‘What the hell is going on?’ she demanded.
A dark eyebrow arched as he moved slowly towards her, and she could tell that if he had a shred of remorse for putting her in this situation, she couldn’t see it anywhere in his stormy blue eyes. They were empty of anything but cold, hard resentment.
‘Why, Sheikha, do you not like your new living arrangements? All this space to yourself, I see, and so much privacy. Who could ask for more? But if you have a complaint, there are stone cells in the floors below the palace, I believe, if these rooms are not to your satisfaction.’
Her chin ratcheted up a notch higher. ‘Why am I prisoner here? What have I done?’ Her voice broke on the last word and then her strength and resolve gave way. ‘Rashid,’ she appealed, taking a step closer even though the very air felt like bars between them. ‘What is happening?’
He snorted. ‘Didn’t I tell you to be careful what you sent using the palace Internet? Didn’t I warn you?’
He made no sense. She hadn’t plastered anything up on social media. She hadn’t sent anything she shouldn’t.
‘But then,’ he continued, ‘why would you listen to me? Blood is thicker than water, after all.’
‘What?’
‘Oh, come now, Sheikha, surely you can’t have forgotten this little gem? “The dollar signs in my eyes lit up too!” Or maybe this one will strike a chord: “keep listening for the ka-ching”.’
And like a sledgehammer it hit her. The email she’d sent to Matt. The nonsense email to get him excited and frothing at the mouth with anticipation.
‘You read my emails? How dare you? That was private.’
‘What did you think I meant when I warned you? Of course the palace has to monitor communication coming in and out. Did you think your little missive to your cousin would go unnoticed—a cousin you are supposedly finished with now?’
‘I am finished with him.’
‘What, after you sent him the two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, or will that be after the five hundred thousand you have promised him next?’
‘What? I didn’t send that money to Matt—it went to a solicitor who—’ And with a sickening thud, she realised just who she’d sent the funds through—the very solicitor Matt had instructed to draw up the documents complete with the small print she’d been too naive to read and so signed her inheritance over to him. And if Matt was in some kind of financial trouble, then, chances were...
‘Let me finish your sentence.’ Rashid confirmed it for her. ‘It went to a solicitor who is now being investigated, along with your beloved cousin, for misappropriation of funds.’
Tora squeezed her eyes shut, reeling at her naivety, cursing the rush she’d been in that she’d trusted a colleague of Matt’s. What if that money, too, had been lost?
But surely Rashid couldn’t believe that she’d sent the money to Matt. ‘I didn’t know about the charges. I didn’t know any of that. Matt gave me his solicitor’s name because he was dealing with my parents’ estate. But the money wasn’t for him. That went—’
‘Then why did you tell him not to worry about it?’
‘No. Listen,’ she said, putting out her hands in supplication, ‘you’re confusing two different things. Matt cheated me out of my inheritance from my parents’ estate—that was the two hundred and fifty thousand he was talking about. When he asked for more, I thought I’d send him a taste of his own medicine. What I sent him was rubbish, Rashid, to lure him in and make him think I’d stumbled on a fortune and was going to share it with him. You have to believe me.’
‘Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars,’ Rashid said, ignoring her explanation, ‘which just happens to be the same amount of money you asked for and got.’
‘Yes, because I had promised it elsewhere and I needed it as quickly as possible.’
‘Why? What was so urgent that you were so desperate to get the money then?’
‘Because Sally’s husband has cancer and they needed the funds to get him to a cancer clinic in Germany. And I’d promised to loan them the money from my inheritance because they’d already mortgaged their house and they’d exhausted every other means. That’s where your precious two hundred and fifty thousand dollars went, and Steve’s there now lying in that clinic, fighting for his life and close to death and now it looks like everything I’ve done has been for nothing.’
Her vision blurred and swam and she dropped her face to the floor. She didn’t know when she’d started crying, she hadn’t been aware of the tears falling, but now there was no stopping the torrent coursing down her face. Because if Steve died, everything would have been for nothing.
The sound of a clap forced her head up. Followed by another. A slow clap coming from Rashid that matched the slow pace of his feet as he drew closer to where she had fallen. ‘Bravo, Ms Burgess, that was an award-winning performance. It had pathos, melodrama, even tears. Unfortunately some of us recognise that was all it was—an act. I didn’t see you looking too upset last night when you were coming apart in my bed. I didn’t see any tears fall then.’
She sniffed. ‘Sally wrote this morning with the news.’
‘Oh, this morning. How convenient.’
‘Steve is dying. It’s the truth!’
‘I don’t think you’d recognise the truth if it slapped you in the face. You climbed aboard that royal jet and ever since then you’ve been scheming to make it worthwhile to you and your crooked cousin. You played it well. Exceptionally well. One time a siren, another a virgin Madonna, you kept ducking and weaving and spinning your web of lies so well that you almost had me convinced that you were special, that there might even be a future for us beyond this short-term deal.’
His lip curled. ‘What a fool I’ve been.’ His cold dark eyes were filled with abhorrence as they raked over her, all but scraping her skin with their intensity. ‘And I must be a fool because I thought—I actually thought...’ He shook his head. ‘A fool. You will stay here in your rooms until it is time to send you home.’
‘Rashid,’ she begged as he turned to leave, because in his words was a tiny kernel, a glimmer of hope, if she could only prove to him that she was telling the truth. ‘Please, I beg of you...’
His feet paused at the door. ‘What?’
‘There is one thing you should know. One thing you have to believe.’
‘Well?’
She licked her lips, her heartbeat frantic as she prepared to lay it on the line and bare herself to him utterly. ‘I couldn’t do the things you say. I would never betray you. Because... Because, I love you.’
He laughed, the sound cold and jagged as it echoed around her room, until she felt as if her heart had been sliced apart. ‘Nice try.’
And then he was gone.
She threw herself down onto her bed and let herself weep in great heaving sobs—because she’d only ever married Rashid to secure the funds for Steve’s treatment and, somewhere along the line, she’d fallen in love with a despot in the process, a despot who’d laughed at her when she’d bared her soul to him.
And now Steve was fighting for his life in a German clinic and it had all been so pointless.
It had all been for nothing.
And she hated the man who had done this to her with all her heart.
The man she’d thought she had loved.
She loved him. Talk about desperate. As if he’d believe that. As if she’d thought it would excuse what she’d done.
Atiyah was crying when he returned to his rooms and the black cloud above his head thundered and roared.
‘She won’t stop,’ a tearful Yousra said. ‘She wants Tora.’
‘Give her to me!’ he demanded, and the young woman’s eyes opened wide with surprise, but still she handed the bundle over. He juggled the unfamiliar weight, the arms and legs working like little pistons, the face screwed up and red, and he caught a flailing arm with one finger and tucked her in close to his chest as he tried to remember how Tora had told him to try to calm her. ‘Atiyah,’ he said, trying to stop the storm cloud hanging over him from making him shout over her screams, ‘Calm down. Calm down.’
He walked with her one way, he walked back the other, but there was no settling her. ‘Atiyah,’ he said, ‘little sister, you must stop this.’ And on impulse, when he could not think of anything else that might help, he started humming the tune, the lullaby he’d heard Tora sing to her, the lullaby that had been dredged up from the depths of his memories. And eventually, somewhere along the line, the notes filtered through to the tiny infant and Atiyah’s cries became more brief, staccato bursts between the listening moments, bursts that became hiccups. Until finally she fell silent apart from a low whimpering sound.
‘Is she asleep?’ Yousra whispered in awe. And he shook his head as he sang that soft lullaby, because, while her face had unscrunched, she was wide awake and staring up at him, a frown knitting her brow as she focused intently on his face, almost as if she recognised him.
He stared back at her, equally fascinated until he came to the end of the song and he smiled, and the little girl wiggled in his arms and smiled right back.