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No one was permitted entry into his private quarters or anywhere in the east wing of his palace without his express permission. And he had no intention of giving it, he reassured himself as he turned down another hallway that led outside to where the royal helicopter waited.
‘Wait! You can’t... I’m with...him. With His Majesty,’ he heard her stutter in a rush as she was predictably detained.
Tahir continued walking, welcoming the blaze of the sun on his skin when he stepped onto the flat stone concourse that abutted the immaculate lawn of his private residence, and willing it to eclipse the blaze and disquiet spiralling within him.
When his pilot gave a brisk salute, Tahir nodded his readiness.
Then, over the rising sound of the rotors, he heard her. ‘Please! Your Majesty, wait! I need your help to save my brother!’
And he froze.
Lauren had learned early on in life never to show weakness.
To do so was to open herself up to cruel ridicule. From her father. From her brother. With her mother looking on and not saying much in her daughter’s defence. When a tearful Lauren had demanded to know the reason behind their treatment, her mother had merely shrugged and clipped out, ‘Life is tough, Lauren. Learn to grow a thick skin or you’ll always be a target.’
She’d been eleven. That was the last time she remembered crying.
Two decades on, with four menacing guards barring her from Tahir Al-Jukrat’s fast-receding figure, she was at grave risk of succumbing to tears.
She’d known this trip wouldn’t be easy.
Patches of her shoulders and back were raw from sunburn, her throat was parched—her water bottle having dried up hours ago. Her clothes were sticky with sweat and dirt, and her feet throbbed from standing outside the palace gates for three sun-baked days in a row.
The harsh lessons taught by her unforgiving father were what had hardened her spine long enough for her to remain at the gates, to keep making her hourly requests until they’d been heeded.
Until moments ago, when the last of her reserves had been depleted.
Well...that and the obscure threats that had followed her for twelve years. The suspicion that her father knew more than he’d let on about what had happened with Tahir. Wasn’t above holding another scandal over her head to make her toe his line.
Watching Tahir stride towards the helicopter in preparation to fly goodness knew where, she’d felt the last whispers of hope drifting away like dandelion seeds blowing in the wind.
Her desperation-soaked voice had stopped him in his tracks.
But that meant nothing. She’d hoped to ease herself into her reason for being in Jukrat. To calmly state her reason for planting herself outside his palace gates, guilefully insisting that they’d be wise not to turn her away because the Sheikh would want to see her, until his guards had had no choice but to relay her request to a higher authority.
All this could mean nothing because Tahir had despised Matt long before he’d come to despise her. Her brother’s indolent, entitled attitude to university life in particular, and to life in general, had grated on the intelligent, focused and ruthlessly hardworking Prince Tahir.
Even back then, the dynamic prince who’d taken her breath away from their first meeting had held a set of values and rigid beliefs that’d secretly awed her. Those values had been in direct contrast to Matt’s, who’d believed in skating through life on family connections and cronyisms.
In fact, hadn’t Tahir condemned her whole family to hell that unforgettable night when the Winchesters had closed ranks against him? When she’d let herself be talked into takingthe only option for the family?
Self-loathing swelled inside her as she watched tension vibrate in his shoulders, watched the muscles in Tahir’s neck stand out as he absorbed what she’d said.
Lauren would’ve given a limb not to be standing here surrounded by menacing-looking men, at the mercy of the Most Revered Sheikh of Jukrat, as one of his many titles loftily proclaimed him.
But her father’s Save-Matt-or-Else had given her little choice, despite all signs pointing to her brother’s guilt.
Her family was her cross to bear.
Perhaps it came from being adopted by parents who’d believed they could never have children naturally, only to discover a year after adopting Lauren that their miracle, much-longed-for biological child was on the way. From knowing, deep down in her soul, she’d never felt as if she belonged. She knew it was why, as a child, she’d gone the extra mile to prove she was worthy of the Winchesters’ choice when they’d plucked her out of dozens of care-home babies. To gift her an enviably wealthy and comfortable life, with every advantage at her fingertips. Advantage Lauren had been careful not to squander.
She’d repaid their choice by being a dutiful daughter, an exemplary student, even a stellar professional when her father had steered her—that thinly veiled but ever present ‘or else’ hanging over her head—into giving up the career she’d foreseen for herself.
While she deeply resented the threat, it was for that child who still craved a family—a desire she hadn’t quite been able to abandon—that she’d swallowed her trepidation and shame to come here. Face the man she’d wronged.
Eyes glued to his back, terrified he would start walking again, leaving her to the mercy of his guards, she opened her mouth to plead once more.
Without turning, Tahir gave clipped instructions in Arabic to his aide. The older man nodded and approached the pilot, whose gaze swung to Tahir, then sprang out of his seat.
