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Abir stroked his long beard and shook his head. “She’s the one who insists in standing in the way of what I want, but I suppose it’s ‘like mother, like daughter.’ You’ve been ruining my plans for months, infidel.”
“Hey!” Haley barked, crossing her arms in front of her chest. “Don’t insult my mom, and you’re not getting anywhere near her.”
Brenda reached for the fabric of her daughter’s sleeve and pulled tightly on it, forcing her back to the mattress. “Haley, no.”
Abir laughed, a long grating sound that would haunt her nightmares—if she lived. “You should listen to your mother, you foolish girl. You think you’re being brave, but you’re showing off how stupid you really are. I have five armed men and weapons of my own. Why do you think you could stop anything?”
“Because it’s my family, and you can’t hurt them,” Haley said, her voice still level but her body tensing as she spoke. “If you need a hostage, then take me. That’s all you need to do, take me instead.”
He laughed again, and Brenda would never forget the sound for as long as she lived. “Because your mother’s brats stand between me and the throne. I worked hard to have my uncle poisoned in such a way that the stroke wouldn’t look unnatural, that people wouldn’t suspect me. I have my family, followed the rules, and now my womanizing excuse for a cousin will be taking everything I’ve worked for—with half-American children, at that.”
“You did what?!” Brenda asked, not believing that Jamsheed’s agony and the long months of hoping the old sheikh—still on life support—would pull through.
“You’re a monster!” Haley shouted, hopping to her feet again.
Abir rolled his eyes and hit Hayley hard in the temple with the butt of his weapon. Brenda screamed as her daughter stumbled and fell to the floor, a trail of blood leaking from her temple. She scurried as best as she could to the floor, getting her hand to her daughter’s head and trying to mop the blood away with her veil. Haley’s breathing was shallow but still there, but she needed a doctor.
Brenda tensed as pain tore through her abdomen and the cramps started in earnest. Her body tensed, and she wanted to scream. Fire shot through her veins, and pain racked her.
Oh god, I can’t be starting labor. Is it my blood pressure? The babies?
She clutched one hand to her stomach and the other to Haley’s temple. “Please, we need help.”
Abir reached down and wrenched her to her feet. “You have no idea how right you are.”
***
“It’s Haley and Brenda, come now, my sheikh.”
Those words had cut through him like a knife ever since Jazmina had rushed into the mosque’s antechamber. It hadn’t even been time for him to take his place at the altar, and he’d assumed that the two most important women in his life were going through the final rituals to make themselves ready for the wedding, whatever type of makeup procedures they needed. He had no idea any trouble at all was brewing.
But the look on Jazmina’s face told him he was wrong.
He rounded the corner to the bedroom and wanted to vomit when he found Haley lying there, her hair on the right side matted with her own blood. He slid down beside her and cradled his stepdaughter in his arms.
“Haley? Oh Allah, please, can you hear me?”
After the longest moment of his life, Haley’s eyes fluttered and she blinked back up at him. “Jamsheed? Where is she?!” She tried to bolt upright in his arms, but he held her still.
“You can’t move. You need for one of my father’s neurologists to look you over. This head wound could be serious.”
Haley, rubbed at her head. “I know and I feel like someone took a drill to my brain, but Mom! She was here. He took her and the babies.”
“Who?” he asked, his insides burning. There was only one obvious answer for who would dare to mess with his family. “Who took them?”
“Abir. That guy? Totally creepy, and I can’t believe you’re related,” Haley said, slipping out of his grasp but still staying seated on the ground. “He’s a grade-A psycho. He said he hurt your dad, too; that he set the stroke in motion with some drugs so he could get the kingdom. Jamsheed...” she began, breaking into tears. “He already tried to kill your dad. I don’t think Mom and the babies have much time. You have to stop him!”
Jamsheed patted her hand and then surged to his feet. “I promise you, Haley. I will find him and save your mother, and then I shall tear my cousin limb from limb.” His fists clenched at his side and he felt the fire and fury of a thousand suns. “Abir will pay. For all of this.”
***
“Do you know how long I’ve waited to be the Sheikh of Zomelia?” Abir asked as the caravan of Land Rovers sped off from the palace grounds. It didn’t even surprise her that a few of the men in the party she recognized as official palace security. Abir had spies everywhere this whole time, men still loyal to him, and now she and her children would pay for that. “I was the one who waited here, did everything Uncle asked, and stayed in Zomelia for our people. I never asked anything for myself.”
She let out a pained breath even as the pain tore through her back and abdomen. Something felt stick between her legs, and every inch of her was terrified that it was blood. “You just took. You know that Jamsheed will find you, don’t you? He’ll never stop hunting you down. So you can do whatever you like to us, but you’ll be a wanted criminal, and you will never be sheikh.”
“I have enough rebels at my command that I can influence,” he said, stroking his beard again. “If I’m the clear heir, then Jamsheed will find himself fighting in the midst of a civil war.”
“Haley was right,” she gasped out, furrowing her brow at the pain assaulting her. “You’re a monster.”
