A Secret Birthright

chapter Twelve

Gwen didn’t know what happened after Fareed declared that she’d be his wife.

Everything blurred before her as he led her to a helipad behind the mansion where a sleek metal monster awaited them with Rose and Emad already inside. He buckled her in the passenger seat and took the pilot seat after securing Ryan in the back with Rose.

She barely noticed that he flew them over the desert, then out to sea. It could have been minutes or hours later when they came upon an island. He landed in front of a house in the same style as his mansion, only much smaller, steps away from darkening emerald waters and a golden beach glowing with the last rays of sunset.

Emad took Rose and a sound-asleep Ryan upstairs, leaving her and Fareed alone. Fareed gestured for her to wait for him as he walked away to get engaged in a marathon of phone calls.

He now walked back to her, tall and broad and indescribable, everything she could love, his fists clenched in the depths of his tailored pants pockets, his eyes cast downward, his brow knotted, his face cast in the harshness of dark thoughts.

Had she imagined hearing him say she’d be his wife? Or was this why he looked so troubled? Because he was regretting it, was preparing to tell her that he hadn’t meant it?

He raised his eyes. Her heart clenched at what filled them. Nothing she could understand. He’d been always near, clear. Now he was as far, as unfathomable as the stars that twinkled in the sky framing him through the open veranda doors.

He exhaled. “I’ve arranged everything. The cleric and the lawyers will be here in a couple of hours.”

Her heart stumbled through many false starts as she waited for him to elaborate. He just kept his heavy gaze fixed on her, as if he expected her to be the one with something to contribute. An answer. An opinion. An acceptance.

But of what?

She finally asked, “What…what do you intend to do?”

His jaw muscles bunched. “Whatever will keep my father at bay. Now I know his true inclinations, we will need every weapon to stop him. In our culture, a paternal grandfather’s claim to a child, especially if he’s an elder or a man of status and wealth, can trump even a mother’s. My father’s claim as king would be absolute without any foul play. I now understand that when Hesham begged me to find you, he hoped I’d find you first, so I would do this.”

“This? You mean…”

“Marry you,” he completed when she couldn’t. “A mother can only gain power against a grandfather’s claim if she’s married to a man of equal status and wealth. My status might not be as lofty as his here, but my international status and assets are weightier. When I adopt Ryan, we’ll have enough rights among us to outweigh my father’s claim to him.”

This was a dream come true.

And the worst nightmare she could have imagined.

Fareed was offering her marriage. But only because he thought Hesham had meant him to, to keep his child out of their father’s clutches.

She’d already known she’d been just a lover to him. As intense as it had been, had she stayed at his insistence, he would have ended it sooner or later. He would have never offered her anything permanent. He would have never loved her.

She’d been grateful for that. She should be grateful now. For this proposal that would secure Ryan’s future.

Even if it destroyed hers.

Fareed had thought he’d already hit rock bottom.

He’d thought he’d never know deeper misery than when he’d found out Gwen had been Hesham’s worshipped lover, the mother of his child. Now he knew there were more depths to sink to. It seemed as long as Gwen was in his life, and that was now going to be forever, he’d never stop spiraling down.

He hadn’t expected her to jump for joy when he’d mentioned marriage. But he’d thought even if her emotions weren’t involved, that she wanted him, might welcome the idea of marrying him, at least see the benefit to her and to Ryan.

But it seemed nothing worse could have happened to her.

It seemed she’d suspended her grief in her gratitude for him and relief over Ryan’s cure. She’d plunged into sexual intimacies with him, but must have thought she’d been betraying Hesham’s memory, and with his brother of all people. To ameliorate her guilt, she’d been promising herself she’d leave, and he’d never know. She might have thought that by disappearing and putting up with any subsequent hardship to protect her child and Hesham’s, she’d atone for succumbing to her need to feel alive and desired again. It had all been bearable, as long as it remained temporary.

But now she’d found out it would turn permanent. She’d realized that the only way to protect Ryan was to marry him, Hesham’s brother, when she’d been unable to marry Hesham himself. This looked as welcome to her as a dull knife through her heart.

He had to stop her punishing herself, assure her that he wouldn’t be compounding her guilt.

His voice was as dead as he felt inside as he said, “I want you to know that I will never ask anything of you again. This is to give Ryan, and you as his mother, the Aal Zaafer name, what Hesham should have been able to give you, with all the privileges that you’re both entitled to. This is also to give Ryan the father he needs, the only man on earth who’ll love him like a true son.”

He’d thought he’d seen her distraught before. But now, she looked as if her heart were fracturing, as if his every word crushed it.

He knew this pact would sentence him to a lifetime of deprivation, but he had to finish detailing it. “I’ll give you the essmuh. In our culture, this means that you’ll control the marriage. You’d be able to end it, if you so wish, without my consent. I’ll also give you full power of attorney, giving you control of my assets. In case anything happens to me, I’ll make a provision to circumvent our inheritance laws, so you’d inherit everything. If we’re both gone, everything will be Ryan’s. If he’s not of age, anyone you choose would be his guardian until he is. This will make you as powerful as I am, will give my father no way to attack you even if I’m gone. As for our daily life, I’ll be in Ryan’s life however you choose me to be.”

And he was done. Finished. She looked as annihilated.

He watched her sag to the couch, then turned around.

He heard a helicopter.

It was time to make this terrible pact securing Gwen and Ryan forever binding.

“Zawaj’toka nafsi.”

I give you myself in marriage.

Gwen droned the words, her eyes glued to the pristine white handkerchief. Her hand was clasped with Fareed’s beneath it. The cleric had his hand on top of theirs as he recited the Jizaanian marriage vows and prompted their repetition.

Emad and a guard were their witnesses. Rose and Ryan were present, one crying rivers, the other giggling a storm.

Soon the brief ritual was concluded and the cleric documented their marriage. She watched him drawing intricate script that looked as if he was casting spells, in a huge, ancient edition, the royal book of matrimony. Then he invited them to sign their vows and the details of the holy bargain they’d struck.

Fareed looked as if he was signing away his life.

Sinking deeper in misery, she signed, wishing she could sign her own. If only he’d take it, she would have.

One of the female servants let out a zaghrootah, a shrill, festive ululation. Rose—who thought this was all real in spite of the irregular circumstances she was just beginning to understand—was highly intrigued and tried to replicate the sound. Ryan was delighted and did his own ear-piercing imitations. Gwen felt her head might split open at any moment.

Fareed looked as pained at the unbridled mood as sharbaat ward—rose essence nectar—was distributed to those present in celebration of the happy marriage. But he endured it all with a stiff smile. He was the one who’d organized it after all.

She wondered why? It couldn’t be because he was treating this as a real marriage. He’d told her in mutilating detail not to expect anything from him. Except everything she didn’t want, that was. His status, his name, his wealth, in life and death. His heart had never been on offer. His passion, his ease and humor were things of the past. She wouldn’t even have his companionship. She could only expect his presence where Ryan was involved.

She would have preferred it if he’d been enraged and outraged that she’d lied to him all this time. At least those would have been emotions, something to make her hope anything he’d felt for her survived, even if wounded. But he’d just turned off, as if he’d never felt a thing, not even on a physical level.

He hadn’t even suspected her motives for hiding the truth. Didn’t doubt she could be hiding even more. He’d just accepted her announced reasons, then proceeded to trust her with the sum total of his life and achievements.

But that wasn’t for her, as he kept pointing out. That was for Hesham’s woman, for Ryan’s mother.

He was now probably putting on a show for those present, so they’d spread news of their marriage’s authenticity. All for Hesham’s memory, for Ryan’s future.

None of it was for her.

And if he knew the whole truth, she’d lose even the crumbs he’d been forced to give her.

Tranquil waves frothed on the shore, erasing the names Fareed kept inscribing in the sand.

Gwen. Ryan. Gwen. Ryan.

He felt as if his world had emptied of anything but them.

It had been a week since they’d come here. He’d been away only to go the center for a few hours a day. When he returned, he hadn’t been able to stay away from either of them all their waking hours. He had nothing but those. Longing for her kept him up nights, his mind and body on fire. He’d only slake it inside her, in her passion. And that was forever gone, too.

He might have survived it if he hadn’t known what it was like with her, the pleasures that had enslaved his brother before him.…

His thoughts convulsed on a torrent of regret. Jealousy and guilt were slowly poisoning him. And he could do nothing but let the emotions corrode him.

But at least his objective had been secured. He’d called every favor he was owed worldwide, had thrown money and influence at every obstacle in his path, and he’d gotten Ryan’s adoption finalized. Gwen had been stunned when he’d told her in the morning.

Then this afternoon, she’d come out of the villa for the first time with Ryan, followed him as he’d paced the beach.

What had followed had been an unexpected torment, a simulation of the times they’d spent together as the family he’d thought they’d been forging. A glimpse of what might never, probably would never be. But then, whatever spontaneity and warmth he’d thought they’d shared had had probably been both of them responding to Ryan’s delighted discovery of his surroundings, his tireless demand that they join him in frolicking in the sand and sea. Left to her own devices, she’d probably avoid him for life.

She would have.

Suddenly her scent carried to him even over the tanginess of the open sea. He braced himself, hating his weakness, the molten steel of ever-present desire that poured into his heart and loins.

“Ryan is finally sand-free.”

He turned at her breathless declaration. She seemed to be floating to him in a full-length dress the sunlit color of her hair. It molded to her, accentuating her willowy splendor as if made for her. Seemed he could translate his obsessive knowledge of her every dip and curve and swell to ultra-precise fit. It was one of the dresses he’d had delivered for her because she’d left her belongings in his mansion. He’d never thought he could buy a woman clothes. Visualizing, fitting and buying them for her could turn into an addiction. As everything concerning her had.

She stopped before him, her skin and hair reflecting the radiance of the setting sun, her eyes the endlessness of the sky. Her warmth enveloped him, her hesitant smile pierced his vitals.

Then she reached out, almost touched him.

He wouldn’t be able to resist such a brutal test. If she touched him, he’d drag her to the sand and take her. And she’d beg him to do everything to her. Then after the mindlessness of abandon, she’d sink into that misery that had so baffled him, that he now understood. He couldn’t survive that of all things.

He caught her hand in midair, his jaw, his whole being rigid fighting the need to drag her by that supple hand, crush her beneath his aching flesh, ride her.

He hurt. Inside and out.

She pulled her hand away, her smile as shaky. “You have sand in your hair. Ryan bathed us both in it.”

He gestured to her glowing cleanliness. “You’re sand-free.”

“Took a lot of heavy-duty scrubbing. The sand here is incredibly fine, like powdered gold.”

He bit back a groan as the images and sensation bombarded him. He could almost feel his hands running down the smoothness of her slippery body as he lathered her, kneaded her under a steady jet of warm wetness, as he drove inside her tight, fluid heat, over and over until she climaxed around him, singed him with her pleasure. Then he would rinse her, caress and fondle her, whisper to her how she felt around him, what more he’d do to her as he brought her down from the pinnacle of pleasure, had her simmering for the next ride.…

He exhaled forcibly, trying to expel the encroaching madness. “I’m glad Ryan enjoys the beach. Activities on the sand and in the sea are the best natural form of physiotherapy for him.”

She bit her lower lip, made him feel she’d sunk those white teeth in his own, in his heart. “I never even took him to the pool. I was afraid to expose him to physical stress because I had no way of knowing if I’d be harming him. So it was his first exposure to the sea, and as you saw, he went berserk with delight.”

He had been as thrilled as he could be in his condition with Ryan’s joy. “We’ll come here as often as possible, then.”

She gave him such a look, hesitant, anxious, as if asking him what was to become of them, what kind of life they’d have.

What did she expect? They’d come here, they’d be together everywhere, where he’d be Ryan’s father and her parenting partner, but never again her lover. They’d never be a real husband and wife and just a simulation of a family.

B’Ellahi, why was she here? Trying to smile and make small talk and shake sand out of his hair? Did she think he could be her easy companion now as he shared Ryan’s upbringing?

Or was she considering resuming their intimacies because they were now married, for worse or worst?

Would he want this, if this were what she was after?

No. He’d either have all or none of her, couldn’t share…

“Fareed, there’s something I need…I have to confess to you.”

His focus sharpened on her. Her incandescent beauty was now gilded by the lights emanating from the villa. The spasm of sheer love he felt for her, the enormity of it, suddenly crystallized one irrefutable fact.

He was wrong. He had been wrong. About everything he’d felt or thought since he’d found out she’d been Hesham’s woman.

What she had been didn’t matter. What she was did.

She was the woman he’d loved on sight, the only one who’d ever aroused his unadulterated desire, possessed his unqualified trust and admiration. She had been a selfless lover to his brother, then as sacrificing a mother to Ryan. She’d been the best thing that had ever happened to him, too, his life’s first absolute intimacy. And he had been willing to give up anything, risk anything for her. His assets, his peace of mind, his hopes, his life. He now realized he could give up even more. He would.

He’d give up his jealousy, that Hesham had loved her first. His guilt over loving her when Hesham no longer could. His anguish over surviving when Hesham was no longer there.

But maybe she was already meeting him halfway. With this confession she wanted to make. He gestured for her to go ahead.

“You didn’t question the reasons I stated for hiding Ryan’s paternity…” She stopped, her agitation mounting.

He had to spare her. “There was nothing to question. You were doing what Hesham would have wanted you to do. He lived in fear of our father finding him and spoiling his life and yours. He clearly knew what Emad did, that our father was looking for him, not in the way I thought, out of anger. When he knew he’d die, he knew if he ever found you, you could lose Ryan to the man who almost destroyed him. My siblings and I were lucky because we had our mothers, whom everyone called the lioness, the Amazon and the harpy, to fend for us. But Hesham didn’t. His mother died giving birth to him.”

Her gaze wavered. “Hesham said your father never let anyone mention her to him as he grew up.”

Fareed exhaled another of his frustrations with his father. “It was whispered around the kingdom that she couldn’t withstand him, being this artistic, ethereal creature. It did seem that our father was so furious with her for being different from what he’d wanted, then for dying, that he banned any mention of her. When he realized Hesham was turning out like her, he did everything to force him into the mold he thought acceptable for a son of his. Hesham was right to fear our father and to instill that fear in you. If Ryan had fallen into his hands, he would have suffered an even worse fate because Hesham at least had us, older siblings who’d done all we could to temper his autocratic upbringing. So I understand that you had to hide the truth with all you had. I only wish you’d trusted me. At least, trusted Hesham’s decision to entrust your and Ryan’s futures to me.”

She grabbed his forearm, urgency emanating from her. “I trusted you with Ryan’s life, with both our lives when I came to the land I feared most on the strength of nothing but my belief in you. But it’s more complicated than you think. And when we…we…”

“Became lovers?” He placed his hand on top of hers before she could retract it. “I can see how this made you feel more trapped. But after I was furious with Emad when he revealed the truth, then told my father, I can’t be more thankful to him now. Like we say here, assa an takraho shai wa hwa khayronn lakom.”

She nodded. “You may hate something and it’s for your best.”

He smiled. “I’ll never stop being impressed by how good your Arabic is. Hesham taught you well.”

She blushed. Blushed. With pleasure at his praise. And at the ease with which he now referred to Hesham, and the beauty of the relationship she’d shared with him?

Then her color deepened to distress again. “But Emad didn’t find out the full truth. And when you know it, you won’t find acceptable excuses for my half truths.”

He took her by the shoulders. “No, Gwen, whatever you hid, I’m on your side, and only on your side, always.”

The tears gathered in her eyes slipped down the velvet of her cheeks as she nodded. “Hesham said your father told him his life story when he was fifteen. He said he married three women, one after the other for political and tribal obligations, had children from each, sometimes almost simultaneously.” Fareed knew well the story of his father and his four wives and ten children. He had a feeling she’d tell him things he didn’t know. “But he didn’t love any of them.”

“It was mutual, I assure you.”

Gwen winced. “Yes. Then he met Hesham’s mother and they fell in love on sight.” Fareed’s jaw dropped. That he surely didn’t know. He believed his father was love-proof, let alone to the on-sight variety. “But even if his marriages were to serve the kingdom, she wouldn’t be a fourth wife. So he divorced his wives wholesale, and dealt with the catastrophic political fallout.”

He was only six when this happened. He still remembered the upheavals. “My mother and the other two women say it was the best day of their lives when they finally got rid of him.”

She nodded. “It was how he convinced Hesham’s mother to marry him. She feared if he could divorce the mothers of his children so easily, that she couldn’t trust him. So he let her interview them and they told her it was what they longed for, how they, like him, had felt trapped in the marriages, that he’d never loved anyone but her in his life. He pledged only death would part them.

“Their marriage was deliriously happy, and when she got pregnant, he told her he’d love her child the most of his children. But she died, and he almost went insane. He at first hated the son he blamed for killing his love. Then as Hesham grew up and he saw her in him, he transferred all his love and expectations and obsessions to him. He ordered no one to mention her because it made him crazy with grief.”

Fareed felt more disoriented than when his father’s guard had struck him. “And it seems I will keep finding that I know nothing about those I considered my closest people.”

She shut her eyes. “Th-there’s more. Much more.”

“Then arjooki, please, tell me everything.”

She drew in a shaky breath. “What nobody knew is that a few years after Hesham’s mother’s death, her tribe, the royal family of Durrah, invoked an ancient Jizaanian law. That if a king married more than one woman, the sons of his highest-ranking wife would succeed him to the throne, with no respect to age. Since Hesham’s mother was a pureblood princess, that made Hesham the crown prince.”

He stared at her, beyond flabbergasted.

This…this…explained so much. Yet was totally inexplicable.

Not that he considered disbelieving her for a second.

But he had to ask. “Kaif? How could my father hide something like this? How is that not common knowledge?”

“Your father pledged to Hesham’s maternal relatives that Hesham would be his crown prince. On one condition—that they reveal this to no one until he prepared his kingdom and his other sons, especially the one who lived his life believing he was his heir, for the change in succession. But most important, until he prepared Hesham for the role he’d be required to fill. They agreed, in a binding blood oath. The king told Hesham when he turned fifteen and your oldest brother, although still in confidence. Hesham said Abbas was sorry for him, if relieved for himself. He didn’t relish being crown prince.”

Fareed could believe that. Abbas was a swashbuckling, extreme-sport-loving, corporate-raiding daredevil. He dreaded the day he’d have to give up the wildness and freedom of his existence to step into their father’s shoes. He always said, only half-jokingly, that the day of his joloos on the throne he’d turn the kingdom into a democracy and be on his way.

But it was making more sense by the second, explaining the infuriating enigma of his father.

“So this was why Father pressured Hesham to that extent. He was trying to turn him into the crown prince he knew he wasn’t equipped to become.”

“Yes, and this was why he so objected to…to…”

“To his choosing you. He must have had some pureblood royal bride lined up for him, too. This does explain why he reacted so viciously to Hesham’s news that he was marrying you.”

“But even with Hesham gone, Ryan…”

“Wait, Hesham meant Ryan’s name the way I pronounce it, the Arabic version, didn’t he? But he picked it because it worked in your culture, too, with a different meaning.”

She nodded, her urgency heightening at what she considered unimportant now. “What I was saying is that Ryan might still be considered the king’s first-in-line heir. And this is why he might never give up trying to get custody of him.”

He ran his hands down his face. “Ya Ullah. I see how your fear of our father is a thousand times what I believed it should be. But you no longer have to worry. Even a king’s claim to his rightful heir wouldn’t trump our combined custody.”

“You might be wrong…”

His raised hand silenced her. Ominous thunder was approaching from the darkness that had engulfed the sea.

A helicopter. He would bet his center it was carrying his father. This had to be Emad’s doing.

His fury crested as he turned to Gwen. “Go inside, please. I’ll deal with this.”

“Fareed, let me tell you first…”

But he was already running to meet the helicopter as it landed, needing to end this before it started. And to end Gwen’s worries once and for all.

The moment his father stepped out of the helicopter that, to Fareed’s fury, Emad was piloting, Fareed blocked his way.

“Father, go back where you came from. Gwen told me everything. And it’s over. Ryan will never be in your custody.”

Challenge flared in his father’s eyes. “I’m surprised you even think your ‘adoption’ is a deterrent. Our laws don’t sanction adoption, just fostering, and adopting him according to another culture’s laws means nothing.”

“The deterrent is not only that Ryan has the Aal Zaafer name through me, not Hesham. It is that I’ll give up my Jizaanian nationality if it will make my adoption binding anywhere in the world, starting with here. But most of all it is that I, a man of equal status to you and superior wealth, am married to Ryan’s mother.”

The king only transferred his gaze behind him. Gwen had followed him, was almost plastered to his back.

Then, without taking his eyes off her, his father said, “That is not your greatest weapon but your greatest weakness, Fareed. Gwen isn’t Ryan’s mother. She’s his aunt.”