alone in the suite Zahir booked for us at the Benton Grand Manhattan overlooking Central Park. This question is one of the first things either of them have spoken since we arrived.
I know Kasha must be traumatized. Instead of freaking out over the luxury suite’s sweeping city views and Art Deco design, she and Sasha sink into the room’s plush velvet couch with their backs to the stunning New York City skyline. And forget selfies…the girls stare dead ahead as two of Zahir’s guards drop their hastily packed suitcases into the smaller of the suite’s two bedrooms and hand me a phone with their numbers pre-programmed in.
“Try to get rid of me when I come home in September. You’ll see how much of a sister I am then,” I answer, taking a seat on the couch kitty corner to theirs.
“So, no…we’re not her blood sisters,” Sasha says, suddenly coming out of her daze to dispense her special brand of cynical translation…only to soften when she looks over at me. “But that doesn’t mean Prin doesn’t love us, right?”
“Exactly,” I say, my voice soft with emotion as I move over to their couch and kiss them both on top of their heads. “They may have taken away our moms, but they aren’t going to break us.”
We talk for a long time.
They wonder if Zahir will get in trouble for what he did to Darius.
I think about the scene we were escorted out of: Zahir speaking to three of his guards while one with medical training began attending to the wound on Darius’s forehead. “No,” I say, my answer unequivocal.
“Do you think it will leave a scar?” Sasha asks.
We all snicker in the hopes that it does.
I know this is a moment and we still have a ton to talk about, but there is something in the living room I can no longer ignore.
Eyeing the 86-inch LCD flat screen embedded into a dark wood console like it’s a long lost (for two whole months) lover, I say, “Wanna order room service and rent a movie?”
Sisters do as sisters do. We have an early American-style meal of burgers and fries on the couch while watching Justice League, a movie I missed during its first run.
Jason Momoa looks beyond fine as Aquaman—especially coming out of the water. But he’s got nothing on Zahir, I think with a mental sigh, as we munch on the M&Ms we raided from the well-stocked mini-bar.
“You seem…different now,” Kasha says as I tuck them both into the suite’s king-sized bed soon after the movie ends. They are going to have to get up extra early for school tomorrow and I want them to get a good night’s rest. “You seem calmer. More at peace.”
With a little jolt, I realize she’s right. Despite today’s events, I feel…well, totally okay with everything.
“Sometimes when you’ve been holding onto a secret for a long time, it can feel really good to get it out,” I say, perching on the edge of their bed. I lean over to cup each of their faces in my hands. “But I meant what I said. This doesn’t change us. It only makes us stronger. You know that, right?”
The twins answer with sober nods. And it’s a sweet moment…until Sasha breaks the silence with, “You are aware you’re married to a Quentin Tarentino movie, right?”
“Okay. Good night, you two,” I say, standing up.
“But he didn’t shoot him,” Kasha points out optimistically. “And at least now we know he’s not just in it to get some.”
“I will not allow you to disrespect my wife!” Sasha declares in a dead-on impression of Zahir’s icy tones.
“Pew! Pew! Pew!” Kasha adds, giggling.
And as much as I worry about them, it’s hard not to think that like a Kendrick Lamar song, they’re going to be alright.
Chapter Twenty-Three
With the Kendrick Lamar song still looping in my head, I leave our shared room and tentatively approach the guards standing at the other end of the hallway outside a mahogany door. I’m not sure if what I’m doing is allowed. Zahir has always come to me, never the other way around. And even on the plane, I had to be invited into his room.
But before I can even say a word, one of the guards steps aside, while the other gives me a polite nod and opens the door leading into Zahir’s suite. Like I have every right to be there, and am in fact, expected.
“Thank you,” I murmur, walking into the suite only to stop short. Zahir is standing at the head of a huge conference table with Luca, of all people, and another white guy in a brown work jacket. He’s older with a pot belly and sprinkles of gray hair that fall in a ring around his head.
“What’s what, beautiful,” Luca says, when he sees me.
He walks toward me with his arms spread, only to stop when Zahir says, “Luca…” his tone clipped in warning.
“Sorry, bro,” Luca says, backing down. “You know me. Gotta test those boundaries and see wha
t I can get away with.”
Zahir and I exchange a look, possibly thinking the same thing. I am your boundary. I am your control.
I switch my gaze to the stranger, not wanting to think about sex with so many people in the room. “Hey, I’m Prin,” I say, placing my hand over my heart and bowing my head, so as not to touch.
The ease at which I fall into the Jahwar style of greeting a man who is not related to me shocks me a little. I guess I still haven’t adjusted to being back in the States.
“Hey, Johnny. Friend of Luca’s. Nice to meet you,” he says with a thick Jersey accent. “You’re right on time. We just rolled out the plans I pulled from the city for your house.”
“You—wait, what? You pulled the plans for my house?” I ask, surprised. “On a Sunday?”
Johnny glances at Luca who just smirks and says, “I’ve got friends in a lot of places.”
“Come, Prin. Stand over here next to me,” Zahir says, indicating a spot on his left.
Confused but curious, I move over to where Zahir gestured and, no joke, I find the original plans for the mansion in Alpine weighted down by a phone with a heavy-duty otter box around it and a metal measuring tape dispenser.
“So, Mr. Zaman here was telling us your place needs some extensive remodeling and repairs, including plumbing and landscaping,” Johnny says to me.
“Yes, it does,” I answer, blinking down at the blueprints. “But I can’t afford to do much right now.”
Luca snorts. “You really think ZZ Sheikh here is going to let you pay for any of this?” he asks me, like I should have known better than to even bring it up.
“I’m not a charity case,” I answer, my pride flaring.
“No, you are not a charity case, you are my wife,” Zahir answers, his much larger hand enveloping mine. “And Sasha was right. You didn’t ask for a big enough dowry, habibti.”
His wife. It’s funny how often he has referred to me that way since our return to America. And his hand around mine turns my heart into warm goo in my chest. I’m unable to keep protesting, even though this wife status he keeps on referring to is a temporary thing at best.
“I’m thinking we can go through the blueprints room by room and then tomorrow, we’ll do a walk through,” Johnny says, taking my silence as his cue to continue. “Mr. Zaman was saying you got a sister who will probably want to join us…”
“Yes,” Zahir answers, before I can. “Sasha needs to rest tonight, but from tomorrow on, please be sure to include her in all of our decisions…”
So Zahir says, and so it goes.
Early the next morning we tour the house with Johnny and two men he introduces as “Giorgio, my landscape guy” and “Danny, the only guy I trust when it comes to the pool and fountain shit.”
Other than Zahir issuing Johnny a stern edict not to curse in front of the women, the walk-through is amazing. Zahir is right about getting Sasha involved. After finding out money is no longer a problem, she reveals her list of dream repairs and renovations—including an at-home recording studio and an updated home gym.
Even Kasha, who had to be dragged here by her tough but secretly co-dependent twin, gets involved. “I’m sick of all this white on top of white shi—I mean crap,” she complains to Zahir. “Can you hook us up with an interior designer?”
“Of course,” Zahir says, before I can step in with my usual, “we’ll see.”
And just like he’s been doing all day, he ignores my “Seriously, Zahir?” look.
He might make me fight, heel, and beg for every privilege he extends, but with the girls he is indulgent AF. And I am beginning to see why little Aisha was so surprised when her amo became angry with her. I sense that Holt and Sylvie’s wedding isn’t a one-off and with most people, Zahir can be quite generous—yet another aspect of his personality I wouldn’t have guessed at when we first met…or during my training.
“Is this the room you said you didn’t want touched?” Johnny asks when we get to the third door past the crumbling entrance stairs on the right.
“Yes,” Sasha and Kasha answer in twin stereo after years of being told not to go in there.
They quickly push past that room to Dad’s old master suite, which they want to turn into an office…or maybe, oooh…a music library!
Zahir listens and answers attentively, but I notice him eyeing the skipped door as we walk to my dad’s old room.
I could let him stay curious. Keep this from him as he has chosen to keep so many things from me. But in the end, I guess I am starting to feel it, too…
That he’s my husband, truly my husband and not just a piece of paper I signed to stay out of jail.
When the tour is done I ask the guards to take Sasha and Kasha to school, then I take Zahir by the hand. “Can you come upstairs with me? I want to show you what’s inside that locked room.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Funny, it has been so long since I’ve stepped foot into this room, that I often think of the door as locked.
But the door isn’t locked. It never was. And that morning, the knob, so long untouched, turns easily in my hand.
I lead Zahir into the room. It’s been closed up for so long that there’s a layer of dust over everything, including the four-poster white silk canopy bed. But it still smells faintly of her long-discontinued DKNY fragrance, and it’s still easy to see all the writing on the wall.
Lyrics, written in sharpie. Some neat, some scrawled across in a manic rush. Some of the words are pretty, lines about sunshine in alleys and knowing you’re going to be somebody no matter what anybody else be saying. But some of the words, most of the words, are dark. You think you coming for me? Watch me put a fuckin’ end to you. Set you on fire. Leave the body for the EMTs.
Besides me, Zahir stills. I can tell he is trying to reconcile what he’s seeing here with that room in his palace that he also keeps closed but not locked.
“What is this place?” he asks, his voice hushed as if we have walked into a sacred space or…a graveyard.
“My mother’s bedroom,” I answer, taking a good, long look at the room for first time in over a decade. “She shared the master suite with my dad, but she…um…also needed her own space when…but there’s a connecting door…” I point it out before nodding over to a dust-covered kid’s desk in a far corner. “Once I got old enough to write, she let me hang out with her in here.”
My eyes grow distant with the memories of how official big girl I felt at that desk, writing on paper while she did the same on the wall between pulls on her joint. “I wasn’t supposed to come in when she had guests, and usually I didn’t, but that night with Darius Ross…”
Fear pits my stomach as I recall, “I was in my room. And I heard her screaming, begging him to stop, and then she started calling for my dad…” A flash of pain ignites in my chest at the memory her normally strong voice calling out, “Charlie…! Charlie…!” His real name. Not Majesty, the one he made up. Only to suddenly cut off.
“I knew I wasn’t supposed to go in there, but I got scared that my dad couldn’t hear her from downstairs because the music was so loud. So, I opened the door. And he had her against a wall. He was choking her, telling her she liked it. But she didn’t like it. They weren’t even having sex. He was hurting her to hurt her. And she already had this cut across her cheek from where he’d hit her with his rings on. I yelled at him to get off her. Then I jumped on his back. He threw me, and I think I must have passed out for a bit, but when I came to, my dad was slapping me, telling me to wake up. He normally didn’t get emotional, but the next Monday, he cancelled Darius’s contract and he ended up at another label. Dad called me his little soldier for, like, weeks after, all the way up until—”
It’s one of those moments when you think you’re ready to jump off a cliff but end up stopping right at the edge. I cut off with a choke, suddenly unable to continue.
Zahir doesn’t say anything, just takes my hand in his. Refusing to interrupt before I’ve finished telli
ng my tale, even when the silence stretches on and on.
Finally, I turn back to the wall and say, “I know you don’t listen to rap, but a lot of these lyrics became lines in a few of the songs my dad produced. She was a pretty good singer, but writing was her real talent. She just had trouble channeling it and staying focused.”
I eye the wall, understanding so much more now than I did then. “She was a lot of fun…I mean, most of the time. Very…I guess you could say giving and free. Not a slut like Darius labeled her. She just did not have the ability to be monogamous, and she wasn’t reserved at all. She once told me her mom had a ‘church addiction—I think she was raised with a lot of restrictions. But Mom never talked much about her past in Minneapolis—she just said she grew up there and never got to meet Prince.”
I chuff at the memory of her derailing the inevitable Prince question before anyone could ask it once they knew where she hailed from. “She lived moment to moment and had a lot of fun. But you know, like a lot of artists she had to deal with periods of darkness. And that’s when things would become fucked up. She didn’t mind sleeping with my dad’s new artists—for her it was fun. But when she was in a dark period, Dad gave her drugs to help her feel up to it. And Darius…well, he was her perfect storm.”
Darius had been right. That night was a long time ago. But right now, I slip back to it as easily as if it were yesterday. Watching the situation unfold from my desk, there but forgotten again as my parents argue about letting Dad send his latest signed artist up to her room.
“Mom didn’t like him…he gave her a bad feeling…” I told Zahir.
My eyes go to a messy sentence near the bottom of the wall. Sour throw up in my stomach. That was the last thing she wrote there and though my dad pretended not to notice the final line, I understood with utter clarity what it was all about.
Ruthless Tycoons: The Complete Series (Ruthless Billionaires Book 3) Page 39