Sheikh's Blackmailed Love

• Chapter One
  
• Chapter Two
  
• Chapter Three
  
• Chapter Four
  
• Chapter Five
  
• Another Story You May Enjoy
  
• Chapter One
  
• Chapter Two
  

Sheikh's Blackmailed Love

By: Sophia Lynn

All Rights Reserved. Copyright 2015-2016 Sophia Lynn

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CHAPTER ONE

One year ago

Bailey didn’t know what she was going to do. Rent was two months late, and she was fairly sure the only reason she hadn’t been evicted yet was because her landlord was actually in the process of going bankrupt and couldn’t rent out her tiny basement apartment anyway. When she looked in the fridge, she found a stick of margarine, four eggs, and a strange variety of condiments.

The twenty-three-year-old bit her lip, staring at her computer screen. She had been up all night at her night auditor job at the local hotel, and she had gotten next to no job searching done because one of the hotel’s inhabitants had come down to ask her repeatedly if she would join him in his room. He had said he would make it worth her while, and Bailey was horrified when she realized that she’d actually thought about it for a minute.

I need to get out of here
,
she thought for what felt like the millionth time, but she had no answer to the next question, which was
but where are you going to go?

Last year, Bailey had graduated with a double degree in art history and Arabic studies, close to the top of her class. She was a proud scholarship student, who had made it through her academic career working two jobs while keeping her grades high. She’d had plans to continue her education, but after graduation, things had changed.

In face of losing the student job that was contingent on her enrollment, discovering the high fees to take the advanced placement tests for grad school, and her mother’s sudden illness in Iowa, her plans had gone down like a plane shot out of the sky. As she watched her classmates go on to find jobs in the corporate or art world, she had been left behind in a small apartment that was infested with mice, and in a situation no better than she would have been in if she had skipped college altogether.

Every day, she was a little closer to seeing if the strip club on the shady side of town was willing to hire a skinny twenty-three-year-old who was barely taller than some teenagers. With her plain brown hair and olive skin, Bailey suspected that the answer would be to come back when she looked a little more exciting.

For a moment, she simply gave in to despair. It looked as if there was no way out, and that fancy degrees or no, she would simply be working at the hotel until she died. If she was lucky, maybe she would become a manager someday.

She took a deep breath, opened her ancient laptop, and got to work. At this point, it didn’t matter what the work was or where they wanted her to be. If it would get her out of her tiny college town, she was going to take it.

It was almost two in the afternoon when she looked up, working a crick out of her neck. She noticed that her phone had two messages on it.

A job offer?

With trembling fingers, she listened to her messages. The first one made her deflate. It was her mother.

“Hey, sweetie, it’s just Mom. Guess you’re not around for calls, so I’m just going to hope that you’re taking some time off for fun. You’ve never been great at that, but now that you’re out of school, maybe you can! Just wanted to let you know that we got the last check you sent home. You should keep more for yourself… Do you have a savings account? Well, I’ll try again later. Love you, sweetie.”

Bailey could feel tears of frustration prick at her eyes. She loved her mother dearly. It had been just the two of them over the last few years after her father had died. She wanted to help her mom so much, and now it looked like she might have to move back, be another mouth to feed. She couldn’t be a burden on her mother—she couldn’t bear it.

The other message was from a number she didn’t recognize. As she listened, Bailey could feel her spirits lift, her eyes widen in hope.

“This is the number that we have for Bailey Tyler, so hopefully that’s who we’re talking to. Hello, my name is Dennis Christensen, and I’m with the firm Christensen and Wilde. We’re an archaeological funding concern based out of St. Louis and the UAE, and we are looking for qualified members for our next dig. We have looked at your resume and researched your accreditation, and you sound like just the kind of person we’re looking for. If you would be interested in exploring this opportunity further, please give me a call back at this number.”

Bailey had to listen to the message twice before she could really believe it. It was the first callback she had gotten at all. She tried to tell herself that it wasn’t really a job offer, or at least, it wasn’t yet.

However, she couldn’t keep her thoughts from soaring up higher than they ever had. A job, and not just any job, but one in her field. Some of her peers had taken their degrees in topics as varied as art history and anthropology and then gone on to safe careers in offices. She had been willing to do that, but a job in what sounded like her field… that was the holy grail.

She wanted nothing more than to call her mother to tell her, but then she restrained herself. Later. She could call her mother when she had the job offer in hand.

I might be okay after all
,
she thought with an excited grin.

*

Next to Dubai, Jabal was one of the most technologically advanced cities in the world. From all over the world, doctors came both to work and to learn, and it was considered to have one of the best hospitals on the continent.

Why, then, Dario wondered, could it not do something as simple as keep his father alive?

His father, Sandros al-Nejem, the sheikh of Jabal, who had borne the title First Among Ten Thousand for more than forty years, was now lying twisted and wasted on his hospital bed. Pumps helped him breathe, and his sister Mala sat by his side holding his hand while Dario held the other.

The doctors had said that it would not be long now. His father’s illness had been lingering and long, and he had not been conscious for almost two days.

Silently, Dario cursed the illness that had laid his father low. It was easier than thinking about what was to come. Over the past few years, he had started taking on more and more of his father’s responsibilities as sheikh, but he was under no illusions. Becoming the First Among Ten Thousand himself would be altogether different.

Unexpectedly, his father stirred. For a moment, his mouth only moved silently, and then, to Dario’s shock, he turned his head to one side, gazing at his only son with clear eyes.

“Dario…” his father said, his voice thin but strong and clear.

Dario was utterly silent, only nodding to let his father know that he had heard. This was a precious gift, one he had had no right to expect. His heart beat fast in his chest.

“Protect… protect Jabal. Protect its wealth and… and protect its beauty. Its history. That must be your legacy.”

“I will. I swear to you, Father, I will.” Dario’s voice broke on the last word. With every fiber of his being, he tried to convey to his father that he would honor his words.

His last words, as it turned out.

Sandros drew a deep, rough breath before starting to cough violently, and in a matter of seconds, that coughing had turned into convulsions. The machines around them started shrieking in panic, and doctors and nurses filled the room. Dario found himself pushed to one side, but he was already numb.

When the doctor in charge declared that the First Among Ten Thousand was truly gone, his aunt started to wail, the funerary cry that Jabal women had sent up for their beloved men for more than five hundred years. Some of the nurses, traditionalists despite their modern uniforms, joined her. Sandros al-Nejem had been a giant among men, a force to be reckoned with at home and abroad. He had ruled his country with strength and kindness, and now it would honor him when he left it for the last time.

Dario could feel a deep well of coldness open up inside him. The grief would come later. Right now, there was the understanding that he had to fill his father’s place, while knowing that there was no man on earth who could do so.

Sleep well, Father. When we meet again, I pray you will be proud of what I have done.

*

Now

In her tiny trailer in the shadow of the Sinn mountains, Bailey tied back her hair and squinted at the pottery shards in front of her. They were a dusty gray, but she knew that if she took a knife to one edge, she would reveal a natural red color that was as bright now as it was when the pottery was thrown some two hundred years ago.

Across the table, Christensen waited with ill grace. He was a pale man with icy blue eyes, a nose that was almost permanently red from his drinking, and a hard slash of a mouth, which right now was even harder with impatience.

“Well?” he demanded.

Bailey carefully hid her flinch. Christensen was a man known to lash out violently, but so far, over the eleven months she had worked for him, he had never struck her. She had seen him lay around him with fists and slaps for the diggers and even some of the field staff, but so far, he hadn’t lost his temper with her. Sometimes, though, she saw the glint in his eye, and she knew that she was no more safe than anyone else.

What the hell am I doing
? Bailey thought for a moment, and then common sense reasserted itself.

I am testing the provenance of some pottery shards for a grave-robbing lunatic
,
she decided and got back to work.

Finally, she put aside her magnifying glass.

“Better,” she said laconically.

“Better?” he asked, his voice rising dangerously. “What the hell is that that supposed to mean?”

“These shards are of a better quality than the ones you’ve brought before. They’re thinner, more even, drawn from a clay that is not local. That means they might have belonged to people who were substantially better off.”

Christensen’s eyes glimmered with greed.

“Like royalty? Kings, queens?”

“Like people who lived better off than the other people we’ve seen here,” she said bluntly. Though she betrayed no fear, a part of her was always wondering if this was the point when things would deteriorate, when he would lose his temper at her.

Instead, he laughed, a harsh bark.

“All right. Good. That’s what I pay you for, isn’t it? Good work, Tyler.”

She wished she didn’t feel a surge of relief and pleasure at his words. Living and working on the site was beginning to change her in ways she didn’t like.

Bailey had first realized things were not right soon after coming to Jabal. Christensen had taken her passport and her identification (“for safekeeping,” he had said) and then taken her off the major roads from the city to this desolate site among the foothills of the Sinn mountains.

She was getting paid, at least. Her mother still sent her happy and cheerful e-mails about getting the money deposits, but very early on, Bailey realized that she was not allowed to access the one computer with a satellite connection unless someone was watching her. Essentially, she was a prisoner.

To her discomfort, Christensen hadn’t stopped watching her, a speculative look in his eyes.

“You’re a smart girl, Tyler. You know that, I bet. I don’t see you fooling around with the diggers or the other staff…”

“Just antisocial, I guess,” she said warily. “I’m not good with people.”

Christensen’s mouth widened in something she was sure was meant to be a smile. Out here in the mountains, he had dropped the affable gentleman trick as soon as she had signed. The truly terrifying part was that he could put it back on again whenever he liked.

“Well, what a coincidence. I have some time coming up. Perhaps sometime in the next few days, we can be bad at people together. I’ll come see you.”

He tipped an imaginary hat at her and sauntered out, but Bailey’s heart was beating faster. She may not have been very experienced in the way of men, but she knew what that meant. It meant that she had to get out, and she had to get out quick.

Her mind racing, she waited until Christensen was properly gone, and then she picked up the long robe and headdress that were part and parcel of what women were expected to wear this far out in the country. She knew that in Jabal, it was quite westernized, but if she didn’t want to be stared at or harassed, she needed to cover up. She dashed off a note on a small scrap of paper, and she tucked it into the pocket in her sleeve.

Bailey rushed out into the hot dry air, looking around, and to her relief, she noticed men loading up cars nearby. She went up to one that she recognized.

“Abdul, are you going into the village?” she asked.

He nodded, uninterested, and continued to load up.