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His mouth tightened. He’d talk to Fayez about this woman, Estelle. But right now he had to get his wife back. Safe and sound.
Estelle stepped stiffly aside as another woman alighted from the backseat and stood directly in front of the spotlight.
Mahindar’s stomach dropped, then hit rock bottom. A flash of stark violence almost brought him to his knees. His wife was bloodied and bruised, one eye closed shut, her bottom lip split and her cheekbones swollen. That this was the same woman who’d dared to flick him and his drone the bird, was probably the only reason she was still alive.
He didn’t move, didn’t allow them to see how affected he was by his wife’s injuries. One thing he’d learned as sheikh was to never give away his emotions.
This washisfault. No one close to him was ever going to be safe. His wife included. The proof was right in front of him.
He stalked toward her in a slow and measured stride, his face blank, empty, while his mind spun with sickening images of the vengeance he’d inflict on her captors. His breath shuddered out as he neared her. If he gave into his emotions now he’d most definitely do something he’d regret.
Keeping everything inside him shut down, he stopped five yards away from his wife and said neutrally, “Arabelle. You’re coming home with me now.”
She didn’t say a word as she stepped past her captors and toward him. That she did so with her battered head held high and her spine straight, as regal as the day he’d met her at their wedding, showed she was a sheikha through and through.
His heart wrenched. He couldn’t have fallen more in love with her if he tried. If only the look in her one good eye revealed the same emotion toward him.
But she was as distant toward him as ever. An icicle radiating coldness. Not that he blamed her. He swallowed past the lump in his throat, his gaze fastening on the man and woman outside the car and the shadowy silhouettes of the two people still inside it. All of whom had kidnapped and assaulted his wife.
That they’d no doubt done irreversible damage to her, not physically but emotionally and mentally, made up his mind. He looked back at his wife and nodded at the nearest helicopter, his voice harsh, “Go. You will be safe with them.”
Her good eye flashed with distress. He winced. He deserved her disbelief. His supposed protection had been what had gotten her into this mess.
It wasn’t until after she’d thrown off her hijab, her tangled hair falling free, and she’d climbed into the helicopter, that he headed closer to the car. He had no need for a gun, not with the cannon in both helicopters. “Weapons,” he demanded.” All of them.”
Ahmed’s lips thinned as Estelle shook her head and mumbled mutinously, “No.”
Mahindar stepped closer to the ‘maid’ and encircled her wrist with his fingers, lifting her trembling hands and the gun she held. His hand tightened at seeing her bruised and skinned knuckles, the red welts under her fingers. She gasped weakly, the gun falling from her feeble grip.
“Good call,” he said, pretending she’d deliberately dropped the gun when they both knew it wasn’t true. He looked pointedly at her hand, then bent to pick up the gun. He pointed it at her casually, getting small satisfaction at seeing her stumble back from him, twisting her ankle badly on the edge of a rock and falling on her ass.
Ahmed tossed his gun onto the ground between them and held up his hands. “We don’t want any trouble.”
Mahindar nodded, then bent to pick up the gun. “Then tell your men to get out of the car.”
Ahmed spoke rapidly to the other two men and they opened the doors before reluctantly getting out of the vehicle. Mahindar didn’t know the man from the front seat but he most certainly knew the man in the front.
Raheesha.
That he’d been a trusted servant and friend scraped Mahindar’s nerves raw. He didn’t take such treachery lightly.
But Raheesha didn’t look at Mahindar, instead his eyes stayed downcast, his face pale and his expression shamefaced.
Mahindar sent them an empty smile. “Toss your guns over the edge of the road.”
The rocky embankment on one side hid a cliff that dropped to the ground a hundred yards or more below. Too far for anyone sane to attempt to regain their weapons.
“Do it,” Ahmed snarled.
Though resentment flared in the foreign man’s eyes, he didn’t put up a protest. Neither did Raheesha. They threw their guns, a faint clattering sound echoing seconds later. Mahindar chose to keep Ahmed’s firearm, but threw Estelle’s gun in the same direction as the others.
Mahindar turned to Ahmed, then nodded at the trunk. “Open it.”
Ahmed did as he asked and Mahindar took a look inside. There were two containers inside. One for fuel and one for water. “Take out the water container,” he instructed.
The men did so reluctantly, straining and huffing with exertion as they heaved it out and allowed it to drop onto the ground near the vehicle. They stepped back cautiously, their eyes on Mahindar.
“Wait! W-what are you g-going to do?” Estelle asked, walk-hopping toward him.
