A Secret Birthright

by Olivia Gates

  He stopped again. He didn’t want his steps to take him back to her. He’d always rushed to her as if every step separating him from her dimmed his life force. Now…now…

  Now those remaining steps were his last refuge. They could be what separated him from finding out that he couldn’t love her.

  Emad had tried his best to dissuade him from taking those steps. His parting advice still cut into his mind, paring away every belief in anything good and pure, painting his world with the ugliness of manipulation and deceit.

  Marry her. Without confronting her. Make her give you all rights to Ryan, secure Hesham’s son. Then deal with her, according to her innocence or guilt.

  His steps ran out. They’d taken him where he’d experienced his life’s first true happiness, the consummation of his most profound bond. Where he might now end it all.

  He opened the door, stepped inside. She wasn’t there.

  He’d have the respite of ignorance, of hope, a bit longer.

  A vase swayed as he bumped into it. It crashed, broke into countless, useless shards. Just like his heart might moments from now.

  A door slammed and footsteps spilled onto the hardwood floor.

  She emerged from the chamber leading to the bathroom, half-running, the face of all his hopes and dreams, alarmed, concerned, sublime in beauty. “Fareed, what…”

  She faltered as she saw the ruins at his feet, took in his frozen stance.

  Then it was there in her eyes. The realization. The desperation. The fear. Of exposure.

  Certainty flooded him, drowned anything else inside him.

  She was Hesham’s woman.

  Gwen stared at the stranger who looked back at her out of Fareed’s eyes, desperation detonating in her heart.

  He’d somehow found out.

  “Laish?”

  “Fareed, please…”

  They’d spoken at the same moment. But he’d finished even as she stumbled to find words to implore him with.

  He’d said all he was going to say.

  He’d only asked, “Why?”

  Why she’d lied. Why she’d kept lying.

  She could only ask her own burning question, “How?”

  The stranger who now inhabited Fareed’s body said, “Emad.”

  She had no idea how Emad had found out, where she’d gone wrong. He couldn’t have gotten it out of Rose. She didn’t know.

  “This is why you kept pushing me away, insisting on leaving.”

  Statements. She could do nothing but nod.

  She’d trapped herself the day she’d withheld the truth from him. And only sealed her fate when she’d grabbed at that one night with him and hadn’t left right afterward, when she’d kept telling herself, just one more night.

  “Ryan lahmi w’dammi. Laish khabbaiti?”

  Ryan is my flesh and blood. Why did you hide it?

  The way he said that, that haunted look in his eyes crushed her. She’d seen him in that videotaped request for her to come forward. He’d looked and sounded wrecked over his brother’s death. He looked like that again, as if he’d lost him all over again.

  She still couldn’t tell him why.

  But his eyes weren’t only deadened with that grief she’d experienced for as long and as intensely. In them still lay his inexorableness. He’d have an answer.

  She gave him all she could. “I was abiding by Hesham’s will.”

  The moment she uttered Hesham’s name, Fareed swayed like a building in a massive earthquake.

  And if she’d thought his eyes had gone dead before, she knew how wrong she’d been. He now looked at her as someone would at his own murderer.

  She couldn’t survive his pain and disillusion. She had to try to alleviate them, with what she could reveal.

  “I had to keep on doing what he did. You know the lengths he went to to hide his family’s whereabouts and identity.”

  In that same deep-as-death voice, he asked, “Gallek laish?”

  He’d always spoken Arabic unintentionally, to express his hunger and appreciation with the spontaneity and accuracy he could only achieve in his mother tongue. He’d usually been too submerged in passion to explain.

  Now he spoke Arabic as if he was convinced she understood, wanted more proof of the depth of her deception.

  Her heart twisted until it felt it would tear out its tethers. “He—he was convinced it would ruin his family to have…your family know of…our existence. This is why he hid. This is why I did, too. I—I only sought you out because of Ryan’s problem, thought I’d get your opinion and leave. But things kept snowballing, then things between us…ignited, turning my position from difficult to impossible and I kept wanting to leave, to disappear, so you’d never know, never feel like this…”

  “Too late now.”

  Silence crashed after his monotone statement.

  She waited for him to add something, to restart her heart or still it forever.

  He only said, “Tell me everything about the last years since I lost my brother. Tell me about your life with Hesham.”

  Gwen looked as if he’d asked her to take a scalpel to her own neck.

  Fareed felt he’d be doing the same. Worse. That he’d be cutting out his heart. But he had to know. Even if it killed him.

  He no longer recognized that dreadful drone that issued from him. “You met him in that conference?”

  She cast her eyes downward. It was an unbearable moment before she nodded.

  He felt as if a bullet had ripped through his heart, stilling its last jerking attempts at a beat.

  He’d thought she’d recognized him that day, had ended her engagement because she couldn’t be with anyone else.

  All that time, it had been Hesham.

  “Did you love him?”

  She collapsed on the bed, dropped her face in her hands.

  She had loved him. The grief he felt from her now was the same he’d felt at first. Her anguish for Ryan seemed an insufficient explanation, if that could be said. It had been due to the loss of Hesham, the father of her son.

  And even though it shredded his heart, he had to tell her. “He loved you. He lived for you, and when he was dying, his only thoughts were of you. Even though he gave up his name and family and whole life to be with you, he thought you deserved more. His dying words were that he was sorry he couldn’t give it to you.”

  Tears came then. Hers. He wished he could shed any.

  He bled instead, dark torrents of loss.

  Two things had been sustaining him. The hope of finding Hesham’s family. And finding her and Ryan.

  But they were one and the same, and his hopes for a blissful future for all were doomed to be forever tainted by the past.

  It wasn’t because he believed the ulterior motives Emad had assigned her secrecy. He wished he could. It would have been a far lesser blow to believe her a self-serving manipulator. He would have been relieved Hesham had died clinging to his false belief in her and at peace. As for his agony at losing his faith in her, it would have been ameliorated if he could have coveted her knowing what she truly was.

  But she was everything he could love and respect, the answer to all his fantasies and needs. And that she’d been the same to his brother, had been his in such an abiding love that she’d become a fugitive to be with him…that was despair.

  For even if he could survive the guilt—and may Ullah forgive him, the jealousy—how could he survive knowing she might never feel the same for him? What did she feel for him? Beyond physical hunger? Had he been unable to fathom her emotions because they didn’t exist? Had she been unable to deny her body’s needs, while her heart remained buried with Hesham?

  If it had, had everything she’d had with him been an attempt to resurrect what she’d had with Hesham? Had she found solace in their minor resemblances, taken comfort in sensing the love he had for him?

  Had she ever felt anything that was purely for him?

  He had to get away from her before whatever held him
together disintegrated.

  He found himself at the door, heard himself saying, “I’ll be at the center. Don’t try to leave.”

  He couldn’t make this a request. It could no longer be one.

  Even if it would kill him, she was staying. Forever.

  Gwen raised swollen eyes to the door that had closed behind Fareed. Heartbeats fractured inside her chest as she expected him to walk back, take her with him where he could keep an eye on her.

  After moments of frozen dread, she tried to rise.

  She sagged back to the bed. The bed she’d never share with Fareed again. In the apartment she’d realized wasn’t his.

  He hadn’t taken her to his private domain, had kept her in what was to him, for all its wonders, an impersonal space.

  Relief had trumped the pain of knowing he hadn’t thought her worthy of sharing his own bed. She didn’t wish the depth of her involvement on him, wished him only the mildness of fond memories when she left his life, not the harshness of unquenchable longing she’d live with.

  But as he’d said, it was too late. Whatever he’d felt for her had now been forever soiled and soured.

  It wasn’t too late to escape. This time, she wouldn’t let anything stop her. She’d at least spirit Ryan and Rose away.

  Panic finally got her legs working. At the door, her hand slipped on the handle…then she stumbled back.

  The door was opening. Fareed. He’d come back as she’d feared.…

  Next moment, she stood gaping at the stranger…strangers on the other side of the door.

  The dark, imposing man who looked like the highest-ranking among them, advanced on her, said without preamble, “You will come with us. The king has summoned you.”

  The ride to the royal palace passed in harrowing silence.

  Her escorts wouldn’t answer her questions. They’d said the king had summoned her, but in reality, she was being abducted.

  Even if she hadn’t heard enough from Hesham about his father, this act of blatant disregard for her most basic rights made her expect the worst.

  She’d long dreaded this man. Her fear only deepened with every step through his palace’s impossible opulence and extravagance.

  Then she was ushered into his state room.

  As the door closed behind her, she felt engulfed by malice.

  It didn’t matter. She’d fight him, king or not.…

  “Harlots always had the intelligence and self-preservation to try to entrap my sons outside my domain.”

  The voice was pure wrath and mercilessness, short-circuiting her resolve. It issued from the deep shadows at the far end of the gigantic room.

  The owner of the voice rose from a throne-like seat and advanced to the relatively illuminated part where she stood. She almost cringed. Almost. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.

  “But you’re here to steal Fareed under my very nose. You’re either recklessly stupid or unbelievably cunning. I’d go with the second interpretation because you managed to have my most-level-headed son eating out of your hand.”

  This was about Fareed? He didn’t know who she was?

  Relief almost burst out of her, but she couldn’t give any outward sign of it. She stood staring ahead, face blank.

  This provoked him even more. She felt his rage encompassing her as he stormed toward her. Then she saw him clearly for the first time. It took all that remained of her tattered control not to recoil.

  The man was an older version of Fareed, as tall but bulkier, must have been as blessed by nature once upon a time, but ruthlessness had degraded his looks, turning him forbidding, almost sinister. And he was incensed.

  “You think I’ll lose another son to another American hussy? One who wants to foist her bastard child on him, too?” He snatched at her. Her heart hit her throat as she stumbled out of reach. He brought himself under control. “But I’ll give you the choice I would have given the trash who deprived me of my youngest son. Leave, disappear, and I’ll leave you alone. If you don’t, what happens to you and yours will be your fault.”

  And she knew. That the lengths Hesham had gone to, to hide from that man, what she’d always suspected had been at least a little exaggerated, had been warranted, and then some.

  But ironically, because of the king’s ignorance of her true identity, he was giving her a way out of this horrific mess. He’d even provided the means for her to leave against Fareed’s will, what she might have never secured on her own.

  “What will it be?” the king rumbled, a predator about to pounce and to hell with giving his opponent a running chance.

  She looked him in the eyes, made her answer a solemn pledge. “I’ll leave. And I’ll disappear. Fareed will never find me again.”

  The king had believed her.

  But knowing that Fareed wouldn’t just let her go, he’d said he would give her every assistance in her disappearance efforts.

  His men had delivered her to Fareed’s mansion to collect Rose and Ryan on her way to the king’s private airstrip. She’d phoned Rose ahead, told her to be ready, wouldn’t answer her confusion.

  She now ran into the mansion, had reached the bottom of the stairs when his voice came out of nowhere.

  “If you’re still trying to leave, Gwen, don’t bother.”

  She stumbled with the force of the déjà vu.

  Fareed was separating from the shadows at the top of the stairs like that first night he’d made her his.

  God, no. Now this wouldn’t be the clean surgical amputation she’d hoped it would be.

  He was coming down the stairs now, as deliberate, as determined as that other night. But instead of the passion that had buffeted her then, the void emanating from him did now.

  “I’m not letting you and Ryan go, Gwen. And that’s final.”

  She took one step back for each he took closer. But nothing stopped his advance. He was now mere feet away.…

  Then two things happened at once.

  Rose appeared at the top of the stairs with Ryan. And the king’s men, all six of them, who’d been waiting for her outside, entered the mansion in force.

  Fareed swerved to advance on them in steps loaded with danger, putting himself between her and them, his expression thunderous.

  “What’s the meaning of this, Zayed?”

  The man who’d led the task force that had taken her to the king gave him a curt bow.

  “Forgive me for the intrusion, Prince Fareed, but the king has changed our orders. Only this woman and her female companion will leave the kingdom. The child, Prince Hesham’s son, will remain—will be taken to him.”

  Eleven

  “This woman and her child are in my protection.”

  At Fareed’s arctic outrage, her gaze slammed from Rose and Ryan—frozen like her at the top of the stairs—back to him.

  “My father is never coming near either of them. As for all of you, you will leave my house, right now, or suffer the consequences.”

  She’d never dreamed Fareed could look so lethal. And she knew. He would fulfill his threat without a second’s hesitation. He was ready to fight, go to any lengths, inflict or sustain any injury, in their defense.

  A chill of dread ran down her spine. She’d tried everything she could so that it would never come to that. But— No, she could have left sooner, prevented this. Now it was too late.

  The king had discovered Ryan’s identity.

  The man called Zayed, what Gwen imagined desert raiders must have looked like, harsh and weathered and unbending, stood his ground. “Somow’wak, by the authority vested in me by the king, I order you to stand aside.”

  Fareed barked a laugh that must have sent every hair in the place standing on end like it did hers. “Or what? You’ll tell my father on me? Do so, and take this message back to that uncompromising fossil while you’re at it, word for word. I’m not Hesham, and not only won’t he intimidate me, but he also wouldn’t want to make me his enemy. I will be if he even thinks of Gwen or Ryan again. A
nd that’s his first and final warning.”

  Zayed’s face clenched in a conflict of reluctance and determination. It was apparent he liked and respected his prince, wouldn’t want to fight him. But his allegiance, even if he didn’t appear to relish it, was to the king, and it was unswerving.

  He finally said, “My orders were clear, Somow’wak. I can’t back down. Arjook, I beg of you, don’t force a confrontation.”

  “That’s exactly what I’ll do, with anyone who dares threaten Gwen or Ryan.” Fareed advanced on Zayed, a warrior who had the same steel-nerved precision and efficiency of the surgeon. “I’ll go to war for them. Will you? Will he?”

  She could feel Zayed hesitating as her mind churned, trying to work out how to exploit this standoff, take Ryan and Rose and escape them all.

  But there was no way out. Either the king won, and she was thrown out of the country, or Fareed won, and he kept her here.

  Either way, Ryan would end up being lost to her.

  Suddenly, the simmering scene fractured.

  Zayed made up his mind and gestured to his men. They advanced instantaneously, a highly organized strike force.

  Two men ran past her and Fareed, targeting the stairs. She heard Rose’s shouted protests and Ryan’s alarmed crying as they advanced. Fareed intercepted Zayed and three of his men as they made a grab for her. She gaped in horror as violence erupted.

  She cried out as a fist connected with Fareed’s face, as she heard the sickening impact of knuckles with flesh and bone. And she threw herself into the fight, blind now but to one thing: defending him, preventing any injury to him at any cost.

  Fareed took the man who’d hit him down with one blow to the throat and Zayed with another to the solar plexus. The third man he took down with one roundhouse kick to the temple. He was fighting with the economy of the surgeon who knew the anatomy of incapacitation. She hit and kicked the man she’d attacked, but he finally managed to restrain her.

  Fareed turned on him, rumbling like an enraged tiger. “Take your hands off her, Mohsen, or have them torn off.”