A Secret Birthright

chapter 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. And 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.”

“Assef, Somow’wak—sorry, but you will stand aside now and let me complete my mission.” Mohsen produced his gun from his holster.

She drove her elbow into his gut with all her strength.

He gasped, staggered, but he tightened his hold on her neck. She choked, the world wavered and receded. She heard Fareed’s roar as if from a distance, saw his contorted face as he charged toward her and her captor, saw a gun pointing at him, from a hand beside her face. Dread for him swelled as she fought to sink her teeth into that hand…

“That’s enough!”

A roar reverberated in her bones, then she was snatched from the vise imprisoning her, and swept into the arms she’d thought she’d never feel again in this life. Fareed’s.

Her wavering gaze panned around. Emad was at the top of the stairs standing between Rose and Ryan and the men who’d gone after them, protecting them with his own body, like Fareed had done for her minutes ago. Fareed’s guards were cordoning the scene, four or five to each of Zayed’s men, pinning them at gunpoint.

“Took you long enough, Emad,” Fareed snarled as he took her deeper into his embrace, beckoned to Emad to get Rose and Ryan down and into his protection.

“My apologies, Somow’wak.” Emad led the shaken Rose who was clutching the bawling Ryan in a feverish embrace down the stairs, encompassing her by his side. Gwen bolted from Fareed’s arms, reaching out to Ryan who threw himself in her trembling ones.

Fareed’s footsteps almost overlapped hers, and the moment Ryan filled her arms, he took them both back into his own.

Ryan’s sobs subsided as soon as he found himself nestled between their bodies, his arms around her neck but his face buried into Fareed’s chest, recognizing him as their protector.

Emad went on. “I was on the road when I got your emergency signal. I had to investigate the situation and organize enough men and the plan to end this farce with minimum fuss.”

“With no further fuss.” Fareed turned his wrathful glance to Zayed. “Isn’t that right, Zayed?”

Zayed, still trying to recover from the vicious blow Fareed had dealt him, looked at him with grudging consent, acknowledging that he’d outmaneuvered him, had won. This round. He gestured for his men to stand down, retreat.

In minutes, all armed men, the king’s and Fareed’s, had left the mansion.

Rose was the first one to break the silence that expanded after their departure. “Holy James Bond! What was all that about? And what do they mean Ryan is some prince’s son?” Rose put her hand on Gwen’s arm. “Is this true?”

Gwen gave a difficult nod, unable to meet anyone’s eyes, hugging Ryan tighter, the fright still cascading through her in intensifying shudders.

Fareed tightened his arm around her, as if to absorb her chaos, squeezing the restless Ryan between them, crooning to him, “It’s over, ya sugheeri, you’re safe. I’m here and I’ll always be here. No one is ever coming near you again.”

A whimper caught in Gwen’s throat at the protectiveness and promise in Fareed’s voice, at the way Ryan responded. As if he understood and totally believed him, he transferred his arms from her neck to Fareed’s, burrowing deep into him, his whimpers silenced.

She almost snatched him back into her arms, cried to Fareed not to promise Ryan what he wouldn’t be able to deliver.

Before she could say anything, Fareed turned his eyes to her. “I’m sorry about what happened. My father will pay for this.”

She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Of course, it does. And it’s partially my fault, our fault, my siblings’ and mine. We’ve long become too involved in our lives and projects, we’ve left his council to work unopposed. He’s always been old-school, and has grown more rigid with age. That had once proven effective in matters of state, but when his inflexibility started causing problems, we just fixed them, instead of fixing his views and policies. And we’ve been paying bigger prices for treating the symptoms instead of the disease. His last unforgivable action was what he’d done to Hesham. But today he’s gone too far.”

Her headshake was more despondent this time. “I meant it doesn’t matter what you, or I, do now. He’s found out about Ryan, and everything that Hesham feared has come to pass.”

Fareed frowned down at her, the intense pain that seemed to assail him when she mentioned Hesham gripping his face.

He turned to Emad, his frown deepening. “What I want to know is how my father found out about Ryan.” The accusation was there in Fareed’s voice. But when the confession surfaced with equal clarity on Emad’s face, it still seemed to shock Fareed to his core. “B’Ellahi, why?”

Emad exhaled heavily. “I had no idea he’d react that way, but…I’d do it again, Somow’wak.”

Fury overcame confusion in Fareed’s eyes as he ground out, “And you have a sane reason for this?”

Emad held his eyes, his grim but unwavering. “Because I’ve known the king longer than you have, have seen different sides to him than what he shows his children. But you are pragmatic and emotional at once and have never given your status or its dictates precedence over your decisions, so you never try to understand his position. There are worlds between being a prince who’s not in line to the throne and being a king. That is the loneliest place to be.”

“And is this analysis of my father’s character and position and your view of both supposed to make any difference to me right now?” Fareed growled.

Emad shook his head. “I’m not asking that you forgive, just that you try to understand.”

Sarcastic disgust coated Fareed’s voice. “Shukran, Emad. I can’t fault my father for playing true to type, but I have you to thank for this impasse. You’re a sentimental fool and you romanticized that heartless relic.”

Emad cast his eyes downward, as if realizing anything he said now would incense Fareed further.

But Fareed wasn’t done. “Because you’ve run to him with your discovery almost the moment you made it, have you also been keeping him updated on my efforts to find Gwen and Ryan?” Emad just nodded. Fareed snorted. “I can’t tell you how great it is to find out that my most trusted ally is also a double agent. And for what? The most misguided sentimental crap for someone who’s never shown anyone the least sympathy.” He stopped, his fingers digging into Gwen’s shoulder, his arm tightening over Ryan, as if he was intensifying his protection. “And among all those fond memories of my father, didn’t you store the one when he forced Hesham into exile? Apart from the vile threats to the woman he loved, you do remember what he thought of the ‘inferior union’ that would soil our venerable line? So, because you’re the expert on my father’s deepest emotions and motives, b’haggej’jaheem—what by hell’s name does he suddenly want with Hesham’s son, the child he disowned before he came into being?”

Emad looked as if he wouldn’t answer that, at the risk of enraging Fareed even more.

Then he did, his eyes heavy, solemn. “I know you think the king cared nothing about Hesham, and I might never be able to convince you otherwise. But he cared too much. He never stopped looking for him either, and in the last year or so, I believe it was to call him home, find a resolution that Hesham would accept. Then Hesham died and remorse and agony almost drove him to the brink of insanity. Only knowing Hesham had a son, and the hope of finding him, has been holding him together. Once I found out who that son was, I couldn’t hide Ryan’s existence and presence in Jizaan from him.”

Fareed looked at Emad as if he was seeing him for the first time, his eyes gone totally cold for the first time since she’d seen him. “And I hope you’re happy with the results of your catastrophic misjudgment.”

And even though Emad had caused irreparable damage, she couldn’t help squirming, as she felt Rose did, too, at the intensity of Fareed’s disappointment in him, at Emad’s mortification.

After a moment of heavy silence, without looking at Emad anymore, Fareed said a curt, “Ready the helicopter.”

Emad only gave one of his deferential nods and strode out of the mansion. Rose ran out in his wake.

Gwen clutched Fareed’s forearm. “Where are we going?”

“Where my father can’t find us.”

She clung harder, implored, “He will find us, sooner or later, Fareed. If you want to help me, help Ryan, you’ll help us disappear. If you don’t, your father will take Ryan away from me.”

His face turned to stone. “No, he won’t.”

Her desperation mounted as she felt his finality trapping her, dooming Ryan. “If I don’t disappear, he will.”

His eyes bore into her as he put Ryan down on the floor, gave him a few things to play with. “So you’re proposing to do what Hesham did? But Hesham could only do that because he gave up his Jizaanian nationality, changed his name and was a freelancer who could continue to be an artist wherever he lived. You won’t be able to do any of that and remain yourself or sustain your career. You won’t be able to wipe out your existence. Now that Emad has enlightened me about my father’s obsession with finding Ryan, I know he would only trace you and kidnap him. I also realize that was why Hesham begged me with his dying breaths to protect you. He must have known our father was still looking for him, was afraid he would find you and take Ryan from you. But it doesn’t matter that he has now. I will protect you, but I can’t do that long distance. You have to stay with me.”

She was shaking all over now, feeling her world slip through her fingers like water, and there was nothing she could do to hang on to it.

“But you won’t always be around,” she pleaded. “You can’t. I stand a better chance of keeping Ryan from him if I’m on the other side of the world, not here, where he rules absolute. You didn’t see how he treated me. I wouldn’t be surprised if he had me…”

Fareed’s dug his fingers into her shoulder, stopping her projection in its track. “Gwen, you have nothing to fear, I swear it. I will fulfill my oath to Hesham. I will protect you, with my life. As for my father, he won’t even think of coming near you once you’re my wife.”