AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Ginny, you can’t just leave.”
“Mom, this isn’t about Xaviera or my baby someday being a king. This is about me knowing that if I don’t get out of this country with my baby, I’m going to be stuck here forever with a guy who doesn’t love me and a king who thinks he’s God.” She tossed her mom’s cell phone to the bed and took her hands. “I have a baby to protect. I’ll be damned if my child will grow up to be a man so stuck to his duties that he can’t even see his own babies born or love his wife.”
She took a long breath and stared at her suitcase. “To hell with this junk! I didn’t want these clothes in the first place.”
She poked her head out the door and motioned for the two bodyguards to come inside. “I want a helicopter on the roof of this hospital in five minutes. Then I want flown to the nearest safe airport and one of the royal jets waiting for me there.” She sucked in a breath. “I’m going home.”
* * *
The buzz of the king’s cell phone had all heads in the war room turning in his direction. Cell phones had been banned. Too many opportunities for picture taking, voice recordings and just plain dissemination of their plans. In fact, no one but the king had left these quarters.
They slept on cots in a barracks-like room, ate food that was made in the attached kitchen and hadn’t had contact with the outside world except through the video feed they stared at.
He missed Ginny. More to the point, he worried about Ginny. Something had been wrong the night they came here and he just wanted to fix it. But he knew he couldn’t, so maybe it was better that he spend three days cut off from her so he didn’t make promises he couldn’t keep.
His father walked over to where Dom sat in front of a computer, staring at the feed of the port, feed that hadn’t changed in twenty-four hours.
His father sat. “What do you think they’re doing?”
“Undoubtedly, trying to figure out how to distance themselves from the sheikh since he seems to have deserted them.”
“Should we give them a chance to surrender?”
He caught his father’s gaze. There was a look in his eye that told Dom this was a test. A real-life hostage crisis for sure, but a chance for his father to test him.
“I’d say we offer them generously reduced prison terms for surrender and testimony against the sheikh, and go after the sheikh with both barrels.”
“You want to kill him?”
“I’d rather arrest him and try him for this. I think making him look like a common criminal rather than a leader who’d started a war he couldn’t finish sends a stronger message to the world.”
His dad laughed unexpectedly. “I agree.” He bowed, shocking Dominic. “Now what are you going to use to negotiate terms?”
He pointed at his father’s cell phone. “This might be appropriate. Except I think we should get hostage negotiators from our police to do that. Once again making it look more like a criminal act that a military one.”
“Agree again.”
Dom called Xaviera’s police commissioner and within the hour the rebels had surrendered, all hostages safe. The sheikh was in hiding, but he was too accustomed to luxury to stay underground for long. Dominic had every confidence they would find him, and when they did, he would stand trial.
The fifty military and security personnel in the war room cheered for joy when they received the call that all rebels were safely in jail.
But Dominic didn’t want to stay around for the party. He might not be able to love Ginny, but she was pregnant with his child and not feeling well. He needed to get back to her.
He tapped his dad’s shoulder. “I’m going to get going.”
“Tired?”
“And I need a shower but I need to see Ginny.”
As Dom turned to walk away, his dad stopped him. “Dom, there are a few things you need to know.”
Expecting more details or facts about their problem, he faced his dad again.
“Ginny has gone home.”
“What? Of course, she’s home. She’s in the apartment.”
“No. She’s gone back to Texas.” He shrugged. “Some women can’t handle war. She got a helicopter to take her to a safe airport this morning and took a jet back to her old hometown.”
He gaped at his dad. “She’s never mentioned wanting to leave before. She was committed—”
“Like I said, some women can’t handle war. We’ve never been at war when she was with us.”
“This is absurd. This was hardly a war. It was an ill-conceived attempt to take over our country by a guy who we clearly gave too much credit to.”
