I can see the conflict in her eyes, and I hate the fact that I have no idea what’s causing it. There are so many questions, and so few answers. She’s withholding so much from me, and I know it. I can see it in her eyes; can feel the lies emanating from her skin in palpable waves.
When I outright ask her what happened, she lies and says she doesn’t know.
After years of questioning witnesses and suspects, I can sense evasion and sniff out omission. I know a lie when I hear one, and she’s lying through her fucking teeth.
Yet, as much as that pisses me off, I can’t bring myself to push the issue. She’s keeping secrets, that much is painfully clear. As a detective, my instinct is to pursue the truth with relentless ferocity. But as a man interested in a woman, I’m conflicted; I want to respect her privacy.
How do I reconcile the two?
Her visit is brief, and I wonder if part of the reason is she’s scared of my questions, scared of telling the truth for reasons beyond my ability to fathom. When she’s gone, I’m torn between equal parts of relief and disappointment: relief from the internal war of the need for truth, the desire to respect her privacy, and the disappointment that she’s actually gone, leaving me to my whirling, confused thoughts.
After Leila leaves, I ask the nurse to lower the lights and draw the curtain around my half of the room. I turn the TV to ESPN and put it on mute. There’s a lot to think about, and I can’t imagine getting any sleep right now.
I slump lower in the hard, uncomfortable bed, scratching at the tubes taped to my forearm, flipping through the pictures again, trying to ignore the increasingly strong feeling that Leila had something to do with the destruction of The Old Shillelagh, that she knows exactly what happened and is just refusing to tell me, for reasons I can’t quite figure out.
God, I wish I could re-wind my life by twenty-four hours.
Chapter 4: Constricting Coils
Leila
Returning from the hospital, I arrive home and unlock my door, distracted and flustered by my visit with Carson. It is very difficult to avoid his questions. I can see that he doesn’t believe me. I don’t want to lie to him, but I have no other option.
Entering, I lock the door behind me and set my keys on the small ledge by the door. An overpowering yet familiar scent hits me in the face…what is it? Cologne, a thick miasma. It’s then that I notice Hassan lounging on my couch, dirty shoes propped up on my glass coffee table, smearing mud on the clean surface.
Rage washes through me, and I clutch at the core of power always swirling within me. My hair is whipping around my head, a sudden, impossible wind blowing through the cramped one-bedroom apartment, plucking bills and magazines and books into a whorling vortex with me at the center.
Hassan shields his face with his arms, shrinking back against the couch. The wind buffets him, batters at his human form; flickers of flame spurt from his body. His arms and legs flash between being wind-blown flame and human flesh.
“Hey!” he shouts. “What are you doing? Cut it out! I’m just here to talk!”
I pull the winds back into myself, tamping them down and forcing them to quiet, but I keep them coiled just beneath the surface.
“What do you want, Hassan?” My voice is cold and hard. I’m disgusted by the fact that he is in my personal living space.
I want nothing so much as to use my powers to throw him through the wall, but I don’t. For one thing, I’m not sure I could win a battle of powers between us.
“I just want to talk, Leila. Just listen to me, okay?” He relaxes his defensive posture and stands up, brushing at his Armani suit and adjusting his diamond-studded Rolex. Hassan is tall and handsome and very, very wealthy. He exudes power, authority, and arrogance. His features are Old World, a hawkish nose, deep-set, glittering black eyes, high cheekbones, lips always curled in sneering contempt.
“There’s nothing to talk about. I’m not marrying you.”
He grins, a sarcastic, snide smile. “Well, now, that’s not really up to you, is it?” He crosses the room to stand inches from me; his evil, dark eyes are hard and fixed on me. He stinks of too much cologne, and I’m choking with it. “You know what’s at stake, Leila. Are you sure you’re willing to sacrifice the well-being of your entire family? I’m not so bad.” With a lascivious smirk he adds, “You’ll see, once you get to know me. I can be very…entertaining.”
I push past him, stifling a shudder of revulsion as I pass him, and set my purse on the kitchen counter. He’s right about the fact that marrying him is not my decision.
This only angers me all the more. “You’re a pig, Hassan. I’d rather spend eternity in hell than marry you. My father knows this, but he doesn’t listen. Just like you, all he cares about is himself and his business.”
“He loves you, Leila. He wants what’s best for you. He knows I can take care of you when he’s gone.” Hassan is picking lint from the sleeves of his suit jacket as he speaks. Always so concerned with his appearance. Vain as a peacock. “He’s aging, your father. He’s growing aware that the end of his life is near. He wants to ensure you are cared for. He knows I can give you everything you’ve ever wanted, and more.”
I huff out a laugh; as if I’d take anything from him. “There’s nothing you have that I want.” I whirl to face him, stabbing a finger at him. “Not from you or from my father. The only thing either of you care about is money and power. All my life, I’ve never wanted for anything. I grew up getting whatever I asked for and more, yet I left all that behind…on purpose. You think I’m living in this tiny apartment because I like it? I pay for this myself, with what I earn, something you know nothing about. You inherited your wealth. You’ve done nothing to earn it, except maybe kill people. I don’t want your dirty money, I don’t want your diamonds or cars or mansions. I don’t want you. All I want is to be left alone.”
Hassan isn’t the least bit fazed by my outburst. “No one is asking what you want, Princess.”
“I KNOW!” I shout. “No one has ever asked what I want! And don’t call me Princess. That’s not who I am anymore.”
But Hassan isn’t done. “No one is giving you a choice about marrying me. You know what’s at stake. If you won’t come willingly, I’ll drag you, and nothing and no one can stop me.”
Hassan’s lips curl up in a snarl, and he’s suddenly pressed close against me, gripping my arms in a painful vise-like grip. I didn’t even see him move. His eyes turn to flickering flames, orange and hungry and hot.
“You’re mine…Princess. There’s nothing you can do about it. You belong to me. I have purchased you, do you understand that? Your existence is mine, bought and paid for.” His breath is foul, putrid and sour. “So here’s what’s going to happen: you are coming with me to Chicago, and we are going to be married, whether you like it or not. The alliance will be sealed, and your family’s wealth will be mine, as will your body and your future. I own you. I own your father, your mother, your cousins. Everyone. Everything. Their lives depend on your actions. So either you go home on your own, or I drag you kicking and screaming back to Chicago. Perhaps I’ll tie you up and put you in the trunk of my car. Would you like that? Bound and gagged? Either way, in two weeks you’ll sign the fucking contract and you’ll speak the fucking words, do you hear me? I will do whatever I must to ensure this is done according to our laws.”
“And if I resist you?” I ask with a bravado I don’t feel.
Hassan’s eyes spark and flare, orange flames glinting with threat.
“I’ll make you regret it,” he hisses. “I won’t harm a hair on your head, oh no. You’re too valuable to me intact. But you will regret it, let’s just put it that way. You understand what I’m saying? No? Then let me spell it out for you—everyone you love, everyone you care about will pay the price for your selfish, stubborn refusal to obey your betters. Your father, your mother, your aunt and uncle, your cousins, all of them will pay the price for your childish stupidity. You wouldn’t want anything to…happen to them
, would you?”
I suppress my rage; my father is a fool, and he has indebted himself thrice over to the al-Jabiri clan, and now I must pay the price to absolve his debt.
“There will be no marriage, Hassan,” I say. “Not in two weeks, not ever. You and your gorillas trashed the bar I work at, and now the police are all over me. They suspect it wasn’t an accident. I will not be cowed by your threats. It will take time to convince them I had nothing to do with the…explosion.”
“That’s your problem, Princess,” Hassan says, his smile sickly sweet. I want to bash in his perfect white teeth. “You should know better than to associate with human men. You are not for them. You are mine. That was…just a little warning. To you, and to that human you were rubbing yourself all over. Next time I catch you with him or anyone else, the consequence will be much worse.”
“The police—” I begin, but Hassan cuts in over me.
“Are humans. They will find nothing. They will decide it was a freak occurrence of nature, and move on. And if not…? Well, then there will be a strange outbreak of house fires, mysteriously claiming only the lives of local police officers. Which, of course, will be on your conscience.” He grins, pointing a finger at me. “Two weeks, Leila. I’ll be back for you in two weeks. If I have to knock you unconscious and cart you back to Chicago in my trunk, I will. This alliance will happen, or I will slaughter your family in front of you, one by one. I don’t need any of them alive to take control of your clan’s assets.” His eyes are dead and cold, his fingers dig into my arm, his breath stinks of garlic and cigars and alcohol. “I will tie you to a chair and cut your father’s throat. I will rape your mother and your aunt and all your delicious little cousins, and then I’ll kill them too. I’ll cut them all into pieces and feed them to my dogs. Do you understand what I’m saying to you, Leila Najafi? You wouldn’t want all that blood on your hands, would you? That much blood doesn’t wash off; trust me on that.”
He leans close, whispers in my ear. “You can save them all, Leila. All you have to do is stop this ridiculous rebellion against your fate.”
I break away, shove him hard, putting magic and wind into the push. “Get out, you ugly pig.”
He flies across the room, slams into the wall beside the front door, and then rights himself. “Watch the way you speak to your betrothed, bitch.”
“You’re not my betrothed and you will never be my husband.” I refuse to cower as he stalks back toward me, his shape flickering between human flesh and ifriti flame.
He reaches into a pocket and pulls out a huge folding knife, black-bladed and wickedly sharp. “You don’t want to antagonize me. You don’t want to do this the hard way, Princess. You should know me well enough to know I’m not bluffing.” He takes a lock of my hair in his fingers, and before I can stop him, he cuts it off, sniffing it. “And next time I see you, you’d better be more appropriately dressed. My wife will not dress like a human whore.” He leaves, sauntering and swaggering, my hair still pressed to his nose.
Creep.
I stay upright until he’s gone, then slump to the floor, struggling to suppress a sob. I know he’s not bluffing. He will do everything he’s threatened, and worse. He’ll kill everyone I know. I’ve heard the stories about him, how bloodthirsty he is, how ruthless in getting what he wants. If even half the rumors about him are true, ‘cold-blooded killer’ would be the nicest of the applicable terms.
I can’t hold back the sobs, and they gush forth, wave after wave of tears born of anger, frustration and fear. The hardest part is that I know Hassan is right about my father. He does love me, and he is doing this because he thinks it’s best for me, and for the clan. But that’s only part of his reasoning. He owes the al-Jabiri clan. Billions of dollars ride on this alliance; centuries of violent feuding between our clans would be settled by this marriage; my life, my family’s lives…the future of everyone I care about rests on my willingness to marry Hassan al-Jabiri. But I can’t. I just can’t. The thought of signing the marriage contract and speaking the binding words makes me physically ill, to say nothing of having to have physical relations with him.
I shudder and nearly vomit just thinking about it.
But I don’t see a way out.
My father never consulted me on his business deals, obviously. He’s old school, Old World. Despite the fact that he has been in America for a long time, the ancient Arabic cultural traditions he adheres to mean my opinion doesn’t count, especially not when it comes to men and their business. By listening in on conversations and picking up the odd detail, I know Father has done many deals with Hassan’s father over the years in attempts to stop the in-fighting and ally them together against the other clans. One deal followed another, and then another, and then things started to go wrong. A deal went sour, and suddenly Father owed them money for a shipment of cocaine and firearms intercepted by the DEA. To get out of that debt, Father had to do another deal, and another, and suddenly he owed Farouk al-Jabiri hundreds of millions of dollars.
And what was my father’s grand scheme to get out from under all that debt?
Marry his one and only daughter off to the al-Jabiri family. Yes, he still believes in dowries and brideprice and all that. He is very old school. Very, very old school. He may live in a twenty-first-century mansion and drive an Aston Martin and carry an iPhone, but his beliefs and way of life are set firmly in thirteenth-century Baghdad, and that’s no exaggeration.
I don’t know what to do and I have no one to turn to. God help me. I can’t marry Hassan, I just can’t. But I also can’t sit by and watch my family get murdered on my account.
And then there’s Carson, and I can’t even begin to figure out where he fits into all of this.
Nowhere, is the correct answer. But my heart and my body don’t seem to be getting that message.
I can still taste him on my lips; feel his hand pulling me ever so subtly. All I want is to flee into his arms and pretend he can make my problems go away.
If he knew the truth about my father’s “business” dealings, would he still want me? Would he tip off the feds to my father’s illegal activities? This is a very slippery slope.
Or would he protect me from Hassan?
I have no answers, and eventually my sobs subside.
My arms are bruised from Hassan’s fingers, and my apartment is trashed from my little display of power. The first thing I do is clean the mud from my coffee table and spray Febreze in the air, trying to erase any evidence of his presence.
The next thing I do is call my father. Next to Hassan, he’s the last person on earth I want to talk to right now, but I have to make sure the family is okay.
I dial his number and hold the phone to my ear.
“You have not called in a very long time, daughter,” my father’s voice rumbles in my ear. “I worry for you, alone in that barbaric city. You must come home. We have much to discuss.”
“Father, listen—” I start, but he cuts me off, talking over me.
“I am willing to forgive your disobedience in running away from me, but you must return home. Now, more than ever, I require your obedience. Hassan will escort you.”
“There has to be another way—”
“There is not!” He raises his voice, something he never does. He’s always, always calm. Never rushed, never perturbed, never angry. “You will marry Hassan! You must. I have made this clear to you, my daughter. I have no male heir. You cannot inherit. There is no other way. There is no one else suitable. No, it must be Hassan, and you must be his wife. It is the only way. You are my daughter, and you will obey. I have allowed you your little…rebellion…for long enough.You have had your tantrum, and now it is enough. I have tolerated you dressing like a heathen and associating with outsiders for too long. It is time for you to come home. Now.”
“Father, you don’t understand—”
He doesn’t let me finish. “There is nothing else you can say, Leila.”
I try again to get him to listen. “F
ather, you have to listen, Hassan was here, and he—”
“Your objections to him have been made clear, and it is my prerogative to override you. Come home, Leila. Immediately.”
Silence, then, and I realize he’s hung up. I didn’t even get to warn him.
Chapter 5: Truth and Exploration
Carson
She shows up at the hospital a little after five in the afternoon the next day, wearing cutoff jean shorts and an orange halter top. I have a feeling she’ll be cold in the hospital room. Not that I’m arguing. It’s mid-July and it’s been hitting the mid- to upper-nineties, so the hospital has the A/C cranked so low it’s downright frigid in here.
She’s got a brown paper bag full of take-out containers, which she sets down on the bed. I can feel the heat emanating from the containers, and the scent of fresh French fries fills the air. My stomach rumbles loudly enough for Leila to hear, and she laughs, a breathy sound accompanied by a flash of white teeth. Dragging the larger recliner-style chair from across the room with a deafening grating noise, Leila plops herself in it, sitting cross-legged.
I have to force my gaze away from the expanse of tanned, muscular thigh. I shake myself and meet her bright brown eyes, helping her arrange the food on the tray.
“Oh, awesome,” I say when I see the juicy burgers and shoestring fries. “Nemo’s! I was worried you’d bring some sort of girly vegetarian shit.”
Leila laughs. “Do I seem like the broccoli and wheat germ type to you?”
“I don’t know,” I say around a mouthful of fries. “We’ve never discussed food before. You’ve got runner’s legs, so you could very well have been a health food nut.”
Leila glances at me as she takes a huge bite of her burger, her eyes gleaming with amusement. “I’ve got runner’s legs, huh?” she asks, her mouth half-full.
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