He drew a long breath, then let it out.
Now, the best he could do was hope that he had somehow removed the stain from his brother’s name, that those Rami had cheated would no longer speak that name with disgust …
Cheated?
Karim almost laughed.
His brother had gambled. Whored. He’d ingested a pharmacopoeia’s worth of illicit drugs. He’d borrowed money and never repaid it. He’d given chits to casinos around the world, walked out on huge hotel bills.
The bottom line was that he’d left behind staggering debts in half a dozen cities. Singapore. Moscow. Paris. Rio. Jamaica. Las Vegas.
All those debts had to be settled—if not for legal reasons then for moral ones.
Duty. Obligation. Responsibility.
All the things Rami had scoffed at were now Karim’s burden.
So he had embarked on a pilgrimage, if you could use such a word to describe this unholy journey. He had handed over checks to bankers, to casino managers, to boutique owners. He’d paid out obscene amounts of cash to oily men in grimy rooms. He’d heard things about his brother, seen things that he suspected he would never forget, no matter how he tried.
Now, with most of the “loose ends” gone, his ugly journey through Rami’s life was almost over.
Two days in Vegas. Three at the most. It was why he was flying in at night. Why waste part of tomorrow on travel when he could, instead, spend it doing the remaining cleanup chores?
After that he would return to Alcantar, assure his father that Rami’s affairs were all in order without ever divulging the details. Then, at last, he could go back to his own life, to New York, to his responsibilities as head of the Alcantar Foundation.
He could put all this behind him, the reminders of a brother he’d once loved, a brother who’d lost his way—
“Your Highness?”
Karim bit back a groan. His flight crew was small and efficient. Two pilots, one flight attendant—but this attendant was new and still visibly thrilled to be on the royal staff.
She knew only what everyone else knew: that the duty of settling his brother’s affairs had fallen to him. He assumed she misread his tight-lipped silence for grief when the truth was that his pain warred with rage.
It was difficult to know which emotion had the upper hand.
“Sir?”
As if all that weren’t enough, she couldn’t seem to absorb the fact that he hated being hovered over.
“Yes, Miss Sterling?”
“It’s Moira, sir, and we’ll be landing within the hour.”
“Thank you,” he said politely.
“Is there anything I can do for you before then?”
Could she turn back the calendar and return his brother to life so he could shake some sense into him?
Better still, could she bring back the carefree, laughing Rami from their childhood?
“Thank you, I’m fine.”
“Yes, Your Highness—but if you should change your mind—”
“I’ll ring.”
The girl did a little knee-bob that was not quite the curtsy he was sure his chief of staff had warned her against.
“Most certainly, Your Highness.”
Another dip of the knee and then, mercifully, she walked back up the aisle and disappeared into the galley.
He’d have to remember to have his chief of staff remind her that the world was long past the time when people bowed to royalty.
Hell.
Karim laid his head back against the head-rest.
The girl was only doing what she saw as her duty. He, better than anyone, understood that.
He had been raised to honor his obligations. His father and mother had instilled that in him from childhood on.
His father had been and still was a stern man, a king first and a father second.
His mother had been a sometime movie-star-cum-Boston-debutante with great beauty, impeccable manners and, ultimately, a burning need to spend her life as far from her husband and sons as possible.
She’d hated Alcantar. The hot days, the cool nights, the wind that could whip the sea of sand into a blinding froth …
She’d despised it all.
In some of his earliest memories of her he stood clutching a nanny’s hand, holding back tears because a prince was not permitted to cry, watching as his beautiful mother drove off in a limousine.
Rami had looked just like her. Tall. Fair-haired. Intense blue eyes.
Karim, on the other hand, was an amalgam of both his parents.
In him, his mother’s blue eyes and his father’s brown ones had somehow morphed into ice-gray. He had her high cheekbones and firmly-sculpted mouth, but his build—broad shoulders, long legs, hard, leanly muscled body—he owed to his father.
Rami had favored her in other ways. He hadn’t hated Alcantar but he’d always preferred places of sybaritic comfort.
Karim, on the other hand, could not remember a time he had not loved his desert homeland.
He’d grown up in his father’s palace, built on a huge oasis at the foot of the Great Wilderness Mountains. His companions were Rami and the sons of his father’s ministers and advisors.
By the age of seven he’d been able to ride a horse bareback, start a fire with kindling and flint, sleep as contentedly under the cold fire of the stars as if he were in the elaborate palace nursery.
Even then, twenty-six years ago, only a handful of Alcantaran tribesmen had still lived that kind of life, but the King had deemed it vital to understand and respect it.
“One day,” he would say to Karim, “you will rule our people and they must know that you understand the old ways.” Always there would be a pause, and then he would look at Rami and say, not unkindly, “You must respect the people and the old ways as well, my son, even though you will not sit on the throne.”
Had that been the turning point for his brother? Karim wondered. Or had it come when their mother died and their father, mourning her even though she had spent most of her time far from him and her children, had thrown himself ever deeper into the business of governance and sent his sons away?
He sent them to the United States, to be educated, he said, as their mother would have wished.
With terrifying suddenness the brothers had found themselves in what seemed an alien culture. They’d both been brutally homesick, though for different reasons.
Rami had longed for the luxuries of the palace.
Karim had longed for the endless sky of the desert.
Rami had coped by cutting classes and taking up with a bunch of kids who went from one scrape to another. He’d barely made it through prep school and had been admitted to a small college in California where he’d majored in women and cards, and in promises that he never kept.
Karin had coped by burying himself in his studies. He’d finished preparatory school with honors and had been admitted to Yale, where he’d majored in finance and law. At twenty-six he’d created a private investment fund for the benefit of his people and managed it himself instead of turning it over to a slick-talking Wall Street