by Olivia Gates
Silence and stillness expanded at her back as his surprise buffeted her. He hadn’t realized that she knew.
But she did. And it explained all her questions about him, her incredulities about his coming into her life and her confusions about his recent turnabout.
Suddenly, his hands fell on her shoulders, feeling like twin bolts of torment that almost reduced her to ashes, his groan ragged. “Jenan, you have to believe me, I didn’t know that.”
She tore his hands off before they burned her through to the bone, then turned on him. “You didn’t know that until you wasted too much time on me. But the moment you did, you tossed me aside.” Another suspicion hit her, becoming a new terrible reality within a heartbeat. “But if you’re trying to coax me again now, it means you know.”
“I’m only trying to tell you the truth. I didn’t know any of what you just said. And—” He suddenly stopped as her last words registered. Then he rasped, “Know what?”
“That I’m pregnant.”
His instantaneous reaction was one of such consternation, it felt as if the heart hanging inside her by tattered strings was torn out completely and hurled on the ground.
The storm of misery that had been building inside her for the past week broke over her like a hurricane, destroying her soul and sanity.
She wept so hard, her tears became a downpour, draining her of everything that powered her being. Her hopes, her faith, her love...her soul.
She writhed weakly in his arms as he groaned and begged and tried to contain her in the now-oppressive circle of his arms, the embrace of deceit and cruelty.
Sobs hacked her insides and her words. “Now you know...your heir exists...you want to have it with the least conflict with the one who’s regretfully carrying it...and what better way...than to con me again? The stupid, trusting, lovesick mark...you played from the first moment.”
“No, Jenan, no, you have to listen to me.”
“No...you listen. I loved Numair...I would have died for him, but now it’s worse than if I’d simply lost him. Now I know that he never existed.”
“I not only exist, and would die for you, but I only came fully into existence when I loved you. Before you, I never truly lived... Jenan, habibati, believe me...”
Unable to bear the scorching agony of his touch, she fought him frantically until he let her go.
She ended up against the door, sobs stabbing in her chest like skewers. He towered over her, a tempest of frustration and agitation raging on his face, knotting his every muscle. No doubt because things were no longer going his way.
But as everything in her clamored for him—the man who’d been as close to her as her very heart—another wave of desolation crashed on her. For she now knew.
She’d never rid her essence of the need for him. She’d never drain the poison of yearning from her blood without draining her very life with it. She’d never truly live again. Instead, she was doomed to just survive. For others. And without the man she’d loved, the man who’d turned out to be an illusion.
Once the conviction struck her, her weeping turned off abruptly. The suffering and desperation were too vast for tears. All that was left to feel was the resignation.
A deadened rasp issued from a throat that felt cut by thorns. “If you’d told me the truth, I would have realized you were the one powerful enough to save Zafrana. And if you’d wanted me at all, for real, I would have taken what I could with you even knowing you’d never feel for me what I feel for you. When you got enough of me, I would have at least remained intact. You could have gotten everything you wanted without destroying me.”
She opened the door and spilled outside. Finding the helicopter still there was like finding a means of escape out of a flooding tunnel.
Before she stumbled to her salvation, he caught her back, his entreaties incessant.
Unable to endure one more touch or word, she wrenched herself from his arms with the last of her strength. “Don’t you get it? You don’t need to act anymore. I’m the one who’s at your nonexistent mercy, who’ll beg you not to deprive me of my baby. You won. Your plans worked. You’ll have everything. Everything but me. But that won’t matter to you, since I’m the only thing you never wanted.”
Ten
So this was helplessness. This was desperation.
After a life of unimaginable ordeals, Numair had finally learned what these were. He’d been abused in every way, tortured to within a breath of his life, and he hadn’t known anything like the sanity-destroying dread of the letdown, the desolation, the end, in Jenan’s eyes.
And he couldn’t do anything about it. Still, every cell in his body now fused with the manic urge to rampage after her, bring her back and keep her prisoner until he made her listen, made her believe him again.
But his every attempt to pull her away from the edge had only hurled her deeper into the abyss of distrust and betrayal. Anything more would only make things worse. She was in shock, and it would only intensify before it lessened. He had no idea when she’d be ready to listen to him. If she ever would again.
Suddenly, the sound of a helicopter approaching almost made his heart detonate with hope. He found himself outside without even realizing he’d moved.
Then everything inside him shriveled again.
It wasn’t her. It was Najeeb.
He stood there as the helicopter landed, as Najeeb jumped off, and hoped the man wasn’t back to antagonize him again. He couldn’t trust himself to pull back this time.
The signs of his earlier attack were becoming more evident by the second in the swelling and discoloration of Najeeb’s face. But there was something new in the depths of his eyes. Not the early antipathy or the fleeting warmth or the recent bitterness. He looked troubled, anxious.
Najeeb started talking before he stopped before Numair. “When you said that my father had yours murdered, was that what you intended to say to shove both him and me from your path to the throne, or is it what you really believe?”
Needing to get rid of him fast, Numair gave him the short version of the truth. “It is what I believe.”
“And you still got me here to seek a resolution?”
Najeeb answered his nod with a curt one, as if he now believed him. “Will you give me a chance to investigate this? I can’t even begin to consider that my father is capable of such a crime.”
He shook his head. “Listen, Najeeb—”
“No, you listen.” Najeeb’s agitation was no longer aggressive but entreating. “I’m not proud of my father. I know he’s vain, imprudent and sometimes unethical, but I know him. He’s not evil. And it would have taken unimaginable evil to have his own brother killed for the sake of the throne. He might appear power hungry, but he isn’t. He’s just a proud man who found himself in a role much larger than himself. He’s done a decent job considering he inherited the kingdom in terrible shape from my grandfather. But unable to do better, and not having the best counselors, he turned to expansion to sustain the kingdom, like his bid to reannex Jareer, and once that failed, turning to Zafrana.
“But he never wanted the throne. Everyone who was around at the time would tell you how distraught he was after his brother’s disappearance, how obsessively he searched for him, that even after being forced to abandon the search, he wouldn’t sit on the throne until a year later, and didn’t attempt to rule for yet another year, hoping his brother would return. But his cabinet eventually shamed and provoked him into taking his unexpected role seriously, and here we are today. Saraya, even with my father’s mistakes, is a better kingdom than the one he’d inherited.”
He ran a trembling hand over his close-cropped hair and ble
w out a heavy breath. “But not only am I convinced he isn’t capable of having anyone murdered, let alone the older brother he worshipped, I’m also certain he would step down once he realizes who you are. In fact, he might even be relieved to finally relinquish the throne to its true heir.”
Numair stared at Najeeb as he fell silent. He had heard everything Najeeb had said, but there was nothing inside him but the need to go after Jenan. Still, he had to say something to Najeeb.
All that came out when he opened his mouth was “I’m sorry I hit you, Najeeb.”
Najeeb waved away his apology. “I was halfway back to Saraya when I realized no matter how you started with Jenan, you now truly love her. And that I caused a major breach between you and deserved a few broken bones—what I realize you could have easily given me, not just this lockjaw and black eyes in progress.”
Needing this over now, Numair said, “I’m the one who gave Jenan every reason to suspect me. And I now believe Saraya’s true heir is you. You’re the one who lived there most of your life, who knows the country, who the people believe in and love. You’re also the one who ameliorated your father’s mistakes. Whatever Saraya is today, it’s because of you, not him. But all this has nothing to do with what I believe about your father.”
After a moment of total surprise, Najeeb’s wariness was back full force. “So you still believe he had your father killed and you will still expose him?”
“No. I can’t do that to you or to your siblings. This was what I got you here to tell you. That I’ll force him to step down so you can take his place, not me.”
This seemed to horrify Najeeb. “B’Ellahi...don’t. I’m not ready to relinquish my freedom. But if you want what’s best for the kingdom, we can work together behind the scenes to straighten things out without either of us being trapped in such a lofty position. You might think the throne is something to want, but believe me, what we now have is perfect. Power and the ability to do everything we want with it without being the ones everyone looks to for answers and solutions, the ones who are responsible and accountable for everything that goes on in their land.”
Numair shook his head, suffocating with urgency. “I haven’t made up my mind. I’ve just called you here to vet things out. I’m just telling you what I’ve come to believe lately.”
“If you’re still revising your stance, I hope you’ll reconsider your belief about my father’s guilt. I know I have no proof. I have nothing but my instincts and my lifelong knowledge of him. But if you’ve come to value me, I hope you’ll value my judgment, too.”
“Any resolution has to wait for another time, Najeeb.”
“Just promise me you won’t take any steps against him before we have unequivocal proof.”
“I will do nothing until I get Jenan back. Only she matters to me now. Only she matters, period.”
Knowing this was the most he’d get from Numair for now, Najeeb nodded. After a moment’s hesitation, he extended his hand. “I’m sorry I made things worse. I hope you forgive me. I will do anything to rectify my mistake.”
Even with a tornado of anxiety tearing everything up inside him, he took the proffered hand. “I was the one who started this, and I’ll be the one to end it. At any price.”
Before Numair withdrew his hand, Najeeb tightened his grip and dragged him closer, his eyes ablaze with sincerity. “I didn’t mean what I said about Jenan earlier. She loves you, and if you love her as much, she’ll believe you and in you again. She will take you back.”
Numair said nothing as Najeeb turned to leave. For he’d felt how hurt Jenan had been, how pregnancy had multiplied her feeling of betrayal by a factor of a thousand. As he’d feared it would. Getting her back now felt like an impossibility.
But if he couldn’t get her back, he would still pay his very life to restore her peace.
* * *
Two hours later, Numair couldn’t wait anymore. One more second of inaction and he would suffer a stroke.
So he rushed to Zafrana’s royal palace, all the way preparing his explanations. But he didn’t find her there. The last time her family had heard from her was when she’d gone to him earlier that day.
Knowing she wouldn’t answer him, he had her sisters try every method of communication. She answered none.
Out of his mind with anxiety, he sounded the general alarm to his brothers as he tore off to the States to search for her. But she seemed to have disappeared the moment she’d landed in New York, where all flights out of Zafrana landed in the States. During his flight, the men he’d sent looking for her couldn’t find her anywhere she used to frequent, or couldn’t even trace her steps after she left the airport.
His desperation burgeoned with every dead end, every second feeling like wading deeper in a waking nightmare.
Somewhere along the way, the nightmare metamorphosed into his old one.
But this time it was different.
Instead of men boarding his father’s boat, it was tossed by waves as tall as skyscrapers. His father wrestled with a huge sail as he shouted for him to get back belowdecks before losing control of the sail that whacked him violently on the head and knocked him overboard. Then the boat capsized, tossing Numair after him.
Wrestling to the surface of the water, of the dream, his whole body discharging with sick electricity, he called Antonio and demanded that his brother meet him as soon as he landed in New York.
Antonio was there as agreed, in the limo that waited for him outside the airport. As soon as Ameen opened the door for him and he got in, Numair began to recount the searingly vivid vision.
Antonio’s cool blue eyes regarded him calmly before the man exhaled. “That’s what I’ve been hoping for, though I didn’t think it a possibility it would happen spontaneously.”
“What the hell do you mean?”
“I knew it would take an even more profound terror than the one you suffered when you saw your father drown and almost drowned yourself to drag more memories to the surface. When I asked for more sessions, I was going to try plunging you into an artificial panic state to dig deeper into your psyche. But since you fear nothing, I didn’t know if I could even do it. But something did manage to scare you more than all the horrors in your life. Your fear for Jenan’s safety and your dread you might even lose her. Those fears finally managed to jog your memories free.”
“You think those were memories?”
“Not just any memories. I think these are finally your real memories.”
“But I remembered a very different version before.”
Antonio pursed his lips. “I did tell you I felt there was more to what you remembered. In hypnosis, subjects frequently take a kernel of a memory and dress it in confabulations that suit their emotional and psychological needs. You wanted someone to be responsible for your father’s death, for your years of enslavement, so you invented the attackers, then used circumstantial evidence to form a perfect conspiracy that validated your alleged memories. We can do more sessions to make sure, but I’m fairly confident this is the truth at last.”
Numair stared at Antonio, but saw only his realizations. He had needed an enemy to hold responsible, to vanquish, to pay for everything he’d lost and suffered.
But this was the reality at last. This was what had happened.
“I’m sorry, Phantom.” Antonio looked serious when he almost never did. “As unsatisfying and unfair as I know this feels to you, it seems your father’s death and your ordeal were onl
y due to an accident.”
At Antonio’s unaccustomed sympathy, Numair roused himself from his musings. “No, no, it’s okay.”
Unconvinced by Numair’s preoccupied response, Antonio pressed, “I think you should be relieved it was. This brings you closure, and rests your father in peace.”
Numair nodded distractedly. Antonio was talking sense. But now that he’d given him a plausible explanation for the disturbing visions, the whole thing ceased to matter to him. All that mattered was that he found Jenan.
Antonio went on, “This even gives you the possibility of a family without the ugliness such a crime would have visited on all of you for generations to come.”
The word generations hit Numair like a hammer to the temple. For there would be a coming generation for him. It had been something he’d never truly visualized, even when there’d been every chance Jenan would get pregnant. And now she was.
But she no longer wanted to be. Not with his child.
“Phantom? Are you okay?”
At Antonio’s nudging, Numair realized the rumbling sound he heard had been issuing from himself. It was a moan of agony, of regret and dread. “No, I’m not. I injured Jenan irreparably.”
Antonio shrugged. “Prostrate yourself at her feet—which I’d love to see, by the way—and she’ll forgive you.”
“Even if she forgives me, she’ll never trust me again. Or love me.”
Before Antonio could respond, Numair’s phone rang. A feverish glance at the caller ID made him growl as if with a kick in the gut. Richard.
The moment the line clicked, Richard’s deep taunt poured into his brain. “After meeting your runaway princess, I’m considering doing her the favor of a lifetime and not telling you where she is.”
Apoplectic fury took him over. Rabid threats, torrents of them, burst out of him like rapid fire.