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Richard only chuckled. “Not only won’t you flay me alive and all the other lovely sentiments you just expressed, you also now owe me another favor. No, scratch that. I now practically own you.”
“Hang up, Richard.” Numair’s growl was so harsh it scraped his throat raw. “I’ll find her on my own.”
“Will you survive until then? And if you don’t care about your suffering, would you leave her with disillusion preying on her a moment longer if you can help it?”
“Dammit, Cobra, where is she?” His roar made Antonio lurch and wince and Ameen almost lose control of the wheel.
“Don’t give yourself a stroke, Phantom. You need your nervous system intact for crawling at her feet.” Threats hurtled from Numair again before Richard interrupted. “I want a promise before I send you her location.”
“What the hell do you want?”
“Nothing. Now. But when the time comes and I want to collect, I want one of those binding promises of yours that you’ll do it without question.”
“Do what?”
“Whatever I ask.”
Though his head was about to explode with rage, Numair was ready to sign an actual contract that made him Richard’s slave in return for immediate knowledge of Jenan’s whereabouts.
“I pledge it. But say another word that isn’t Jenan’s location and I will flay you.”
* * *
Richard hadn’t said another word. He’d just chuckled and ended the call. The next second Numair’s phone had buzzed with a text message with Jenan’s address.
After dumping Antonio on the nearest curb, Numair had Ameen tearing back to his jet. He was now flying cross-country to California.
According to Richard, she’d rented a place in the desert. A year’s contract had been signed. It seemed she’d wanted to escape her old life and anything that reminded her of him.
The seven and a half hours it took him to be standing on the doorstep of her rented condo in Rancho Mirage finished the last reserves of his endurance.
She opened the door, puffy eyed and precious and everything he wanted in life. He would have fallen to his knees before her if she hadn’t immediately turned around, leaving him to follow her inside.
Clearly not surprised that he’d found her, she started immediately. “I already told you you’d get what you want. You don’t have to mollify me so I’d be easier to handle. I won’t give you any trouble. I know no one can stop you, certainly not me, so I won’t even initiate a losing fight.”
“Jenan...please...”
Her deadened tone cut him off more effectively than if she’d screamed. “I’m pragmatic enough to know that whatever I wanted for my life no longer matters, and any plans or hopes I ever had are over. I have no one to blame for this but myself. I’m the one who disregarded every caution and plunged headfirst into your trap, and the result is an innocent baby, who’s now the one thing that matters. I don’t expect you’d be involved in its life as a regular father would, but you’ll have whatever role you wish. Because I can’t stop you, but mainly because I won’t have the baby suffering the consequences of my folly in making you its father. I won’t compound this disaster by turning its life into a battlefield over it.
“Now that you’ll take over Zafrana and Saraya, you’ll be there most of the time. But since you know my position on living there, we’ll negotiate a schedule when I’ll come periodically, so you can see your child. As long as you stay away from me, everything will be exactly as you want.”
His every fiber shrieked for him to grab her, drag her back from the void of estrangement and into his heart. He could only stand before her, helpless for the first time since he was ten.
“I want nothing but for you to give me a chance to explain. What Najeeb said—”
“—is just what you told him.” She spoke over him again, her lifelessness another blow to his shriveled heart. “But it isn’t the truth still. I can feel it. I always felt you were hiding major stuff, but I deluded myself into thinking it was because they were such intensely personal and painful matters, they were unspeakable to you. I thought it would hurt you all over again if you ever had to relate them to someone. I couldn’t think of trespassing on your private agonies, but I was stupid enough to keep hoping you’d one day feel enough for me, and trust me enough, to unburden yourself to me.”
Suddenly, her mask of numbness started to splinter, tremors of anguish breaking through, eclipsing her fragile eyes, shaking her swollen features. “Now I know you were just hiding your identity and intentions. You never told me any truth. And you’re still lying now.”
With the first tear that escaped the trembling pool filling her reddened eyes, he staggered back, unable to bear the brunt of her disillusion and alienation.
“You’re right. I was still lying. But no more. Though I would have given anything to never have you know the whole truth about me, I owe it to you to tell you everything.”
She stumbled back, too, as if from the path of a bullet. “I’m sure you have some story you think will make me slide back into trusting you, or at least make me sympathize with your motivations and understand why you did what you did. But it’s too late for that. Too late for anything.”
The finality of her words felt like a mortal blow. How he remained standing, or even breathing, he had no idea.
“You already do understand why I did what I did. I wanted what I believed to be my birthright, and I always do whatever it takes to get what I want. As for making you sympathetic, there’s no chance for that. The story I have to tell you—all the things you sensed me hiding—will only horrify you.”
