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His desperation burgeoned with every dead end, every second feeling like wading deeper in a waking nightmare.
Somewhere along the way, the nightmare metamorphosed into his old one.
But this time it was different.
Instead of men boarding his father’s boat, it was tossed by waves as tall as skyscrapers. His father wrestled with a huge sail as he shouted for him to get back belowdecks before losing control of the sail that whacked him violently on the head and knocked him overboard. Then the boat capsized, tossing Numair after him.
Wrestling to the surface of the water, of the dream, his whole body discharging with sick electricity, he called Antonio and demanded that his brother meet him as soon as he landed in New York.
Antonio was there as agreed, in the limo that waited for him outside the airport. As soon as Ameen opened the door for him and he got in, Numair began to recount the searingly vivid vision.
Antonio’s cool blue eyes regarded him calmly before the man exhaled. “That’s what I’ve been hoping for, though I didn’t think it a possibility it would happen spontaneously.”
“What the hell do you mean?”
“I knew it would take an even more profound terror than the one you suffered when you saw your father drown and almost drowned yourself to drag more memories to the surface. When I asked for more sessions, I was going to try plunging you into an artificial panic state to dig deeper into your psyche. But since you fear nothing, I didn’t know if I could even do it. But something did manage to scare you more than all the horrors in your life. Your fear for Jenan’s safety and your dread you might even lose her. Those fears finally managed to jog your memories free.”
“You think those were memories?”
“Not just any memories. I think these are finally your real memories.”
“But I remembered a very different version before.”
Antonio pursed his lips. “I did tell you I felt there was more to what you remembered. In hypnosis, subjects frequently take a kernel of a memory and dress it in confabulations that suit their emotional and psychological needs. You wanted someone to be responsible for your father’s death, for your years of enslavement, so you invented the attackers, then used circumstantial evidence to form a perfect conspiracy that validated your alleged memories. We can do more sessions to make sure, but I’m fairly confident this is the truth at last.”
Numair stared at Antonio, but saw only his realizations. He had needed an enemy to hold responsible, to vanquish, to pay for everything he’d lost and suffered.
But this was the reality at last. This was what had happened.
“I’m sorry, Phantom.” Antonio looked serious when he almost never did. “As unsatisfying and unfair as I know this feels to you, it seems your father’s death and your ordeal were onl
y due to an accident.”
At Antonio’s unaccustomed sympathy, Numair roused himself from his musings. “No, no, it’s okay.”
Unconvinced by Numair’s preoccupied response, Antonio pressed, “I think you should be relieved it was. This brings you closure, and rests your father in peace.”
Numair nodded distractedly. Antonio was talking sense. But now that he’d given him a plausible explanation for the disturbing visions, the whole thing ceased to matter to him. All that mattered was that he found Jenan.
Antonio went on, “This even gives you the possibility of a family without the ugliness such a crime would have visited on all of you for generations to come.”
The word generations hit Numair like a hammer to the temple. For there would be a coming generation for him. It had been something he’d never truly visualized, even when there’d been every chance Jenan would get pregnant. And now she was.
But she no longer wanted to be. Not with his child.
“Phantom? Are you okay?”
At Antonio’s nudging, Numair realized the rumbling sound he heard had been issuing from himself. It was a moan of agony, of regret and dread. “No, I’m not. I injured Jenan irreparably.”
Antonio shrugged. “Prostrate yourself at her feet—which I’d love to see, by the way—and she’ll forgive you.”
“Even if she forgives me, she’ll never trust me again. Or love me.”
Before Antonio could respond, Numair’s phone rang. A feverish glance at the caller ID made him growl as if with a kick in the gut. Richard.
The moment the line clicked, Richard’s deep taunt poured into his brain. “After meeting your runaway princess, I’m considering doing her the favor of a lifetime and not telling you where she is.”
Apoplectic fury took him over. Rabid threats, torrents of them, burst out of him like rapid fire.
