The Sheikh's Destiny (19 page)

Her pain crushed his heart.

But his pain didn’t matter. Only hers did. He wanted to absorb her agony.

At his imploring touch, she tore herself away, quaking on sobs he feared would tear her insides apart. “I spent my
whole life
looking up to you... I thought you were made of honor, of integrity...that if there was a haven in this world for me...it would be you. But not even those who I thought would have raped and killed me could have...
debased
me like you did.”

He fell to his knees before her, insanity clawing at his mind, begging. “Don’t let pain take you that far,
ya habibati,
I beg you. Rage and rave and slash me apart...but don’t make me a demon when I’m only a pathetic fool. I did devise the plot, but I didn’t see it through...”

“You did,”
she wailed. “That first night—
ya Ullah—
how did you
do
it? Anticipating me...adjusting your response on the fly to keep me hurtling...deeper into your trap. You had me in your bed in hours...thinking it was at my insistence. You stayed up all night, didn’t you? It was the only time you forced yourself to stay beside me...burning to close the deal. You must have wanted to strangle me when I...forced you to pretend to court me before I returned with you to Zohayd so ecstatic, I managed to fool...even Amjad for you. You would have seen it through to the end...if I hadn’t found out the truth.”

“That’s
not
the truth.” His protest strangled as she stumbled away from his begging hands only to collapse a foot away, ending up with her streaming face pressed against the wall, her whole body quaking. “But whatever else you think me guilty of, I beg you, believe I had nothing to do with the attack.”

“Do you know that my earliest memory is of you?”

He doubled over with the surprise confession.

Her sobs subsided by degrees. “It was my fourth birthday. You were standing behind Haidar, wearing light blue jeans and a black T-shirt. I thought you were the most wonderful thing I’d ever seen. As I blew out the candles I made one wish, for you to be my friend. I’ve made no other wish since.

“I idolized you, saw a wealth of beauty in everything about you, even the way you kept your distance. I thought we shared so much, both of us outsiders, with no one who loved us most or put us first. I lived dreaming of our being each other’s allies against all odds. Now all my memories are contaminated with the truth, and my past wasted in loving a figment of my imagination. My future will be consumed in regret over every moment and emotion I wasted on you.”

He crawled toward her, the ground burning him worse than the sands he’d once dragged himself over for days to a salvation that kept receding. Her feeble resistance died as his arms shook around her, taking her drenched face against his heaving chest.

“Don’t say that...don’t think it and make it real in your mind. Don’t do this to yourself, to us. I
never
lied about my feelings...”

Her head rolled against his shoulder, her eyes meeting his. For seconds he saw his Laylah, felt he might reach her again.

Then she whispered, “I would have laid my life down for you, Rashid. Now I would rather die than see you again.”

She pushed away from him, stumbled up to her feet.

Looking down at him as he remained on his knees, demolished, her eyes were as dead as her voice. “Wishing you the heartbreak you inflicted on me wouldn’t work when you have no heart. So I’ll settle for crippling you like you crippled me. I’ll make sure you lose the only thing that matters to you—the throne.”

Thirteen

“S
o how
did
you manage to lose that girl?”

Amjad’s sarcasm scraped across Rashid’s every screaming nerve.

He turned slowly toward Amjad. He’d been doing everything slowly since he’d followed Laylah back to Zohayd less than a day after she’d left him in Azmahar. Any sudden moves might set him off.

His trigger quivered as Amjad sauntered toward him from his office on the ground floor of the royal palace of Zohayd, his signature mockery hitting him between the eyes.

“You must have committed some nuclear-level stupidity to blast through her immutable worship of you.”

“Listen,
King
Amjad,” he snarled. “I have only been in anything approaching this state once in my life. I was cut open and my life was bleeding out. And I still managed to kill all my torturers. There were eight of them. I am now far more desperate.”

“Whoa. Are you aware you just threatened to kill a king right in his own palace? Or are you really as out of it as you look?”

“That threat is a few more words from becoming reality. And don’t think your royal guard can help you. I can end you all without breaking a sweat.”

“You know what?” Amjad gave him the once-over. “I believe you can, Super Soldier-man. But what next? You massacred your previous tormenters, who I assume gave you this delightful souvenir—” he flicked a hand at Rashid’s scar “—and escaped to live long and prosper. I don’t see a similar scenario here, as there’ll be no living long and prospering for you now. Not without Laylah.”

Hearing her name slipped another notch of his control. “I am at the point where I don’t care what happens next. If you don’t get out of my way, I’ll kill you for the pleasure of it.”

Amjad smirked. “Was that why Laylah canceled your wedding? She discovered your homicidal tendencies?”

Rashid didn’t even try to hide the truth. “She believes I want to marry her only to have an alliance with Zohayd. With
you.
”

“That’s not true. Sure, being Laylah’s husband will sweeten the deal when I take you under my wing. But that’s just collateral damage. You really love her.”

“Love? Love is a conditional emotion tainted with self-serving. I’ve been using the word, making believe it means what I feel. But I can’t describe how I feel for Laylah. There is right and wrong and honor and disgrace, until it comes to her. Then there is only her. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do, nothing I wouldn’t endure or sacrifice for her.”

Amjad held up his hands. “Hey, I’m not the one you should swing that sales pitch at.
I
believe you. It takes one colossal fool for love to know another. I almost alienated Maram forever, too. Good news is, those women of ours love once and all the way, no matter what. Yeah, Maram told me as much, after she nearly killed me, before taking me back. So even if you think your world is over and Laylah lost to you forever, if you grovel creatively enough, strip yourself to the bone until there’s not much left, she’ll relent, fish you out of hell and dunk you back in paradise.”

Amjad’s assurances did nothing to dispel Rashid’s despair. “Maram discovered you used her to get the Pride of Zohayd jewels back. But your goal looked noble, as the conspiracy could have resulted in war. Laylah discovered I planned our engagement to become king, which looks purely self-serving. And while you kidnapped Maram under the pretext of a sandstorm, Laylah believes I approached her under the pretext of a kidnapping attempt.”

Amjad scowled. “Okay, that’s where you not only lose all my sympathy, it’s where I might have you thrown in the dungeon. I might even let you sit on that throne just to squash you on it.”

“If you think me capable of something like that, feel free to treat me like the criminal it would make me.”

After a contemplative second, Amjad waved. “Nah. One thing I’m infallible at is reading people. Especially men. You have some terminally honorable syndrome, wouldn’t scare any woman like that, not even for a throne. So, where did she get the idea?”

“Hasn’t she already told you everything?” he gritted.

“She informed us the wedding was off, wouldn’t be persuaded to say why, adding only that she never wanted to see you again.”

This bewildered him. “She said she would stop me from becoming king. I thought she would tell you what she believes happened, ending any chance of an alliance between us. Why didn’t she carry out her threat?”

Amjad’s lips twisted. “See? A sign that she still cares.”

“I know how much she cares—
cared.
Her agony and disillusion now is as absolute.”

“Yeah, I know.” At his exasperated growl, Amjad tsked. “Seems I’m going to have a perpetually pissed off lion for an ally.”

“You won’t have
anything
if you keep condescending to me.”

“No condescension.
This
time. I told you, been there, done that, with Maram.” Amjad grinned. “Tell you what. I’ll work on Laylah. I’ll exasperate her until she has to talk to you again.”

The hope that Laylah might speak to him again caused Rashid’s throat to almost close. “You’d do that for me?”

“Yep. I’m magnanimous like that.”

“You get her to speak to me again, Amjad, and I’ll hand you my neck on the end of a leash.”

Amjad winked at him. “
That’s
how I like my allies. Done.”

Then with one more smirk, Amjad turned and walked away.

Rashid watched him leave, thoughts of tearing through the palace looking for Laylah roiling like thunderclouds through his mind.

But what would he do when he found her? She was no longer his Laylah, but the woman who’d told him no one had hurt or degraded her like he had. What could he do to atone?

Before he could make a move, Haidar and Jalal exploded through the palace doors. He watched them stride toward him, their steps and expressions laden with fury.

Haidar almost slammed into him, did punch him in the chest. “You lied to me.”

Jalal wrenched him around. “You did plan to use her to get the throne, didn’t you?”

Haidar jerked him back. “And you’re here looking like a madman, to what? Beg for Amjad to
still
endorse you for the throne of Azmahar? Yeah, we know he thinks you’re the number one candidate. That weasel. But he turned out to be a stupid one. You had even him fooled.”

Rashid shoved the twins away. “You two and the throne can go to hell. I’d send you all there if I had time for you. But I don’t.”

He stormed away. Haidar and Jalal caught up with him on the first floor, dragged him into an empty meeting room.

“You’re not walking away from us again,” Haidar hissed.

“We’re getting everything out in the open once and for all.” Jalal turned from closing the door. “And I mean
everything.
”

Images of cutting them both down where they stood, something he could do in his sleep, deluged his mind.

Suppressing the mindless aggression with the last tatters of control, he glared at them. “You’re still pretending you don’t know why I hate you? You’re still trying to slither your way out of any responsibility, you sons of a serpent?”

“Shut up, you exasperating son of a...” Haidar jerked his shoulders uneasily. “I have no idea what your mother was, but I sure as hell won’t call her names so I can insult
you.
”

“Calling your mother a serpent is a terrible insult—” he bit off “—to the worst human snake who ever lived. But you want my version of what happened? So you can have a complete picture? Fine.”

And with four years’ worth of anger and agony and betrayal churning up his insides, he told them.

As they gaped at him throughout his account, one thing became indisputable. They
hadn’t
known.

They’d had no hand in what had been done to him.

He’d lived for years poisoned by the belief that they’d brutally betrayed him, for nothing.

Finally, a shell-shocked Haidar said, “
Ya Ullah
ya
Rashid—you spent all these years thinking we did that to you? And we’re still in one piece?”

Jalal, seeming as stunned, nodded. “That’s what I’m wondering, too. That you believed what you did, and only tried to destroy us in business, gives me a whole new insight into your character. You must be part saint.”

Rashid couldn’t bear another word. “I don’t care about what happened or who did it or why anymore. I only care about Laylah.”

Haidar approached him tentatively. “But if you tell her what you just told us, she’d—”

“No.”
His shout went off like a gunshot. “She will
never
hear anything about this. I’m not getting her back at this price.”

Jalal approached from the other side, as if helping his twin contain the volatile quantity that was Rashid. “It might be the only price that’s good enough, Rashid.”

“I said
no.
And if you tell her, I will stop at nothing this time to punish you for breaching my confidence.”

Haidar ventured a hand on his shoulder. “Settle down, will you? We won’t say a thing.” He squeezed his eyes. “
Ya Ullah—
what I really want is to wipe everything you said from my mind. But then, a mental scar is nothing compared to what you suffered.”

Any other time, Rashid might have felt relief that the scar of losing them would heal, that he could have them back in his life and heart. But now that he no longer had Laylah there, nothing meant anything.

Haidar leveled his gaze on Rashid, anguish and regret gripping his face. “I can’t tell you how powerless I feel that I can neither change the past nor punish the culprits. But I will put this right if it takes the rest of my life. You’re my other twin, Rashid, and I’ve been...bereft all these years without you. I swear to you, we’ll make up for lost time.”

Jalal joined his twin in his pledge. “That goes for me, too. But you’re right, Rashid. What matters now is Laylah. I swear to you, we’ll do everything to reunite you with her.”

* * *

Everything hadn’t been enough.

It had now been eighteen days in a hell worse than anything he’d known, sinking deeper in the quicksand of Laylah’s rejection.

Amjad had given him quarters close to hers so he could “stalk” her, or they’d do a “pincer” on her, with everyone herding her toward him until she was forced to confront him.

She didn’t. She’d let them push her to within inches of him, only to pass him by as if he didn’t exist. A punishment for his present transgressions and past avoidance. Feeling nonexistent to her, no matter if it was on purpose, was excruciating.