Hey, I found your long-lost brother! He’s snoring and farting in my bed in the middle of Virginia. Can we have his crown back now? I would like to be a billionaire queen and not have to teach Finance 101 to annoying losers in community college. Thanks! Best wishes, Peggy.
She almost did write that letter, but she knew it was too risky. She had no idea what Zameer’s reaction would be, no idea what he knew or didn’t, what he wanted or didn’t. Based on the clean-up job on the Internet, clearly Zameer had helped his brother disappear. So perhaps Zameer would also deny everything, call her a madwoman and ignore anything she said. Or perhaps he was a power-hungry madman himself, and he’d send masked men to her house in the middle of the night to wipe out any and all evidence! Anything was possible, right?
No, Peggy had decided. I need to get to someone else linked to the kingdom of Ladaak. Someone else I can use to draw Sheikh Zameer into my world, find out more about him, figure out how to play this so I get what I want, get what I deserve, get my happy ending, my fucking crown.
So she’d dug deeper, keeping the faith in her destiny, telling herself it wasn’t a coincidence that she’d married a long-lost prince. This was meant to be. It had to be. It was too damned weird to be otherwise! It was fate, and fate would present her with a chance. She just had to wait for it.
She waited, and finally she got her chance when she came across a listing for Al-Ladaak Investments in Washington, DC. A little research revealed that it was owned by the Kingdom of Ladaak, which meant it was just one degree removed from Sheikh Zameer himself. Still, she had no way of getting involved—after all, Al-Ladaak Investments only existed to buy American stocks and bonds. They weren’t taking on clients—not that Peggy had any money to invest, anyway.
Could she apply for a job there? Maybe even an unpaid internship? Get a chance to meet the Sheikh himself when he visited—if he visited? She inquired, but got no response. So Peggy waited some more, holding onto her faith, her dream, her obsession, letting it all build.
And then finally she got her chance in the form of a man named Siddiqui, a man with his own obsessions, his own weaknesses: the oldest weakness of man.
After discovering he was the manager of Al-Ladaak Investments, she followed him for three weeks, not sure why she was doing it in the first place. But it excited her, awakened something in her, and when she learned that he used an escort service to feed his obsession, she showed up at his doorstep one evening in a black dress and red lipstick, saying that she’d heard about him, about what he liked, that it excited her.
“My girlfriend works for the agency,” Peggy had explained when Siddiqui said he hadn’t ordered a girl that evening. “She told me about you. She told me you’re married, that you like to keep it professional, keep it quiet. I’m married too, and I’m just looking for something exotic, something different, something exciting.”
She’d sucked him off in the entryway of his penthouse in Georgetown, her panties wet by the end of it, and when he’d tied her wrists and taken her from behind, she’d come so hard she almost passed out. She let him do anything he wanted to her that evening, and soon she was at his penthouse twice a week, driving down to DC in secret, taking everything he gave, being everything he wanted, her eyes on her prize: that crown.
“Have you thought about buying real estate for your investment portfolio,” she asked him one evening after he’d finished all over her face and she’d cleaned up and come back out to the living room.
Siddiqui had grunted, shaking his head and barely looking at her. “It is not liquid enough. I like to be able to buy and sell at a moment’s notice, and land is not so easy to sell.”
“There’s something to be said about diversification, you know. It’s Finance 101.”
“You are teaching me about finance? You are my whore, not my investment advisor.”
Peggy had swallowed hard and forced a smile. “Well, technically you aren’t paying me, so I’m not a whore.”
Siddiqui had laughed. “I pay you with my cock. Not every woman gets to taste it, to feel it, to experience its glory.”
“It’s a beautiful cock,” Peggy said. “But as I was saying, don’t you want to maximize your investment returns for your Sheikh?”
Siddiqui snorted. “The Sheikh can suck my cock after you are done. He is a hypocrite, and perhaps worse. Much, much worse.”
“What do you mean?” Peggy had asked, hunching forward on the carpet, doing her best to appear only mildly interested. “I thought he was well respected by his people.”
“His people have short memories. They do not remember that Zameer had an older brother, Zayaan. He was heir to the throne.”
“So what happened to Zayaan?” Peggy asked, looking down as she felt the blood rush to her face.
Siddiqui shrugged. “No one knows. He disappeared the night before his coronation. Vanished like a sand dune in the shifting desert.”
“You’re kidding. Wasn’t there an investigation?”
“Apparently. But they found nothing. Not a trace. No body. No evidence of foul play. No suicide note. It was like he never existed.”
Peggy nodded. “Are there any photographs of Zayaan? I didn’t see any when I searched the web.”
Siddiqui had raised an eyebrow. “Why are you so interested in this?”
Peggy shrugged. “Because it’s interesting. You know how boring my life is, Siddiqui?”
Siddiqui had grunted. Apparently that had been enough of an explanation for him. “No photographs. Not even a portrait on the walls of the Royal Palace. I cannot respect a Sheikh who wipes out all memories of his own brother.”
“But you still work for him. Make money for him. Rely on him for—”
“I take money from him,” Siddiqui snapped, his brown face going red as he whipped around to face Peggy.
Peggy sat up, her face peaked with excitement. She wasn’t sure where this was going, but there was a chance here, she sensed. A chance to get close to the Sheikh, or at least to get him to the United States. “What do you mean?” she asked.
“Nothing,” Siddiqui said. “Nothing. It is time for you to go.”
“Tell me,” she said softly, sidling over to him and touching him the way he liked. “Please. It’s so interesting. So exciting to hear secrets.”
Siddiqui laughed. He took a breath and shuddered as his body responded to her touch. Then he nodded and began to talk. He told her he’d been embezzling money from the Sheikh’s investment funds—not because he needed the money, but because he wanted to hurt the Sheikh in some way, exercise some power over him, exact some form of justice for what he believed was an illegitimate ascension to the throne.
Peggy listened and nodded as she lifted her dress and bent over for Siddiqui, who was getting hard again talking about how he was draining the Sheikh’s portfolio bit by bit, covering his tracks with accounting tricks and fake investment losses. She wasn’t sure how she could use this, but she kept pushing, asking him questions as he got heated up, egging him on when he went silent.
“His policies are erratic and impulsive,” Siddiqui had said as he’d launched into a laundry list of complaints against Sheikh Zameer. “For instance, a few years ago he declared an outright ban on all alcohol in Ladaak. Ridiculous and backward thinking.”
“But isn’t alcohol forbidden in Islam anyway?” she’d asked.
“There are degrees of strictness,” Siddiqui said. “Ladaak was known as a moderate kingdom, a kingdom that was opening up to the world. Alcohol had always been allowed in international hotels and restaurants with permits. And although Islam is the state religion, every citizen has the right to pursue his or her own path. If that path takes them away from Islam, then so be it. That is what freedom is about, yes? You cannot force someone to be someone they are not!”
Peggy had nodded. It made some sense, and although it didn’t seem like a good excuse to
be stealing from your boss, there was something about the Sheikh’s overzealous hatred of alcohol that stuck with her.
It took another two weeks, but slowly a plan came together in the Pegster’s mind. She’d already decided that she could use the embezzlement to get Siddiqui out of the way when it was time—indeed, she needed him gone . . . eventually. But it also became clear to her, given her husband’s denial of his connection to Ladaak, that there was a good chance Zameer would not acknowledge his brother even if they were put in the same room. This wasn’t a betrayal between brothers; it was a bond between them, a pact, a promise. Which meant she had to use Siddiqui to expose them.
It took several more months before Peggy figured out what to do. It would be a delicate operation, and perhaps it would blow up in her face. But she’d engineer it in a way that protected her, and even if it failed, the end result would simply be Siddiqui in a prison cell in Ladaak, screaming through the metal bars that he’d found the long-lost heir of Ladaak. And even in that worst-case scenario, perhaps eventually someone would take notice.
But the missing piece was still a connection to Sheikh Zameer. She had to get Siddiqui to create some kind of connection, however indirect, between Peggy and the Sheikh, so when she leaked proof of Siddiqui’s embezzlement to the Sheikh’s people and Siddiqui was whisked away, there’d be some bridge between her and Zameer, some reason for Zameer to be in the United States and within one degree of separation from Peggy.
And when old man Ashford died without leaving the winery to Nat, Peggy saw her chance.
First she convinced Siddiqui to buy the winery for the Sheikh’s investment portfolio:
“Won’t that be the ultimate slap in the face?” she told him when she explained that the land alone was a solid investment, even without the buildings. “The anti-alcohol Sheikh profiting from the manufacture and sale of alcohol?”
Then she told Siddiqui her husband’s secret:
“I know it’s insane, but I think my husband Henry is actually Zayaan, your Sheikh’s missing brother. He won’t admit it, and neither will Zameer, I think. I believe Zayaan left because he didn’t want to be Sheikh.”
“That is ridiculous. Why would he not have faked a suicide or a death?” Siddiqui had asked, shaking his head dismissively.
Peggy had shrugged. “Because that’s so much more complicated. You’d need a body, wouldn’t you? And if you left a suicide note with no body, it would make Zameer look even more guilty. They did it this way because then there would be no explanation whatsoever.”
“Does that not still make Zameer look guilty?” Siddiqui had asked scornfully.
“Sure. But without any explanation, and with no dead body, no evidence of foul play, no suicide note, it’s an unsolvable mystery. So Zameer and Zayaan must have decided that certainly there would be rumors and speculation, but in the end there couldn’t be any proof of foul play because there wasn’t any foul play. So they counted on the fact that people would eventually stop talking, and life would go on.”
Siddiqui had taken a breath, his jaw tightening as he focused on Peggy. “You believe this was an agreement between Zameer and Zayaan, that they were both in on it?”
“Yes. I’m sure of it. Henry won’t even admit it to me, no matter how hard I confront him.”
Siddiqui bit his lip, his eyes narrowing. “May I see a photograph of your husband?”
Peggy nodded, pulling up her phone and showing him a photograph of Henry and her with their two sons. Siddiqui looked at it and frowned.
“There is a resemblance,” he said finally. “But it has been ten years since I saw Zayaan. And even then, it was from a distance. Zayaan was always shy. He stayed away from public appearances most of his life. I cannot imagine most of the kingdom would recognize him today. It would be a stretch to convince anyone on the basis of a few photographs.”
“DNA evidence,” Peggy said firmly. “You can establish that they’re related by comparing their DNA, correct? I can get a swab of my husband’s saliva.”
Siddiqui nodded. “Yes, but how to get the Sheikh’s DNA? I barely see the man in person. He rarely visits the United States, and I am here most of the time.”
Peggy was quiet. She’d already thought about this point, but she didn’t want to let on that Siddiqui was the bait. Once she leaked word that he was stealing from the Sheikh, Zameer might visit the United States to take care of things. And if that wasn’t enough, she had a backup plan: the fact that Siddiqui had used the Sheikh’s money to buy a winery. It was twisted and convoluted, but it covered her bases. Between those two transgressions, there was a damned good chance Zameer would get pissed off enough to make the trip to the United States. And once he was here, she had a chance to get his DNA . . . even if she had to convince her best friend Nat to do it. And Nat would do it, wouldn’t she? Of course she would, if it was positioned right.
“You can buy the winery yourself,” she’d told Nat that afternoon when they were drinking on the back porch of the winery. “I’ll help you run the numbers.”
Peggy brought up the idea a week after she’d anonymously turned Siddiqui in to the Ministry of Finance in Ladaak. To her surprise and delight, the Sheikh had made the trip himself to relieve Siddiqui of his duties, and now all Peggy had to do was send Nat in to make her sales pitch, which in effect would inform the Sheikh that he owned a winery!
Then the Sheikh would either sell the winery to Nat, or he would shut it down altogether and use the land for something else. Either way, it would put Nat and the Sheikh in the same room, and when that was imminent, Peggy would break the news to Nat that Henry was a king! OMG! All Nat had to do was get a DNA sample from the Sheikh—a glass that he’d sipped from, a fork he’d used . . . it wouldn’t be that hard! After that . . . well, then it was up to Peggy to convince her husband to find his balls and take back what was his, give her what she deserved. And once Peggy was Queen, she’d make sure Nat got her winery, with all those loans paid off! What an ending! Everyone gets what they want!
But then things went sideways: Siddiqui had somehow managed to divert his plane to Saudi Arabia—perhaps he’d bribed the pilots; perhaps he’d convinced them that he’d really found the long-lost heir to the throne and it was their duty to expose the truth. And in the meantime Nat had somehow convinced Sheikh Zameer to spend a week with her at the winery! Which meant Peggy couldn’t tell her the truth! Not when Nat suddenly might have her own Sheikh, her own chance to be a queen! Now what! Oh, shit, now what?!
Now I need to decide what’s important, Peggy told herself. My friendship, my marriage, or my most desperate dream. I need to decide what to do when all those things are in conflict. What do I do if Nat and Zameer are together and she refuses to help me get his DNA and bring him down? What do I do if Henry continues to deny his duty to be king and Sheikh, even if his identity is exposed?
Peggy silently slipped off the bed, taking one last look at her sleeping husband as a dark chill came over her. She walked out into the hallway of their modest three-bedroom home in Northridge, Virginia, taking care to sidestep the creaky floorboard as she made her way to where her sons were asleep in their bunk-bed.
There is no conflict, she told herself as she watched their little chests move as they breathed softly. This isn’t just for me. It’s for you as well. The two of you are princes, and someday one of you will be a king. Whether your coward of a father wants it or not. That’s your destiny, your birthright, and I will seize it for you, my sons. No matter what I have to do. No matter what.
She padded back to the master bedroom as that dark chill got stronger in her, her resolve hardened, the idea that had been sitting at the back of her mind taking form in a way that terrified her. DNA could be gathered from a man even after he was dead, she thought. So if Henry continued to deny his responsibility, deny his duty to make her a queen, make their sons princes, then perhaps Henry wasn’t necessary anymore. Perhaps
she could take matters completely into her own hands.
Yes, perhaps Siddiqui escaping to Saudi Arabia was a blessing, another sign that fate was twisting its way in her direction, giving her what she needed. If she could get DNA samples to Siddiqui and the Saudis, they could run their tests, publicize the results, call for a full economic boycott of Ladaak until Sheikh Zameer was forced to step down . . . step down and hand over the throne to the rightful heir: And if Zayaan were dead, then the rightful heir would be Zayaan’s oldest son. Peggy’s oldest son. Queen Peggy’s oldest son . . .
If you won’t make me queen, she thought as she stared at her sleeping husband, then I will be satisfied with being Queen Mother, caretaker of the throne until my sons come of age. So when the time comes, choose your path carefully, Henry, Zayaan, whoever you are. Because I’m going to get my ending, whether you’re a part of it or not.
21
“This is the hard part,” the Sheikh said softly from behind her. “Just relax, Nat. I will go slow.”
“The hard part?” Nat said, turning her head halfway as the Sheikh slid his fingers out of her anus and lined his cockhead up against her slicked-up rear hole. “That’s what she said, right?”
The Sheikh laughed, stroking her hair from behind as he slowly pushed himself into her. She was tight. By God, she was tight! It felt so good he almost choked as he watched the dark red bulb of his cock disappear past her rim, his tremendous girth stretching her in a way that made her tense up and utter a low, droning wail as he entered.
“Are you all right, my love?” he whispered, rubbing her neck, her naked back, her breasts from below and around. He could barely speak, the arousal was so great. The moment was so full of tense passion, but yet so filled with tenderness that the Sheikh almost cried with joy as he watched her nod yes, like she was saying yes to everything, saying yes to him, saying yes to them!
“You never actually said yes, you know,” he whispered as he stopped for a moment, his cock almost all the way in, the thickest past of his shaft stretching her rim so wide it was beautifully obscene.
Uncorked for the Sheikh: A Royal Billionaire Romance Novel (Curves for Sheikhs Series Book 14) Page 12
