The Billionaire's Innocent: Zair al Ruyi (Forbidden Book 3)

by Caitlin Crews

  “Quite the opposite,” Zair replied.

  He glanced at Nora then, her blue gaze fierce and her smartphone in her palm and with her nod, the news they’d been waiting for. He thought, given the chance, she would throw herself at Azhil the way her friend had lunged for him in that SUV the night before. She would try to protect him if she could, no matter how outmatched she was. She would wade right in, because that was who she was. And because that was what she did. She jumped—and only worried about the fall on the way down.

  He knew she loved him. Maybe she always had. Maybe he’d always known it. But until Cannes, how could he have recognized such a thing?

  He’d never questioned the lack of that kind of ferocious love in his own life because its absence was all he’d known. Love, if it existed at all, was a hard, long road to duty. It was gratitude for scraps and for honors bestowed while wrapped in a thousand ever-tightening strings. It was knowing his place and staying in it. It was never questioning, never objecting, never lifting his head high when he could bow it down low instead.

  It was accepting the great and glorious honor of being framed for hideous crimes he’d never committed, deliberately and consistently, over the course of nearly twenty years.

  It was bullshit and he was finished. He was finally finished.

  “You have a moment to explain yourself, Zair, and only because I value our history,” Azhil was saying, with that slick black gleam in his dark gaze. “Do not force me to remind you how easily you can be replaced.”

  Zair shifted position then. He looked out over the glittering party until he found who he was looking for, and then he looked back at his brother. “Go ahead, then.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Replace me.” He hid neither the challenge in his gaze nor the temper in his voice, and for the first time in as long as Zair had known him, Azhil looked uncertain. If only for a moment.

  “What is this?” the sultan demanded. “How dare you speak to me like this?”

  “I’m perfectly serious,” Zair said, low and direct. “Replace me, if it is so easy.”

  That laugh again, ugly and low. “Do you doubt it? Has your head grown so large? I should have known better than to give one such as you too much power. It has made you insane.”

  “I’m certain you could appoint a new ambassador within the hour,” Zair said with a shrug, though he kept his gaze level. “But what of the rest of it? How will you continue to convince the world that the person in all those grainy security feeds is a high-ranking member of your government who merely happens to look like you when no one in your inner circle does?”

  Azhil looked stunned. And Zair was certain he would hoard the memory of this, take it out often in future, dwell in it and enjoy it—but there was still so much further to go.

  “If you wish to be more involved in these matters, you need only ask,” Azhil gritted out, after a tense moment during which the only sound between them was the band from down below, the wave of so many cultured voices. “This disrespect, this challenge, is unacceptable. Do not forget I am your sovereign.”

  “You are a pimp,” Zair said, very distinctly, and Azhil actually flinched in shock, “though I suspect the truth of what you really are is far, far worse. There are words to describe old men who sleep with little girls, Azhil. They particularly like to use those words in this country, I think you’ll find.”

  “I don’t care if you’re related to me, I’ll kill you myself!” Azhil hissed then, all pretense of charisma gone. His face was mottled and flushed. This was the truth of him, Zair thought. This angry, ugly little man. This repulsive troll.

  “You won’t.”

  It was a deep relief to speak as he did everywhere else but here. Not to bow or scrape. Not to hide his own power lest he offend his brother. He was bigger, stronger. Taller. Trained in deadly arts and in far better physical shape. He could kill Azhil a hundred different ways, maim him in a hundred more, yet he chose not to do it. He stopped trying to pretend otherwise.

  Zair would never bow down to another man again. Never.

  “I think you forget that this consulate is considered Ruyian soil,” Azhil snarled at him. “And it has clearly escaped you that I am the Sultan of Ruyi.”

  “As it has escaped you that I am not a fucking idiot,” Zair retorted.

  Azhil jerked back as if Zair had hit him. Zair ignored the driving urge to do just that. He aimed his chin toward one of the tall tables that ringed the dance floor and the trio that stood there, engaged in what looked like an intense conversation. He didn’t wait for Azhil to figure out who they were, though he shifted his stance to stand slightly in front of Nora, the better to protect her if Azhil got any bright ideas.

  “Do you recognize the girl?” he asked. “I took the liberty of removing her from a house I only recently discovered I own in the desert back home in Ruyi. She has many a tale to tell, brother.”

  Zair let that sink in, let Azhil take in the fact that it really was Harlow who stood there, brave and lovely and resolute.

  A remarkable woman, and not only because she clearly did love Nora as deeply and as foolishly as Nora loved her if she’d been willing to risk herself the way she had last night. To throw herself at a man she’d thought was as bad as Azhil, to do her best to hurt him and the consequences be damned. Zair would have admired her for that alone.

  But Harlow was here, tonight, despite the ordeal she’d only just escaped. She’d agreed to help them before Nora had even told her what helping them entailed. And now she stood like a queen in the consulate of the country where she’d been held for at least the past few weeks, and if she was afraid, it didn’t show.

  Beside him, Azhil made a sound that Zair couldn’t quite identify. A groan? A curse?

  “And who is she with, you ask?” Zair said with a quiet satisfaction he made no attempt to hide. “That is Chelsea Maxwell, of course. She is the famous television journalist who, you might recall, was instrumental in taking down one of your underlings. Jason Treffen.” He paused, enjoying himself, if that was what it could be called, for the first time in what seemed like a long, long while. Like a long day of sunshine in the midst of a difficult winter. “Next to her is her fiancé. Not just a pretty face, of course. He’s Alex Diaz, better known as a global media mogul of some renown.” He pivoted back around to face his brother head-on. “What could the three of them have to talk about, I wonder?”

  Another long, tense silence. Azhil was breathing heavily, scowling down at the party, and Zair let him. And when his brother spoke again, it was in a voice Zair had never heard before. Almost soft.

  “I could have you executed where we stand and it would be perfectly legal,” he said.

  Zair laughed. “You could, but what would be the point? It’s already too late. Your criminal enterprise is in pieces. As we speak, Interpol has moved in on your operations in Singapore, Cape Town. Laurette Fortin is in custody, which means Europe has fallen.” He felt Nora react to that beside him, but couldn’t look at her. He focused on his brother, the only person he’d ever considered family, instead. “Your reign of terror is over, Azhil.”

  But Azhil was recovering. He stood taller, and the glare he turned on Zair was nothing short of brutal.

  “I remain the sultan. You remain a bastard throwaway. A joke. This little game of yours has done nothing but make you dead to me. No ambassadorship. Exile if you wish to live, execution if you dare try to come home.” He leaned in closer, his mouth a snarl. “You are nothing but a dead man masquerading as a living one, Zair, but believe me when I tell you, your day will come.”

  “As it did for Jason Treffen?” Zair asked relentlessly. “Will you shoot me in my own home as I imagine you did him, Azhil? I’m insulted. If you want me dead, brother, I expect you to use your own hands.”

  “Jason Treffen was an ant,” Azhil said dismissively. “I do not concern myself with ants and I certainly don’t bother myself with their execution. But you I will have beheaded in the center
of the palace.” His voice turned almost dreamy. “I will call for a national holiday and then I will mount your traitor’s head on the gates. And I might not sully my hands with such a task, Zair, but never doubt that I will be right there to watch you die as you deserve.”

  “Appealing.” Zair smiled, a hard, triumphant thing. “But if I were you, I’d worry more about your own head.”

  Nora moved then, holding out her smartphone when they both stared at her, Zair in dismay that she might attract his brother’s attention, and Azhil in a way Zair could only call murderous.

  “It’s on Al Jazeera and AP,” she said in that calm, polite, upper-crust way of hers that made him want to throw Azhil off the balcony after all so he could concentrate on the sweet perfection of her instead. “It’s real. It’s happening.”

  And for the first time in as long as Zair could remember his half brother, going back to even before the sultan’s heir had taken notice of an angry and lonely teenage boy, the mighty Azhil looked…flummoxed.

  “You’ve wasted your time,” he seethed at Zair after a moment. “I’m the sovereign of a foreign nation. The Americans have no choice but to let me leave. If they detain me it will be considered an act of war.”

  “I suspect you’re overestimating the strength of your welcome back home.” When Azhil scowled at him, Zair shrugged. “Ruyi is a conservative country, as you reminded me only last night, and the enemies you’ve made want nothing more than to see your regime toppled. How do you think an international sex trafficking ring will play to the people? How do you propose to play moral and spiritual authority over a country when it will be clear by morning you’re nothing but a pervert?”

  Azhil looked at him as though he longed to throttle him, and there was no little part of Zair that wished he’d try. That wanted to beg this soft, spoiled man to put those meaty hands on Zair instead of another helpless female. To show him exactly what happened to men like him when they took on someone their own size.

  “All you have accomplished here is your own ruin,” Azhil said then. His contemptuous gaze moved to Nora and stayed there far longer than Zair liked before flickering back. “There are always more whores. Wherever there is money, wherever there are men. And what did you think? That I am the only one who has ever run such a ring? Five more will pop up in my place, if they haven’t already.”

  “They might,” Zair agreed. He leaned in slightly, to make his point, but he didn’t lower his head. He didn’t avert his eyes. “But none of them will use my face, my name, to do their dirty work. No one will ever do that again.”

  “It is your word against mine,” Azhil said, with a sneer. “And I am the sultan.”

  “You are,” Zair agreed. He tapped his chest, and he actually grinned as he leaned in close to the man who shared his nose, perhaps, but nothing else. Nothing that mattered. A man he had no intention of ever laying eyes on again. He might never wash the dirt off. But he could make sure he never saw his brother again in this life. “But I’m the one wearing a wire, you arrogant ass.”

  And after that, it was out of Zair’s hands.

  The sultan exited abruptly, leaving the guests to mill about and come up with wild theories for his sudden departure—until the phones started to ring and the truth started to spread. Zair wasn’t sure what he’d expected to feel in such an aftermath, but it wasn’t this. This…need to keep in physical contact with Nora. This certainty that somehow, she was the key to everything, no matter how little sense that made.

  No matter how little it had to do with reality. Because he knew must happen next.

  He was still holding on to her when they found Alex and his famous fiancée with Harlow, and it was harder than it should have been to let Nora go then, let her run to her friend and hug her, fierce and hard.

  “Are you watching this happen?” Nora asked Harlow, flashing her phone’s screen. “I saw that Laurette woman get thrown in the back of a police car in Marseille. The whole thing is coming apart, Harlow, and it’s all because of you. You made this happen. You took these bastards down.”

  Harlow’s gaze met Zair’s then, over Nora’s shoulder, and it made him feel cold. Her dark eyes were sad and terribly wise in ways they shouldn’t have been. In ways no one’s should have to become.

  “It’s a drop in the bucket, Nora,” Harlow said quietly, in a voice that seemed to lodge itself inside Zair, reminding him that his suffering had been minor in comparison to hers. Hardly worth noting. So his brother had never loved him. So he’d had to play the role of a very bad man. So what? “A tiny little drop. In a bucket much bigger than you can ever imagine.”

  “But at least this particular drop is finished,” Zair concluded for her, when the silence threatened to bowl them all over and Nora looked as if she might weep. “The sultan won’t be a player again.”

  “Yes. There is that.” Harlow’s lips curved into the closest thing he’d seen to a smile on her face since she’d landed last night, making it clear that she was still the bright girl he’d met years ago, undiminished by the things that had happened to her. Still Harlow. Still her. “Personally, I hope he burns.”

  *

  In the end, after he’d reported to his partners and given what he knew was only an initial statement, Zair told them he’d pick it up again in the morning and took Nora home.

  Because he couldn’t seem to help himself.

  “I wish I could do something,” she’d whispered when Harlow left in the company of Zair’s Washington connections, who were putting her up in a safe house somewhere until everyone was certain the sultan had left the country. Until they could take down every detail of what she’d lived through and make absolutely certain she was safe.

  “You’ve already done it,” Zair said. “You can’t do the rest. That’s up to her.”

  She was quiet when they entered her loft and this time, she turned on all the lights the moment they walked in, bathing them in all that warm, buttery light. As though this was a port in the storm, after all.

  “We did it.” She stood at the back of her couch, balancing herself with one hand while with the other, she pulled off one of her shoes. She repeated it on her other side and dropped half a foot in height once her bare feet were on the floor.

  “We did.” He stood in the center of the bright space, framed by the thick white pillars and the exposed beams above, his hands thrust deep in his pockets and his eyes on her as if he might never look at anything else again.

  Her smile then was wry. “This celebration is getting much too crazy. What will my neighbors say?” That electric thing crackled between them and he knew they were both remembering the night they’d shared here. Her smiled deepened. “I think they do know your name, in fact. If you were wondering.”

  “I can’t stay,” he told her firmly. Gruffer than necessary. “I’m needed in Washington.”

  Not at the embassy, of course. He could never go there again, and he supposed it said things about him that he didn’t care. He’d maintained a separate penthouse in Washington for years, because a man whose primary residence was an embassy couldn’t have the kind of private life he’d been pretending to have. Over time, it had become, if not quite a home, then his repository for the things in his life he actually cared about. His few mementos of his childhood. His stark collection of memories. Everything else, they could keep. Or burn.

  “Your partners,” Nora said with a certain serenity that made his body tighten, and not with tension. “A government agency you refuse to name because you live for the secrecy and danger.”

  “Something like that,” he said, darkly, because he didn’t want to find her as sweet as he did. Or as amusing. “And, of course, for things like national security.”

  It had been easier than it should have been to work with Washington to lay the groundwork for what had happened tonight. Discussions with the Justice Department, with the White House. Law enforcement. The battalion of lawyers he knew personally, or that his partners preferred. Then Zair had called Alex a
nd asked if he and Chelsea would like to finish what they’d started with the Jason Treffen exposé. And then, finally, ten days after Nora had shared her idea with him, he’d called that awful house in Ruyi and asked for a shipment of what he’d pretended was his “property.”

  It had been so much easier than it should have been, which told him one thing and one thing only: he’d been the one stalling. His refusal to see the truth about his brother had made all of this drag on, and that was unforgivable. It had hurt countless people, put even more than that at risk, and all because he hadn’t wanted to face the truth.

  He couldn’t possibly loathe himself more, he thought then.

  “I have to go,” he said, harsher, though he didn’t move. He was overtly aware of her gaze on his. Of her bare feet against the cool floors, as if he could feel what she felt. Her faint smile as she moved toward him and stood there the way she had before, within reach.

  But not his. Never his, despite all the ways they fit. Not after the things he’d done and let happen with his inaction, his willful blindness.

  He thought for a moment she might touch him—but she didn’t. Her blue eyes were so big. So clear. As if she could see straight through to the very heart of him. As if she could sanctify him, somehow, with a simple look.

  “Do you love me?” Nora asked.

  And everything just…stopped. The world tipped on its side and emptied, and there was nothing left but her. Nothing left but Nora.

  But he couldn’t let this happen.

  “No,” Zair said, and it felt as if he’d burned himself. As if the word, the denial, blistered his own mouth on its way out.

  He thought she’d react to that, but she only smiled in that enigmatic way of hers, and then, never shifting her gaze from his, starting unfastening her gown. He stared as though he’d never seen a woman before as she unzipped herself from the bodice and let the whole of the shimmering silver concoction float to the floor in a frothy circle around her. She stepped out of its center wearing nothing but a strapless push-up bra and a tiny thong, and Zair felt as if he were the one who’d been tossed from some great height.