by Olivia Gates
Shaheen glared at Amjad. “There might still be another explanation to all this.”
Haidar shook his head, looking as shaken as Jalal felt. “No. Mother makes a perfect one.”
Harres nodded. “Agreed. One thing I can’t figure out, though. How did she get Lujayn to leave?”
Jalal turned, walked away. His brothers let him go this time.
He didn’t know how. But he would find out.
He would put an end to his mother’s damage once and for all.
* * *
Ten sanity-wrecking hours later, Jalal walked into the seafront house he and Haidar had provided for their mother in Aruba.
They’d picked the place based upon being as close as possible to Azmahar’s climate, and the house to maintain the comfort level she’d been used to. In spite of everything, they’d wanted her to feel as at ease and at home as possible in her exile.
But it stopped here. His filial weakness. Not because he’d almost died when he’d thought Lujayn had been kidnapped, or because she’d sabotaged their wedding. It was what she’d done to Lujayn, again. He hadn’t forgiven her for her past transgressions. Now, he never would. He couldn’t bear to imagine Lujayn’s anguish when his mother had forced her to leave their wedding.
Ya Ullah, how had she done it?
Waving away the guards he’d assigned to his mother, he strode into the one-level sprawling house with the first rays of dawn. The thought that she could sleep after she’d ruined his wedding, maybe even his life, had blood roaring in his ears, louder with each step closer to her bedroom.
“…everything you wanted.”
The words barely carried to him, but they felt like a direct blow to his heart. For he didn’t have any doubt who’d said them.
Lujayn. She was here.
His feet almost left the ground to home in on her voice. Then he exploded into his mother’s private quarters, stood at the door staring at a sight he’d never thought he’d see. His mother sitting relaxed with Lujayn over steaming cups of tea.
Neither woman reacted at his entry. As if they’d both been waiting for him. His mother, in an emerald satin dressing gown that reflected some color onto the steel of her eyes, looked as majestic and ageless as ever. Lujayn, in a sedate gray pantsuit, had her hair still in the chignon she must have had styled for the wedding that never was. She kept her face turned away.
He had to tell her she mustn’t feel bad, that he was here to…
“I’m glad you’re here, ya helwi.” His mother’s expression and voice were calm as she extended a hand to him. “Come, join us for tea. Or did you have enough stomach-turning beverages on the plane?”
His teeth gritted. “No, you don’t, ya ommi. You don’t ‘my sweet’ me. Ever again.”
His mother gave a theatrical sigh. “Zain, let me get to the point without any…sweetening. Lujayn has always been my mole.”
Everything went still. Had she just said…?
Incredulity and fury overcame him, crackled from his depths. “Ya Ullah, is there no end to your surprises? Why not tell me Lujayn is actually a man? That would be more believable.”
His mother’s gaze maintained its unwavering serenity. “I sent her to you when you were establishing the New York branch of your business. I needed someone I controlled to keep you away from the unsuitable women swarming around you, by giving you everything you needed from a woman with seemingly no strings and no price. But when you kept going back to her for years, I realized my plan had worked too well, was afraid you’d gotten attached to her. So I ordered her to start alienating you. But contrary boy that you are, you liked her more for it. I waited almost two years for you to walk out, but you didn’t, so I ordered her out of your life, told her she could go for the other man she’d been…cultivating. Lujayn obeyed, of course, cut you off and married your friend, who was conveniently dying. I decided it was safer from then on to drive women away one at a time. But we know I haven’t had to do a thing. You did it on your own ever since.”
Jalal could only gape at his mother, his eyes flitting every other sentence to Lujayn. Lujayn’s face remained turned away, what he could see of it was frozen, expressionless.
His mother went on. “While it was a relief at first that you wouldn’t let anyone near, I felt worried, then guilty that I’d set you up to fall for my impostor, but hoped eventually you’d find others. I never predicted that you’d go after Lujayn after her husband died, wishful thinking on my part. I surely hadn’t counted on you getting her pregnant. When she told me, I ordered her to stay away, hide the child. That is, until I needed to create a scandal for you.”
Unable to feel shock anymore, Jalal only stared at his mother as she rewrote his whole history with Lujayn.
“But again, you, unpredictable boy, thwarted me. Before she could unleash the scandal of your illegitimate child from my servant’s daughter, you had to go unearth her family’s origins. While I was deciding how to deal with this new development and how best to use her child, you found out about him, jumped to acknowledge him and offered Lujayn marriage. So I told her to lull you till the last moment, then leave you standing at the altar. Now that the news has traveled the region, if not the world, no one in Azmahar will think that such a foolish man is king material.”
No end. No end to the blows. To the injuries. He could have taken anything from an enemy. But from her…
His mother’s face finally displayed an emotion as she rose in utmost grace to her feet, approached him with an entreating expression. “I love you, Jalal, but I want Haidar to be the king. Both of you forced me to take action when he stepped down and you kept going full force with your campaign. Now you’re out of the running, he will take the throne. But he will make you his crown prince, and everything will be for the best.”
Silence stormed in the aftermath of her heartless justifications. Jalal closed his eyes for several minutes.
When he finally opened them, they felt lined with sandpaper. Just like his throat and his heart when he looked only at his mother and said, “I don’t believe a word you said.”
His mother sighed. “As I expected. But you would believe Lujayn. Go ahead, ask her.”
“What good would that do?” he huffed bitterly. “She’d say anything you want her to say, because she knows you’d carry out the threats that forced her here.”
His mother inclined her regal head at him. “That’s a very fascinating theory, ya helwi. What did you decide my threats involved? Harming her family? How would I do that from my exile?”
“Spare me, ya ommi. We both know you’re here but your influence remains at large. Something I’ll be rectifying from now on. And I will no longer have any qualms about employing my brothers’ and father’s help in severing your tentacles. So I hope you enjoyed abusing your power for the last time in your life.”
“If you believe using my power to do what needs to be done is abusing it, then I was right and you’re not fit to be king.”
“You always hated me because of my Aal Shalaan face, didn’t you? Just looking at me reminded you of your hated enemies, my father and his sons.”
She shrugged. “I admit, looking at you is unsettling, but you do have parts of me, and you’re my son. You’re one of two people I love in this world. But I do feel more intensely about Haidar.”
Bitterness almost overwhelmed him, when he’d thought he’d long come to terms with this fact. “Aih, the true part of you.”
“All parents have preferences. I’m only honest about mine.”
He looked at the mother he loved in spite of everything and wondered. Where did this endless well of emotion come from when it should have dried up decades ago?
He shook his head. “I long believed that Haidar is the loser between us, being your favorite. But I should have realized your lethal focus on him is a multiedged weapon, since you’d destroy anyone for him, even your other son.”
His mother sighed, nothing on her flawless face courting his approval or forgiveness, just
his understanding. “It’s a matter of simple pragmatism, ya helwi. I love you and you will make a fantastic second in command, but he, the one with an Azmaharian face and a Zohaydan name, will make a better king for Azmahar.”
“You thought he’d make a better king with that face for Zohayd and Ossaylan. You just want him on a throne so why even try to justify it? You want what you want, and you plot to get it, regardless of any devastation you may cause. This is exactly why I tried to keep my relationship with Lujayn a secret, fearing your ingenious manipulation, what you will always rationalize as necessary for the eventual greater good, and collateral damage be damned. In this instance, years lost when I could have been with Lujayn, with my son. You almost cost me and them our happiness together.”
His mother tutted. “So you in one breath admit to my ingenuity yet still persist in thinking you had anything with her that I didn’t manipulate you into? Why don’t you just admit it and move forward? Tongues will wag for a while, and you won’t become king, but you will be crown prince....”
“You talk as if Haidar and I are the only candidates.”
His interjection had her eyes widening as if he’d said something too ridiculous to answer. She decided to humor him, it seemed. “You are the only valid ones. Rashid Aal Munsoori is damaged goods. Nobody in his right mind wants that unstable creature in control of anything, let alone a kingdom. Please, Jalal. He has as much chance as an iceberg in Azmahar’s summer desert.”
He had to laugh. “You have it all worked out, don’t you?”
She nodded graciously. “I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. You will all thank me later.”
He shook his head again, unable to wrap it around the scope of his mother’s capacity for deviousness. Ya Ullah, what a crushing shame she used all that insight and intelligence in such evil, world-scrambling pursuits. Was there any way to defang her, reroute her capacities to doing good, or should he just give up?
Give up, everything inside him said. He listened this time.
He circumvented her, walked to the frozen Lujayn. She didn’t look up even when his legs touched her spastic ones.
“My mother’s account provides a neater explanation for everything we had than anything I believe happened.”
Her stiffness increased, her breathing stifled. Her face remained turned, eyes downcast.
He went down on his knees before her.
A gasp escaped her as his hands caught hers, keeping her in place when she tried to bolt away. She still wouldn’t look at him.
“But what she didn’t count on was one thing. That even if my version of what happened fits nowhere as perfectly as hers, even if she brings me evidence that it had all been another of her long-term plots, I know what’s real. You—” he dragged her shaking hands to his lips then tugged her into a convulsive embrace “—are my only reality, ya rohi. You and Adam.”
She looked at him then, and the force of her desperation detonated in his heart. Tears poured from her eyes as if under pressure, her voice a choked tremolo. “I can’t be your reality. But she might let Adam remain in your life, if I am not.”
“You will both be my life, for the rest of it.”
She escaped his embrace, shaking all over, tears splashing his chest. “She won’t stop at anything to drive me away from you. She believes she’s doing you, and even Adam, a favor.”
“She won’t be able to do anything. I’ll protect you and your family. I will never let her hurt you again.”
“You think…I’d care if she threatened…to hurt me or my family?” Lujayn’s sobs rose, chopping her words, as if each tore something inside her. “What worse…injury could she inflict on me than…losing you? As for my family…she’s done the worst she could do to them already…knows she can’t do worse…ever again.”
“Then what is she holding over your head? Who is she threatening to hurt?” The ugliest suspicion that had ever assailed him tore into his mind. “Adam?”
And she cried out, “You!”
He staggered back on his heels, rocked to his core.
Too much. This was just too much. The blows his mother kept hitting him with. Was there no end?
Lujayn wept openly now. “She told me…she’d…destroy you. She said if I defied her and carried on with the ceremony, if I even told you, that she would, no second chances. And it wasn’t…a threat. It was…a promise. I believed her. I—I still do. I came…to try to reason with her…but it’s no use.”
He turned a gaze numb with shock to his mother.
Exasperation tinged her exhalation. “You believe her?”
“I would believe Lujayn over my own eyes,” he said, the words spontaneous, certain, his voice disembodied.
His mother’s gaze hardened. “That only proves I was even more right than I thought. Now that I know how deeply she has you in her thrall, I will do anything to stop you from surrendering your name and honor to her. And to her family, who’ll make you theirs, no longer your own person or your family’s. Or mine. If you were in your right mind you’d know that no one in Azmahar will ever accept her family, reinstatement or not. If you think prejudices ever go away, then you know nothing about the people you want to rule.
“But the worst of it remains on her. No one will accept an unnatural union between a man descended from pure royal lines on both sides with a mongrel slut who exposed her body for the highest bidder. A black widow who you claim married you during her husband’s mourning period, but who everybody knows is guilty of worse, of having illicit sex with you during that forbidden time, to trap you with her illegitimate child.” Steel blazed in her eyes. “But the absolute worst of it is you. You’re even worse than Haidar when it comes to giving your heart. I won’t wait until she pulverizes it. I’ll destroy you first, before I see you destroy yourself. My destruction will be surgical, can be reconstructed once I’m certain you’re safe from her, not like the infected mess she’d cause and that might necessitate an amputation.”
This time, as he stared at his mother, he wondered if he’d ever find words again. Ya Ullah…that conviction that she was ultimately doing this for his best.
His mother turned away, went to the open window where dawn had conquered the night. “It’s a simple equation, Jalal. I have to be your eyes and your logic until both are working again. I might have let you wed her so you’d claim the child, but when I learned you were leaving the essmuh in her hand, that you were giving her the sole power to divorce you, and control of your assets, I knew I couldn’t wait for you to wake up. You can claim your son, who does have your blood, but her and her family, never.”
Silence shrieked in the wake of her last words.
Then he finally pressed Lujayn’s shaking hands and rose, went to face his mother.
“Here’s my simple equation, ya ommi.” He marveled at how calm his voice was, how clearheaded he was. He knew this would be his last effort where his mother was concerned. If she responded unfavorably, he would have no mother anymore. “I won’t say that inside you is a mother who doesn’t want to hurt her son, for I know I can’t budge you from your belief that you’re saving me. But there is a mother who doesn’t want to lose her son, even if he isn’t her favorite, and a fool to boot. I know blood means everything to you, and you won’t risk losing the third person you’re equipped to love—your firstborn grandson. And you will lose me, and him, irretrievably, if you pursue this, and if you hurt Lujayn again, in any way. That isn’t a threat. It’s a promise.”
His mother looked at him for what felt like an eternity, a lifetime of unsaid things passing between them, profound things he’d never dreamed existed.
Was that concession he saw in the depths of her eyes? Surprise? Even distress? Or was he just seeing the things he hoped to see?
But when she spoke her voice carried traces of all that, and dared he think, defeat, too? “Zain. I will back off.”
Did that mean she feared losing him so much she would go against her nature? Could he hope?
&nbs
p; Then she went on, and said nature was back, hale and hearty. “But you will come to regret your decision. Just pray it won’t be ‘irretrievable’ when you do. And do promise you won’t feel so foolish then that you won’t come to me for help.”
What do you know? The dragon lady was shaken. She’d gambled big and lost, was trying to scramble back to higher ground.
“I can tell you from now to not hold your breath, ya ommi.” He suddenly did what not even he had expected, pulled her into a fierce hug. “But I can’t tell you how much I hope that you one day will regret your actions, change your mind and make a new start. Think about it. Your family is growing, and instead of wary, infrequent visits from your sons, you can choose to connect with us all and find some peace and contentment.”
His mother remained still in his arms. He knew it would be too much to expect an immediate response, and in front of Lujayn, too. Maybe never. But for his own sake, for Lujayn’s and Adam’s, he didn’t want to harbor any bitterness toward anyone, starting with her.
He finally stepped away, hoping to get some reassurance from her. Her face was carefully empty, which told him more than any expression would have.
Then she gave him a slight smile, patted his cheek and swept away. There was majesty in her every move as she sat down on the couch, facing the frozen Lujayn, and rang a crystal bell.
“Might as well have breakfast,” his mother said, looking at Lujayn as if she’d just met her. “Do you have any preferences?”
* * *
“Pinch me.”
Jalal immediately pinched a handful of Lujayn’s delightful bottom. She yelped then chuckled, still jumpy, her eyes dazed.
“I mean, your mother blackmails me into standing you up at the ma’zoon, then serves me breakfast half a world away? So, was this a hallucination? A breakdown?”
He grinned his love and relief down at her. “Whatever else she is, my mother thrives on being flabbergasting.”
“Tell me about it.” She melted deeper into his arms in his private jet’s reclining seat as if she’d burrow into him, hide under his skin if she could. “Oh, God, Jalal, she was so convincing. I almost bought her version of what happened. As you said, it explained everything far more neatly than the truth. But you believed in me, against all damning evidence.”
