by Sarah Croix
"I can't marry you," I said quite evenly, "Because I don't think that would be really fair to your son."
Now there was a much louder gasp from the room and I heard the Sultan take a loud gasp. Obviously, this was going to be big news for him.
Aziz only looked up at me, as if he was in a state of shock.
Well, good, I thought. For all the time that I had spent anguished, wondering how someone so amazing, who had so completely altered my life could keep something as important as another child and lover from me.
"I received a package today, Aziz," I said, looking down at him. "Telling me all about Clara Kane."
This time, I had a noticeable effect on Aziz. He visibly winced as I said that name. Like I struck him. Everyone else was glued to the scene playing out in front of them.
"Clara Kane," I said again and Aziz flinched once more. "That name really strikes a nerve to you, doesn't it?" I asked him, reveling in the embarrassment I was causing him.
"I don't think I can accept your proposal, Aziz," I began again. "Because I don't think it would be fair to Clara. Or did you ask her permission too during the three times you've visited her while I've been here?"
Now a collective murmuring arose out of the people sitting at the table.
"Miss Natalie," the Sultan began, but Mother took over.
"Darling, maybe you want to talk about this in private?" she got her answer when one look from me silenced both her and her husband.
"And do what? Talk about how I basically felt like jumping out the window all day today because the man I love has been seeing another woman when he leaves the Palace?" I asked, tears beginning to fill in my eyes. "How he's been transferring money to them to take care of the child since he got back."
"His name is Andrew," Aziz said quietly.
"What?" Nadia's file hadn't mentioned what his name was.
"His name is Andrew Kane..." Aziz said again, firmer.
"Well, he's eight Aziz," I said, placing my hands on my hips. "Don't you think he's been too long without a Dad?"
Aziz chokes back a response and I knew that I had wounded him.
"I wasn't enough for you, was I?" I ask, venom dripping from my words. "You saw her after we were together. You saw her before me. God, Aziz, did you tell her the same things you've been telling me, you asshole?!?"
Now I was screaming but I couldn't help myself. Muriel got out of her chair and she came to me and put her hand around me, whispering softly in my ears. But the tears were flowing and I realized I was losing control. "I can't marry you Aziz. I asked you so many times what was bothering you when you got that faraway look in your eyes and you couldn't tell me. We could have figured something out if you had been honest but you hid it from me. You lied to me..."
I couldn't hold back and began to sob openly. Muriel pulled at me and this time I gave way, letting her walk me away from the table. I looked at Aziz, still on one knee, his head held low.
But I couldn't see anymore - tears blurring my vision. I don't remember how I walked back to my room. I don't remember much else except throwing myself on my bed, and crying into my pillow until I felt like I would die.
At some point, I heard knocks on the door. I heard Aziz' voice. I didn't move to open it. I heard my mother calling out to me and I finally opened the door. She rushed in and I grabbed her, crying into her shoulder. My friends soon followed.
I didn't see Billy. I guess he was too embarrassed having been friends with Aziz.
After a while, I asked to be by myself and people grudgingly left.
I knew the only reason I wasn't crying anymore was because I had no strength left in my body. I lay there on my bed like a rag doll, all washed up and broken.
I fell into and out of sleep, and each time I awoke, I thought how badly Aziz had wronged me. How he had wronged this woman and her son. As commoners, they probably had no idea what Aziz had been doing with me. How unfairly he had treated them.
Before I fell asleep for the last time, I told myself that in the morning, I would pay a visit to Clara and Andrew Kane.
It was time they knew the truth about Andrew's father.
In the morning, I felt ill. There was a weight upon my chest and I realized that if I didn't fight through it, I would stay in bed all day.
I realized I was still wearing my dress from last night. After another moment of misery, I finally got up.
I took off my dress and walking into the shower, getting ready for the day.
Clara Kane's house wasn't that hard to do find. Before I departed, I summoned Jasmine and asked her to find it for me. She searched the public records and found it within a few minutes. Then I asked her to get me a car and driver, and that I'd be going on my own.
The Palace recently assigned me some bodyguards, but because of my relatively low profile they're not as intense as the ones Aziz had to deal with. Still, their job was to blend in the background and give a modicum of privacy to him. For me at least, a few well-placed questions and words was enough for me to get out on my own.
The limousine pulled up in front of Clara's house around 9 am.
My heart aching at knowing was I was going to find, I steeled myself and walked the length to her door.
I rang the doorbell and waited. The house was a modest home, nice and homey. It was built on the edge of the city where the suburbs began to start. In many ways, it reminded me of our house that I had grown up in Los Angeles.
I knew that most likely at the end of this meeting, I would probably be making plans to move back there anyways. As much as I loved Aziz, I couldn't keep doing this. There was way too much hurt and pain, out of what used love and longing.
The door opened and an attractive but tired older woman looked out at me. A part of me was startled. She seemed a bit old for Aziz - the woman looked like she was in her late thirties, maybe older forties. Her eyes were careworn but still she managed to keep a trim, tight body, wearing a pair of yoga pants and a tank top that hugged her body in a way that still made her look cute.
I wondered to myself if Aziz was the type to go for MILFs, because this woman would definitely be one.
"Hi, uhm, Miss Kane, my name is Natalie Ewing," I said, not sure at first how to broach the subject. I couldn't really go in there and be like ‘Hey, just thought I'd stop by because we're both fucking the same sheikh.’
"Yes?" she said, opening the door wider, giving me a better look inside her home.
“I’m from the Palace,” I said. "Is it okay if I come in?"
"Absolutely," she said, opening the door and letting me through. I walked into a home that had a very homey, lived in quality. There were times when the Palace was too large, too impersonal to me. It made sense - it was after all used as a state administrative building as well. But this house seemed like it was filled with love.
But it also felt like there was an undercurrent of sadness in it as well. Sadness that had been there for a while, but had finally lifted.
Clara showed me to the living room, where I sat down. She brought out some tea.
"What can I help you with?" she asked after we had finally sat down.
I put down my teacup and looked at her. The only way to remove a Band-Aid, I thought, was to rip it off quickly.
"I don't know how to tell you this," I began as she looked at me, her eyes widening. "So I'll just come out and say it."
"Okay," Clara said, nodding her head.
"Yesterday, evening, Aziz Mussayef, the Sheikh, " I got that far and realized I needed to pause and take a breath. "He asked me to marry him."
I waited for a reaction. Any reaction.
"You see; we've been seeing each other for some time now. We’ve been dating, but I didn't know about you. We've been...intimate on large number of occasions, but again that was when I didn't know about you," I continued. Clara just kept staring at me.
"I'm going back home Los Angeles and I told him no, but I guess I just wanted to come clean to you before I left," I concluded, looking at
her expectantly.
Clara looked at me a long time.
I had a feeling that this wasn't going to be pretty.
That’s when I heard Aziz on the television.
23
Aziz
Holy fucking hell. This could not be happening to me.
After Natalie ran out, the place cleared out pretty fast. I didn't stop to talk to anyone, I just got up and stormed out as people were still shuffling towards the door. Some people may have stayed and finished dinner, but I didn't care.
I stalked down the hallway and into the den. Looking at the trophy of a camel’s head that was felled by my great-great-great-grandfather Amir bin Al-Alim, I cursed the day I was born into the royal family. It made me a target and when people couldn't get what they want, they thought it was perfectly acceptable to hurt the one's I cared about.
Of course I knew who gave Natalie that file that she was reading and crying over. There was only one person that knew.
Lady fucking Nadia Hussein.
My dad must have been following me because he stormed in right after me. Unlike me, he didn't stop at the boar's head but walked straight to the wet bar. He pulled out two glasses and poured a general helping of whiskey into them. He took both and brought one to me.
"Take it," he commanded. I obeyed and downed the drink.
"Fuck," I said aloud, thinking how my plans had gone fucking pear shaped in the matter of fucking minutes.
"Why didn't you say anything, son?" he yelled, looking at me, putting the glass back down on the bar. "Why didn't you tell her?"
"What the fuck am I going to say?" I yelled back, frustrated with myself for the situation I'm placed in. "I had to protect him!"
Father filled the glasses again and sat down in a plush, overstuffed chair. "You have to tell her, Aziz," he said.
I remained silent, walking to the window and looking out at the tall skyscrapers off in the distance. The central business district of Qumar was home to a host of multinational corporations from all over the world. The low corporate tax rate and ease of doing business made our country a haven for foreign direct investment.
"Aziz," Father said again. "You've proven your point, son. You've shown me that you're cut out to be Sultan. You have displayed attributes of perseverance, honor, duty, and now, loyalty."
I turned towards my Father. I couldn't believe he was praising me so highly. For a man who rarely spoke well of me the last few years, this was something entirely unexpected.
"But I want you to think about yourself, for once now, son," Father continued. "Don't let your loyalty cloud your focus. Don't let it ruin your life. And above all, don't let those who benefit from your goodness use it against you."
I walked over to the bar and grabbed the glass of whiskey. I downed it again, feeling it burn as it went down.
Father came up to me and put an arm on my shoulder. "When I first courted your mother, she fell in love with me, but she saw the vicious politics of our country and a part of her was afraid that it would tear us apart," Father said softly. "She initially refused to marry me. But I made a grand gesture afterwards that convinced her that she was the only woman for me."
I turned towards my father, my eyes asking what that gesture was. I had never heard him tell me this story.
"I carry it with me every day, Aziz," he said, pulling out a letter from his pocket.
He handed it to me, and I began to read it.
Fuck me.
It was a letter from Sultan Sayid bin al Mussayef renouncing the throne for matters of the heart. I read the letter, speechless at what I was reading.
I turned towards my father.
"Make a grand gesture, Aziz," he said, squeezing my shoulder. "Show her how much you love her. The person you protect would have wanted that if he could have been here."
And with a gruff smile, he walked out, leaving me to my thoughts.
I tried to wake Natalie at some point in the evening after I collected my thoughts, but she didn't let me in. Couldn't say I fucking blamed her. I must have seemed like an asshole like no other.
I began to make some calls. I called Hamid in and sat down and explained what I wanted to do. He agreed wholeheartedly and told me it was about fucking time. Seriously, he used those words. "About fucking time, Your Highness."
Fuck me if I didn't realize that I was slowly letting go of the past that had held me back so long.
I went to sleep around 2 that morning and woke up at 6. It was going to be a busy day.
I had a different dress uniform that next morning at 8:30 am. I fingered the ring I had presented to Natalie the night before. If everything went well, then maybe there was a chance she would consider me again. I fingered my other pocket, and felt the item I was looking for, and smiled briefly
Hamid had set everything up just as I had told him to. The press began to gather at the steps to the palace around 8:45 am, with security holding them back past a perimeter. Photographers snapped pictures of me.
I had been out of the public eye for quite some time and the media were salivating to see what I did next. I could imagine quite a lot of media outlets wondering what they could do with all the reporters they had hired for their "Aziz beat" that were sitting around the last month and a half twiddling their fucking thumbs as I kept my nose clean.
Well, not exactly clean, I mean it had been in Natalie quite a bit. Along with my tongue. And fingers. And my massive cock.
I smiled to myself as the media gathered. At exactly 9:00 am, Hamza, the Royal PR man went to the podium and turned on the microphone. He knew that I was going to be making a statement, but not much more than that. He wasn't happy about it. But then again, I didn't want to ruin this last, delicious story.
"Ladies, and gentlemen," Hamza said into the microphone, "Here now, Sheikh Aziz al Salam Mussayef."
Photo bulbs flashed as I took the podium, looking out into the sea of journalists and the sizable crowd of pedestrians who had stopped to see what the spectacle was.
"Ladies, and gentlemen," I began, pulling out my notes. "I will have a prepared statement, after which I will not take any questions. This statement should be being broadcast on all local channels, and the Royal Broadcasting Office is pushing this on the airwaves of all non-local satellite and cable television channels as well as all radio frequencies. Pretty much the only channels not impacted are military channels utilized for defense. The reason for this is simple...and that is to reach all people as quickly as possible with what I'm going to say."
I looked into the cameras, taking a deep breath. "For the last several years, I have been harboring a very close secret that has been eating me alive," I said, keeping my voice steady. "It's caused me to act out in ways that many of you are familiar with - generally to the point where half the world either knows me as 'Sheikh Party' while the other half knows me as 'Sheikh Passion'. I'll leave you to figure out who thinks what."
There was a small ripple of laughter as I continued. "But the truth is that I was acting out. Acting out in ways that masked a deep pain that I hid from the world."
I paused as the journalists began to sense the crux of the story and the cameras started to flash.
"You'll all know that I was in Afghanistan several years ago. What many don't know, through my own instructions at the time, was that I was placed within the elite commando unit known at the time as Special Force Team 4."
The cameras begin to flash faster. "We were tasked with deep penetration missions that were deemed too dangerous for regular infantry. We reveled in the danger. Until one day, when it all went bad."
I paused and look at the cameras rolling in the back and wondered if Natalie was watching. Hamid had informed me that she had left the palace in the morning, and that they were currently locating her.
"I was the Captain of my unit, and I accepted full responsibility for the events of that day, but the brass as well as a Board of Inquiry determined that the circumstances as they had been placed had left me making the be
st of a bad situation. We had been lured into a trap by enemy forces outside of Kandahar, and we struggled for days to stay alive in a zone that was meant to make us vulnerable instantly and kill us quick. The Board of Inquiry ruled that the fact that I had kept my team alive so long was a testament to my skills."
The cameras began flashing even faster.
"But from where I was sitting, I didn't feel like I had done anything. Because I lost someone under my command. He never made it out of the valley, and it was because of my orders. He died, protecting us. He died, protecting me. I had to make the call, to protect the rest of the unit. I wasn't in his location, otherwise I would have been the one that stayed behind. But all I could do was radio the order."
I noticed that the number of people who are standing looked like it had increased dramatically.
"His name was Anwar ab Hussein, perhaps my best friend in the world."
The cameras went crazy. People had known Anwar. We had grown up in front of the cameras together.
"But Anwar left a legacy. He left behind an heir and a woman that he was planning on proposing to once he got back. Only, he never came back. Which left a badge of what his family felt was dishonor that they had wanted to remain hidden."
I looked into the camera and spoke. "For too long, Clara Kane and her son, the son of Anwar, have lived in silence. No longer. If Anwar were here today, he would want the world to know that he loved them. That he was going to marry Clara and put his life in order."
The cameras at this point formed a continuous wall of flash bulbs.
"I have been supporting and ensuring that Clara and Andrew Kane are taken care of, but as of this day, I will officially ask Parliament to recognize them as part of the House of Hussein in recognition for Anwar's valor."
Journalists were standing up, and typing furiously into their phones.
"There was no dishonor," I said, "Except that which I committed myself. For too long, I allowed myself to grieve and my wound festered. And I embarrassed this office. And this nation. And when I finally realized what I had done, it was all because of one woman."
