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He’d said ya habibati.
When he wasn’t in the throes of passion.
My darling. My love.
Eight
“You sh
ould have told me I’d meet you on a One Thousand and One Nights set. I would have come in costume.”
Numair stared at the man who approached him as he stood at the top of the stairs facing the helipad. The last man on earth he’d ever thought would come to his assistance. Richard Graves.
The Englishman had waited until the helicopter’s rotors had stopped before he talked to make sure Numair heard his mockery. As if Numair didn’t already know it was his default in general, and with him in specific.
Only two years older than himself, Richard had been Cobra to him for the sixteen years he’d known him in the prison of The Organization.
But he wasn’t one of his brothers. He’d been one of his jailers. He’d long been his nemesis. He was now his partner. It was...complicated.
Richard was now looking around the expansive desert vista surrounding Numair’s home.
Yes, his home. That was what this place had become in the past six weeks. His first home. Anywhere Jenan was with him, even part-time like now—when she spent most of the days with him, making love, conducting their businesses remotely, just being together, but spent the nights in the royal palace for appearances’ sake—would now always be home to him.
She was home.
“So you’ve finally found your roots, eh? Happy now?” Richard drawled as he came to stand eye to eye with him. He was the only one who’d ever matched him in strength, in power, in danger and ruthlessness.
Numair glared at the man he’d loathed for the past twenty-five years. The man who’d once been his best friend.
Not that they’d ever mentioned this brief period when they’d been the most important person to each other. Not between themselves, and certainly not to others. All his Black Castle brothers knew was that they were sworn enemies. His brothers had spent the past two decades wondering and asking why. But neither he nor Richard had ever volunteered an explanation. What had happened between him and Richard had been before he’d made the others his team. And it had been unforgivable. Richard should be grateful Numair hadn’t killed him the moment he could.
And he would have if not for Rafael Salazar, his youngest brother. Richard had been Rafael’s handler, and Rafael had formed an unbreakable bond with him, considered him his mentor, his older brother, even. When Richard had left The Organization and caught up with them by tracing Rafael, Numair and the rest had unanimously decided to eliminate him. They’d considered him the enemy, and a lethal threat to their new identities. Exposure as the agents who’d escaped The Organization would have meant their certain deaths. Or at least being forced to relinquish the identities they’d gone to so much trouble to create.
It had been a simple equation. Richard or them.
But Rafael had put himself between them, insisted he trusted Richard with his life and theirs, that if they got rid of Richard, they had to get rid of him, too.
Rafael’s adamant position had forced them to trust his judgment as they always had, and to back down. Not that Richard had made that easy. He’d taunted them, warning them that in a confrontation between all of them and only him, they would be the ones in danger.
Rafael seemed to have called it right, since Richard hadn’t exposed them. But Numair suspected it had only been because Richard considered Rafael his younger brother, had killed and would die for him and wouldn’t risk him being taken down with them. Numair had wanted nothing more to do with that bastard. But he’d soon found himself forced to collaborate with him in building Black Castle Enterprises.
Being pragmatic, he’d known only Richard had the knowledge, skills and power he needed to construct something impregnable. His own field was military intelligence, espionage and counterterrorism, putting him in position to deal with the huge political and criminal issues that faced a corporation of their size and reach. But Richard was the one who was an incomparable security specialist, who dealt with the everyday dangers, the security issues in the real and cyber worlds that could bring any business down.
So they’d become, for all intents and purposes, partners. Not that this had changed their personal position. They would always remain antagonists.
Richard’s lips twisted as he returned his antipathy, just with his usual sarcasm. “I should have known you came from such a land, where vendettas are inherited and cherished as the source of honor and glory. You can’t help what you are, it seems. It’s in your genes.”
Usually, he engaged Richard in the rituals of their ongoing cold war. But Numair couldn’t afford to do that now. Not when that damned snake had something he needed.
Knowing that, and determined to make the most of Numair’s inability to react as he wished to, Richard smiled like the serpent he was.
Pushing the jacket of his handmade sand-colored suit out of the way, he shoved one hand into his pants’ pocket, with the other one still holding the briefcase he was here to deliver. Without attempting to give it to him, he looked around like someone assessing a pawned property he’d come to acquire in lieu of an unpaid debt.
“So I see you installed yourself in a setting appropriate to your future lofty status, until you take over Saraya’s royal palace.” Richard gave him a baiting glance, one of the staple methods of interaction between them. “You even acquired yourself a local princess.”
Numair bristled but forced himself not to flay Richard alive. He wanted that briefcase with a minimum of fuss.
Obviously, Richard had other plans, as his goading intensified. “At first I thought you were stringing her along to spoil Hassan’s marriage plans. I thought you’d asked me for help with the release of Zafrana’s financial assets to deprive him of his power over Zafrana, to contribute to crippling him before you struck him down. But then you continued carrying on with her, and I realized your actions have all been directed to making her and her father indebted to you, and dependent on you. You don’t only want Saraya’s throne, you want Zafrana’s, too. And she’s your ticket to it.”
