“One bullet,” she told the blind old Sheikh of Kalyan as he chewed on his gnarled fingers, drooling from the side of his mouth but listening with intense focus. “One bullet can give you a last taste of glory, old Sheikh. One bullet will give you an unprotected nation with no heir, a king and queen emotionally shattered, a people with no means to resist. One bullet to end the line and start the chaos in which you can seize control.”
“Kill a child?” the old Sheikh rasped in the shadow of the setting sun.
“There is no child yet,” Alma said. “She is still with child, and so the one bullet will end the line. One bullet will take two.”
“One bullet will take two,” the Sheikh of Kalyan repeated, pointing two fingers off to the left of Alma. “One bullet will take two.”
31
NINTH MONTH
“Well, I have been eating for two for a while now,” Grace said as she waddled herself off the large weighing scale outside the third floor bathroom in the Southern Wing that had started off as her prison and was now going to be her lifelong home. “But still, this is ridiculous. I don’t think I’d be allowed on an airplane, because it would just tip over to one side!”
“I do not understand why you are even weighing yourself,” the Sheikh said as he helped her walk towards the day-room that opened up into a sprawling verandah which offered a beautiful view of the southern part of Mizra’s capital city, with the massive white dome and four high minaret-towers of the grand public mosque occupying prime position.
“You should not even be walking,” Zareena said, standing with arms folded across her chest. “Ya Allah, help her, Dhom! Get her to that sofa so she does not strain her knees! Do you know knee-injuries are extremely common during late-stage pregnancy?”
“So even Zareena thinks I’m a whale whose legs are going to snap from the sheer bulk,” Grace said, rolling her eyes and then winking at Zareena in a way that made the queen smile.
Grace was due any day now. They could have scheduled a date and time and done a C-section, but Grace had said nothing doing, that her hips were plenty wide enough and besides, she sorta wanted the experience. Zareena’s heart had jumped when Grace told her that she wanted to give birth in the palace, in the Southern Wing of the Palace, with midwives and medics present, of course—but also with the Sheikh and Sheikha there to witness the birth. If they wanted, of course.
“Of course I will be there if you will allow it,” Zareena had said when Grace told her. “Ya Allah, I am honored to—”
“Oh, please,” Grace had said, clearly fighting back tears. “I know you can still have me beheaded and fed to the camels.”
“If she does that, I will EAT those camels and then give birth to you myself and then get you pregnant again,” Dhom had declared.
“Um, I don’t think that came out right,” Grace had said, staring wide-eyed at Dhom as Zareena doubled up and clapped her hands.
They had all laughed, the three of them, and the mood had been light and airy, joyful and optimistic. They truly felt like a family, Zareena had thought at the time. And it felt even more like a family now, she thought as she watched her fake-husband help his pregnant secret-wife/mistress/whatever-the-hell towards the green day-bed facing the verandah that overlooked the public gardens and the minarets of the Great Mosque of Mizra.
“Why do you not come and take some sun, my lady,” came a sweetly accented voice from the queen’s left, and Zareena frowned in surprise when she saw it was Alma.
She and Alma had long since made up—though there was still some kind of tension the queen picked up when the two were alone. She had dismissed it, chalking it up to her own guilt—even though Zareena did not truly believe she had cheated on Alma. That one time was . . . something else. From another world. A bleedthrough from an alternate existence, perhaps.
“Were you looking for me, Alma?” the queen asked now, still frowning at she looked at her attendant, who did not venture far from Zareena’s private chambers. “Is there a matter that needs my attention?”
“No, my Sheikha,” said Alma. “I was just . . . I simply came to offer Ms. Garner my wishes.”
“Ah, the palace rumor-mill has been churning it out,” said Dhom, grinning as he glanced at Alma and then back at Grace. “Well, Lady Garner. Why don’t you sit on your royal day-bed and receive the well-wishers.”
Grace stopped and looked over at Alma and then the open verandah. “Actually, I think I’ll take Alma’s suggestion and get some sun. God knows I’m pale as an albino in winter, and once this little whale-baby gets popped out, who knows how much time I’ll get to just lounge around in the sun.”
“Allow me,” said Alma, smiling and stepping between Dhom and Grace, taking Grace’s arm and leading her out to the open balcony.
Zareena watched Alma and Grace, and she felt a strange chill come over her as the warm afternoon breeze swirled around her naked ankles, now curling its way up her hijab like tentacles, the arms of an octopus, the coils of a snake, every scale and suction cup whispering to the queen, that breeze itself tugging at the queen’s gown.
“Alma?” Zareena said, taking a step towards the verandah as Grace stood there front and center even as Alma took an awkward step to the side, distancing herself from Grace, it seemed. “Alma, may I have a word?”
Alma did not acknowledge the queen, though Zareena knew she had heard. Now that chill rose up to where it felt like she was being choked, pulled along by an invisible grip around her very neck, and the queen stepped out onto that balcony, another step now, a third step, now stepping out in front of Gracie Garner and stopping there as that desert breeze whispered again, a whisper that had started as a warning and was now a farewell, a thank you, a goodbye.
Things slowed down for the queen now, like time had stopped and everything was just a series of frames. She saw Alma mouth the words No, my Queen. She saw Alma look towards that high minaret in the distance. Now Alma leaping in front of the queen as the shot rang out, a single shot, a single bullet, slicing through space and time, taking Alma through the neck, bursting her jugular, crashing into Zareena’s heart, stopping that magnificent heart, the heart of a queen, the heart of a woman, the only heart strong enough to stop that bullet from going any farther.
32
ONE YEAR LATER
A WEDDING, A CORONATION, A BABY SHOWER
“First the wedding. Then my coronation. And we end the evening with the baby shower,” Grace said firmly, writing out the schedule for the third time that day even as she adjusted the feeding cushion around her and switched Baby Dhom from her left nipple to her right.
“The wedding should be last,” grumbled the Sheikh as he looked at his wonderfully curvy wife, who was already showing from the new pregnancy even as she breast-fed their enormous, healthy son, the heir and future Sheikh of the island kingdom of Mizra.
“No,” said Grace, tossing the schedule aside and looking down at her son, who was peacefully suckling away, eyes closed, oblivious to the drama and madness, the heartache and pain, the love and the chaos from which he had emerged, fresh and innocent, screaming for air, howling for Mommy. “The baby shower is the most important event to me, and so I want that to end the evening.”
“What about the wedding night! What kind of a woman does not want her wedding night! Ya Allah, do you not want your fairytale wedding? We will dance into the night, and—”
“I’ve already got my fairytale, Dhom,” Grace whispered, her eyes tearing up as she touched her son’s hair with one hand, her pregnant belly with the other. “And it took so much from so many people to get us here. I want to respect that. I want to cherish that.”
“You do respect it, my love. And you do cherish it. There is no greater way to show it, Gracie,” Dhom said, going to her and pulling her into a careful embrace, placing his own large hand on her belly.
“This isn’t for show, and it isn’t
for symbolism. It’s because I want to do it. It’s because I desperately want to do it! You know that, don’t you?” Grace said.
“Of course. Why else would I let those quack doctors even come near you?” Dhom said, frowning and trying to joke away the emotion that was making his voice waver.
“Clearly they aren’t quacks. There was one egg of Zareena’s left, and they were able to successfully fertilize it with your seed and then implant it in my womb. And my body accepted it, thank God!”
“How could there be any doubt your body would accept it?” Dhom said, kissing her on the cheek as he looked down at her belly again. “Ya Allah, I still cannot . . . cannot . . . ah, Zareena. You will live forever with us through your child. Do you see? Can you see? Can you hear?”
Of course I can, came the whisper on the afternoon breeze that swirled through the room, rustling the curtains, curling through their hair, tickling little Baby Dhom, caressing the husband, embracing the wife, the son, the daughter-to-come, and the mother.
Of course I can, came that whisper from the newest mother, who was now cradled in the universe’s eternal womb. Of course I can.
∞
EPILOGUE
GUANTANOMO BAY HOLDING AREA
John Benson, head of the CIA’s Dubai Field Office, blinked in the overhead light of the interrogation room as the blind old Sheikh of Kalyan drooled and pointed.
“A little to your left, old man,” offered Benson.
“I am not pointing at you,” said the Sheikh. “I am pointing at those creatures laughing at me.”
Benson frowned and looked around the empty room. Then he shook his head as if to clear it, rubbing his eyes and leaning back in his metal chair. “OK, great. Now what is it, Kalyan? I am told you have been mumbling my name for months now, and since I was visiting the area to catch up with some old . . . friends, I thought I’d see what you’ve got for me.”
“What I have for you? I have nothing! I have done nothing!” the old man wailed.
Benson sighed, rapping on the metal table. “You attempted to kill a United States citizen in a jurisdiction where U.S. law does not apply. That means terrorism, buddy. And that means Gitmo. No trial. No pleas. Nothing but three squares a day and a goddamn prayer mat. Got it?”
“It is not right!” shouted the old Sheikh. “I was barely in this story at all! And I am the one—”
“I hear ya, buddy,” Benson muttered as he stood to leave. “We all want our own goddamn story. But these ain’t our stories. And we ain’t the storyteller.”
“Then whose stories are they? And who is the goddamn storyteller?” the blind old Sheikh howled as Benson walked away.
There is only one storyteller, Benson thought as he lit a cigarette under an unusually large crescent moon that seemed to be smiling down from the Cuban sky. Because there is just one story, and it is all our stories.
The story of East and West.
The story of good and evil.
The story of man and woman.
The story of boy and girl.
The story of love.
∞
FROM ANNABELLE WINTERS
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Anna.
BY ANNABELLE WINTERS
THE CURVES FOR SHEIKHS SERIES (USA)
Curves for the Sheikh
Flames for the Sheikh
Hostage for the Sheikh
Single for the Sheikh
Stockings for the Sheikh
Untouched for the Sheikh
Surrogate for the Sheikh
Stars for the Sheikh
Shelter for the Sheikh
THE CURVES FOR SHEIKHS SERIES (UK)
Curves for the Sheikh (UK)
Flames for the Sheikh (UK)
Hostage for the Sheikh (UK)
Single for the Sheikh (UK)
Stockings for the Sheikh (UK)
Untouched for the Sheikh (UK)
Surrogate for the Sheikh (UK)
Stars for the Sheikh (UK)
Shelter for the Sheikh (UK)
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Surrogate for the Sheikh: A Royal Billionaire Romance Novel (Curves for Sheikhs Series Book 7) Page 17
