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“Are you here to kill me?” she whispered.
“No,” he said. “That would be far too basic, and I am a civilized man.”
“And not dead,” she pointed out.
“No. At least not last I checked.” He looked at her yet more intently. “Did you think that I was?”
“I did not discount it.” She looked away, and he was certain he saw regret in her eyes, sadness. But he was not swayed by it. “I know the fate of the rest of your family.”
“Riyaz lives.”
She nodded slowly. “Is that why you’re here? Because of Riyaz?”
“Yes,” said Cairo. “I am here on behalf of my brother. You don’t seem shocked that Riyaz is alive.”
“There were rumors. That he had been kept alive and imprisoned in the palace. Collateral of some kind. I do not fully understand.”
“Neither do I. But can one understand the will of a madman? Your father is included in that.”
“My father’s betrayal of your family was not something I had any idea of.”
“And I have no designs to blame you for it. You were a mere child.”
“So were you.”
He regarded her for a long moment. He had not felt like a child. Not since he had escaped the palace that day. He had known then that all he could do was survive. He’d had to. For he was the only remaining, living member of his family that was not being held in captivity. Survival was not an option. It was a directive.
“Then, you aren’t here for revenge?”
Revenge would be a much simpler task. Revenge he’d taken already and it had been easy, cathartic.
Ariel had never been easy for him.
But atonement required sacrifice.
And she was that.
“No. I’m here to ensure that the contract is honored. My brother has been freed, and he needs a wife.”
“I don’t suppose there’s any chance of you trying to find another one.”
“No. There is not. You were promised to my family, and my family has lost too much of what it is owed. I will not see this ended as well.”
She tossed her hair, looking every bit the haughty American socialite he had always thought lurked beneath the rather sweet, large eyed demeanor that she had always portrayed when she came to visit Nazul. But it was not genuine. He could see that just as easily. She was trying to be brave.
“It seems a bit like crying over spilled milk,” she said.
He was not a cruel man. But he was not a man who knew how to bend either. And there were certain things he refused to suffer. Fools, attempts at manipulation, and attitude from the woman whose father had engineered the murder of his parents.
“It is not milk that has been spilled,ya amar, but blood. The blood of my parents. And it is not spilled milk that causes anguish even now, but lost years. Fifteen years Riyaz has been in the dungeon. Fifteen years. Without human contact. With nothing. While I made the weapons that would claim his freedom. And you wish to speak to me in cliché. Let me return one for you. An eye for an eye. A tooth for a tooth. A life in captivity... For a life in captivity.”
What she wanted didn’t matter here. It could not matter. Softness here, with her, was unforgivable. A mistake made once before and never again.
Never again.
And then he reached out and took her by the arm, propelling her from her apartment. But she did not move quickly enough, so he lifted her off the ground with ease, cradling her in his arms as if she were a bride he were to carry over his own threshold. Laughable. She was not for him. She never had been. Always, from the beginning, she had been meant for Riyaz. And Riyaz had been robbed of... Absolutely everything.
It was that which fueled him now. The rage that he felt on behalf of his brother. And the need to atone for his part in it.
