Option 2: We stay divorced, and you can do as you please with Queenie Quinn except marry her or have children with her. You may take other wives over the course of your life, but never will you marry Queenie Quinn, and never will she bear your child. Our child will be born, and will be the heir of Wakhrani according to the laws of the first-born ascendancy.
She read past the strange ultimatum of the suicide, shaking her head again as she tried to figure out what the hell was happening. Why did Renita hate Queenie so much? Was it just misdirected hatred for the Sheikh? Did she just want to hurt Bawaar, and so had decided the best way was to humiliate both the Sheikh and Queenie by denying them the chance to be truly together as man and wife? How could this make any sense?!
“I don’t get it,” Queenie said, biting her lip as she read the note again. Her gaze stopped on the word “Alaskan,” and she frowned and stared. Renita had called her an Alaskan whore, not an American one. Sure, it wouldn’t have been hard to find out where Queenie was from; but still, it seemed odd.
Queenie blinked as she looked up at Anders Van Hosen. “Earlier you said Renita wanted to meet face-to-face with not just the Sheikh but me as well. How did she know I was here in Wakhrani? Were your people spying on me in America? Watching the Sheikh’s Palace in Wakhrani?”
Bawaar whipped his head towards Van Hosen, his fists clenching as his eyes widened. “You dared spy on me in my own kingdom?! That is a violation, and you know it! How can you talk about reputation when you violate the basic rules of the business! I never threatened Renita, and you had no grounds to send your agency’s people within my borders! Ya Allah, Van Hosen, I swear I will—”
“No!” said Van Hosen, and he closed his eyes tight and shook his head, his white face turning red. “No,” he said again, lowering his voice and shaking his head even harder. “I should never have taken this job,” he began to mutter. “This is not going to end well for me or my family business. Our bread and butter is the political and corporate security businesses. This job is a family matter, and clearly I am not cut out for the level of insanity! At least in the political or business world, the motives and clear and logical. Money. Power. So simple. Easy to understand. But this . . . by God, this is beyond my capacity to understand! Why all you people will go to these lengths to hurt one another when there is neither money nor power at stake?!”
“Of course there is money and power at stake,” said the Sheikh, fists still clenched. “Renita wants the throne back, and she wants her child to rule when I am dead! If that is not about power and money, then what is!”
Van Hosen took a deep breath, lowering his head and rubbing his eyes. “Clearly you do not know your own wife. Yes, she cares about money. But she is a billionairess after the divorce settlement, and she would be rich anyway just from her own Jordanian family inheritances. The money isn’t a factor. As for power . . . yes, in a sense it is about power. But not political power. For them it’s about power over individuals, power over your lives, power over . . . her.”
He glanced at Queenie as he said her, and once again Queenie felt the blood rush from her face as she took a step back. But for some reason another word stuck in her mind:
“Them,” she said, her head still spinning. “You said them, not her. You said ‘For them it’s about power over me.’ But it’s just Renita, isn’t it? Or is there someone else involved?”
Van Hosen’s face turned a sickly white, and for a moment it looked like he might pass out on his feet. He might have been very good at handling the most dangerous political situations, but clearly he was out of his league when it came to family drama. Queenie almost felt sorry for him when she realized he’d let something slip, said more than he was supposed to, revealed more than he’d planned.
“To hell with it,” he muttered. “He would have revealed himself anyway. The plan was always for you to know. He would want you to know it was him.”
“Who?” Queenie whispered, her own fists clenching as she took a step forward like she was prepared to beat it out of this European if she had to. “You better start talking, Van Hosen, or else we’ll take you down to the dungeons and introduce you to some medieval-ass interrogation techniques that will make you scream for Mommy.”
Queenie caught the Sheikh turn to her, his mouth twisting like he was trying to stop himself from laughing. She almost burst into a smile herself when she realized what she’d said with supreme confidence and conviction, like she was some evil queen from a fairy tale. But that chill was still running through her, and when Van Hosen finally took a breath and looked her square in the face, she staggered once again.
“The man whose family you destroyed back in Alaska,” said Van Hosen. “He contacted Renita on Christmas morning. He told her you were here in Wakhrani, with the Sheikh. He told her everything.”
Queenie’s mouth hung open, but she couldn’t speak for several long moments. “The man whose family I . . . destroyed?! In Alaska?!” She frowned as she thought back to that blue-eyed man with the green car, but that made no sense. It was so long ago! Over a decade ago! She was still nineteen then! No way!
Her mind spun as she tried to make sense of it all. The last she’d heard of Mister Blue-Eyes was when Mama said he’d shown up at the house looking for her. Mama had told him she was gone, whatever that meant. And then there was the fire, and Mama’s death, and Queenie had moved to an apartment on the far side of town. Blue-Eyes was mostly forgotten in all that chaos, even though there’d been moments when Queenie had thought about him: sometimes hating him for lying to her; other times wondering what would have happened if she’d just said to hell with it, that she didn’t give a shit that he had a family, that it was his choice to leave them for her, that he had a right to be happy and so did she. But he’d never contacted her again, and she’d let it go. At the end of it she knew she wasn’t that woman, that she couldn’t be the reason a man left his wife and children, no matter how he made her feel.
So why the hell would Blue-Eyes suddenly show up now, a decade later, talking to Renita about stuff Queenie had supposedly done back in Alaska?
There was only one explanation that made any sense:
Blue-Eyes wasn’t suddenly showing up.
Blue-Eyes had never left.
Queenie blinked as her vision clouded, but her mind was clear as a bell. She could clearly think back to the first time Blue-Eyes had talked to her: It had been months after he’d been driving his green car to her gas station. So for months he’d seen her, maybe watched her in the rearview mirror, perhaps sat in his car and gazed at her as she handled the cash register inside the station. For months he’d just stayed in the shadows before coming forward with that story of the lottery and the offer to give her a car. She’d been a kid. She hadn’t noticed the pattern back then, but it was clear now. Could it be that he’d kept his eye on her for a decade since then, waiting for a chance to . . . what, get revenge? Destroy her chance at being happy, at starting a family, at being someone’s wife, a mother to someone’s children? If he’d been watching her, then he’d have seen her getting kidnapped. Perhaps he’d followed her captors to the airport, watched the private jet painted with the Sheikh of Wakhrani’s insignia take off from Juno’s tiny airport.
And then he’d contacted Renita, someone who shared his obsession with making an ex-lover suffer when instead they should have been blaming themselves. What did he tell her? How did he convince her to issue that crazy list of options, ending with a threat to kill herself and the child just for . . . what, more revenge? To avenge the insult of the Sheikh taking another woman so soon? Who were these people! Who thinks like that?! Who acts like that!
Queenie glanced over at the Sheikh as her thoughts drifted to Renita. We’re all in this together in a way that seems so crazy, but also makes complete sense, doesn’t it? It was our own choices that brought these people into our lives, our own choices that kept them in our lives. Yeah, I was nineteen
and vulnerable, swept off my feet by a sophisticated older man who wanted to give me gifts, hold my hand, and love me like I was a real woman. But I should have guessed it was too good to be true. Or perhaps I suspected it was too good to be true but didn’t care. Didn’t wanna know. Hell, perhaps I am that woman who doesn’t give a damn who she steps on to get to her happily-ever-after!
Queenie blinked and swallowed as that last thought stuck in her throat like it was a fish-bone. Was she that woman? Ruthless, selfish, obsessed with her own happiness without regard for anyone else’s?
“Oh, God, Bawaar,” she whispered, turning to the Sheikh, only now realizing he’d been calmly looking at her for the past several minutes. “Oh, God, I’m a horrible person. I deserve this, don’t I? I brought this on myself. On all of us!”
The Sheikh frowned, glancing quickly at Van Hosen and then back at Queenie. “Stop talking like you are as insane as the rest of these fools. None of this happens without Renita. It started with her, with her twisted, convoluted mind, her unrealistic sense of what matters. To her it is all about perception, what the world thinks of her. She is built up by compliments, broken by insults. And she sees you as an insult, a threat to her self-image. That is why she is lashing out in such an inexplicably personal way even though she does not know you.”
Queenie shook her head, biting her lip as she thought back to Blue-Eyes. She felt a shiver make its way through her body like a dark wave as she remembered how that green car had driven up to the gas station every two days like clockwork, always on her shift. Had she been secretly turned on by the thought of having a stalker, a man obsessed with her, a man prepared to walk away from his wife and kids for her? She wasn’t sure if she was sickened by Blue-Eyes or herself!
Once again she looked at the Sheikh, her toes curling up as if prompting her to run. She glanced toward the door, the absurd thought of physically running away from this crossing her mind. But of course there was nowhere to run. No one to run to.
“Where is she?” the Sheikh said, turning to Van Hosen, his voice like cold steel. “Is this illness real or manufactured? It is time to talk, Van Hosen. This is not your game, and you know it. You want to save your reputation, keep your family business clean enough that future clients will trust you, then it’s time for you to step out of the way. Where is she?”
Van Hosen glanced at the two guards flanking him, and then he slowly shook his head. “The sooner I get back to the safety of political assassinations and corporate kidnappings the better,” he muttered. “All right, Sheikh. You win. You all win. You all deserve each other. I am bowing out.”
21
SOMEWHERE IN EUROPE
“Should I bow when I enter her presence?” Queenie asked as their limousine pulled up to the address Van Hosen had given them.
It was a small town somewhere between France and Germany, and the Sheikh had grunted in recognition when he’d seen the address.
“One of the properties I gave her in the divorce,” he’d said on the flight over. “I did not even remember I owned this place.”
Queenie had shaken her head and smiled. “Van Hosen was right. You guys are not normal people. Who the hell has mansions in Europe that they just kinda forgot about?!”
The Sheikh had looked at her and smiled. “More people than you might think. But technically Renita owns it now. And no, you should not bow when in her presence. She is no longer royalty—at least not Wakhrani royalty—and she needs to be reminded of it.”
“Is that wise? To insult her when this whole drama has been spun by her reaction to being insulted?”
“You want to just give in to her? All right then. Which option do you choose? To be my second wife, sharing the Royal Palace with Renita, who will live out her days satisfied that you will always be beneath her in the hierarchy? Or perhaps you like Option Two, where you can live as my girlfriend or whore or one-woman harem. No wedding ring. No children.”
Queenie laughed as the limousine stopped outside the gates of the mansion. “How about Option Three, where she just kills herself on Facebook Live while screaming your name. It’ll be like the ending scene in Braveheart, where Mel Gibson dies a horrible death for the sake of principle. And we’ll live happily ever after as the evil king and queen.”
“That is a smashing idea. From now on I will base all my major decisions on the movies of Mel Gibson,” said the Sheikh, raising an eyebrow as he pulled out his phone and tapped on it. He glanced up as the automated gates slowly swung open. “Ah, at least she did not change the code.”
The limousine stopped outside the front door, and the Sheikh’s guards stepped out from the car. They surveyed the area before knocking on the front door, and the Sheikh placed his hand on Queenie’s as they waited.
No one answered the door, and finally the Sheikh got out of the car and simply pushed on the old brass handle. The door swung open, and the Sheikh’s guards rushed in as Bawaar held his arm up, indicating that Queenie stay in the car until he gave the all-clear.
“Whatever,” Queenie said, getting out of the car and walking up to the Sheikh as he sighed and shook his head. “What’s she gonna do? Throw a pointy heel at me? Stab me with her hip-bone? If she wanted to physically hurt me, she would have had it done, don’t you think?”
The Sheikh grunted as they waited for his guards to search the house. “Perhaps you understand Renita better than I ever did.”
“Perhaps,” said Queenie, and the Sheikh smiled when he noticed the seriousness in her tone. “But what bothers me is—”
She was cut off by one of the Sheikh’s guards running down the main staircase, calling out in Arabic.
“Iidha kunt tatahadath alearabiat, aismahuu li 'an 'aerif,” he said, his eyes wide.
The Sheikh frowned, and then he turned to Queenie. “Stay here,” he commanded, glancing at one of his guards and nodding to make sure the guard stood by Queenie’s side. Then the Sheikh bounded up the stairs, two steps at a time, until he was at the top.
“Ya Allah,” he muttered when he saw the body on the floor. “What in God’s name?!”
“Oh, God!” came her voice from behind him, and the Sheikh turned to see Queenie standing right there, her chest heaving from running up the stairs. Of course she’d disobeyed him.
“Is that him?” Bawaar asked, taking a breath as he glanced at the dead man. The man was older, with deep wrinkles that made his face look he was still thinking about something even in death.
Queenie nodded silently as one of the Sheikh’s guards knelt over the dead man and checked his pulse before glancing up and shaking his head. “Why is he here?” she said softly. “Why is he . . . oh, God, Bawaar! What’s happening? Why would Renita do that?”
“She would not,” said the Sheikh, rubbing his jaw as he began to pace. “That is not her way. She would rather hurt herself in order to bring pain to others. Murder . . . ya Allah, no. It is not her style.” He glanced up at Queenie, his eyes narrowing as he thought. “There is someone else involved, Queenie. Who?”
“His wife,” said Queenie, blinking as she kept her gaze fixed on the dead man. “She tracked me down all those years ago. She must have been following him back then. Maybe she never stopped following him.” She looked up and shook her head. “God, I don’t even know if they stayed together back then. Don’t even know if she’d still be his wife.”
“Sounds like they deserve each other,” the Sheikh muttered. “Everyone following everyone else, blaming someone else for their mistakes, exacting revenge instead of practicing forgiveness.”
Queenie frowned. “Forgiveness? Who exactly are we going to forgive? And for what?”
“Ourselves,” said the Sheikh without hesitating, even though he was as surprised at his words as Queenie appeared to be. “I have been blaming myself for turning Renita into this person, a caricature of a human whose entire self-image was built on public perception. And so w
hen that was threatened, she broke, shattered, became unstable and unpredictable.” He glanced at Queenie, reaching for her hand. She trembled when he touched her, and he knew she was affected by the sight of the dead man. Not just because it was a dead body, but also because the man had meant something to her. Not something good, necessarily—but he had played a role in her life, in making her the person she was. His queen.
She nodded as she tightened her grip on his hand. “And I’ve blamed myself for . . . for him. Even though he lied to me, lied to his wife, lied to his family . . . I still blamed myself a little. Maybe a lot. I don’t know. Shit, I don’t know, Bawaar.”
The Sheikh took a breath and led Queenie from the room, glancing at one of his guards on the way out. The guard shook his head, indicating that the rest of the house was empty. Renita was gone.
“How did he die?” said Queenie when they walked down the stairs and sat side by side on a green velvet sofa facing a picture window. Outside were old trees, evergreens, with lush green branches laden with white snow. The Sheikh remembered planting one of those trees when he’d first bought the house, and he smiled as he felt a strange, almost fatherly pride at how tall and strong it had grown.
“There is no blood, so he was not shot or stabbed. Poison, perhaps? I do not know.”
“We should call the police,” said Queenie, her eyes going wide as if the thought of the police worried her.
The Sheikh smiled. “My guards will take care of things. There are other things for us to take care of.”
“Like what?”
“Like ourselves. Are you all right, Queenie? I know . . . I mean, I understand that this man was a part of your past, played a role in turning you into the woman you are. The woman I love. So it is only natural to feel something. Grief. Or perhaps—”
Mistletoe for the Sheikh: A Royal Billionaire Romance Novel (Curves for Sheikhs Series Book 17) Page 12
