“Please … understand … I o-only hid my pregnancy b-because I was s-scared you’d make me terminate it!”
Her words detonated inside him, the belief that it was all an act erased in the blast. All he heard was the accusation, all he believed was that she’d believed it.
“You thought I would ask you to kill an unborn child? My unborn child? And you think you know anything about my culture or me? And when she was born, what did you fear? That I’d bury her alive like my land’s barbarians of old?”
“No.” Her cry was engulfed by shearing sobs. She still talked through them. “All I thought was you—you might fear her existence, might think her a threat to your honor, your status … And I wasn’t risking it. I would do anything—anything—to keep her from harm.”
“And you thought I’d harm her? You saw me fighting to bring relief to millions of children and thought I’d harm my own?”
B’Ellahi, what was he saying? He was playing the part she’d shoved him into with all the oblivious fervor of the past. He was answering her as if he believed concern for her baby and true fear of his reactions had been the reasons behind her disappearance.
“B’haggej’Jaheem—by Hell, I thought you’d come up with better than that. Or maybe you didn’t give it much thought since you were sure this confrontation would never come to pass.”
She shook her head, sending her tears splashing everywhere. A few fell on his hands, felt as if they’d burned him to the bone.
“But why do you want her?” And if he’d thought she’d given defeat sound, she now gave desperation tone and texture. “Don’t Judarians value only male sons? What is a daughter to a prince like you who surely wants only heirs?”
“So, first you dare to imply that I might have gotten rid of her for being born at all, and now that I’d discard her for being born female.”
She spread her hands in a helpless gesture, a lost gesture, beseeching his understanding, his mercy.
He had neither to give. “Enough of that.”
She again threw herself in his path, but was shaking so hard she couldn’t even cling. “I didn’t dream you’d want her … please …”
He looked down at her, struggling with the need to slake the accumulation of hunger in that body that had deprived him of finding pleasure elsewhere. He’d been unable to contemplate marrying another after she’d walked out on him, even as a damage-control measure when Tareq had rushed out and married the first woman to accept him. Instead, Farooq had decided to expose Tareq’s ineligibility to rise to the succession once and for all, had asked his king, who couldn’t go back on the marriage-criteria decree, to stall everyone until he furnished irrefutable proof of Tareq’s perversions and crimes.
He was close to gaining that proof, but now he’d found Carmen and Mennah—and they were the fastest route to securing the succession. Not that he would let Tareq go unpunished. Or Carmen, either. But he wouldn’t touch her. Not yet.
Putting her away was harder than anything he’d ever had to do. Then he strode through the entrance she’d been guarding, went deeper into the apartment, felt her stumbling behind him, her tremors buzzing through his flesh, her sobs constricting his lungs.
He ignored the feelings, stopped before the door that he just knew had his daughter on the other side. Then he turned.
“Show me my daughter, Carmen.”
He had no idea why he asked her permission when he never asked anyone’s, gave her that consideration when she’d shown him none. Worst of all, he had no idea why he’d done it so … gently.
That was for his daughter, he told himself. He didn’t want to enter her room, her life, with anger polluting those first magical moments. Children picked up on moods, deciphered tension between adults. And he wasn’t poisoning her mood or introducing fear and anxiety in her life for any reason, was even willing to make peace with her mother, if only around her, for her sake.
“Stop crying. I won’t have my daughter see me for the first time with her mother weeping beside me. She’d forever link me with your pain.”
“A-and she’d be right … you’re destroying me.”
He grimaced his distaste at her exaggeration. “Cut the melodrama, Carmen. Or are you willing to risk scarring her impressionable psyche just to paint me black in her mind?”
“No, no … I’d never … never …” She almost fell at his feet, forced him to take her full weight, his hands around her rib cage, so close to the breasts that were now shuddering with emotion, that had once shuddered in his palms, beneath his chest in ecstasy. She raised rabid eyes to his and wailed, “Don’t take my daughter away … I’d die without her.!”
Three
Farooq stared down at Carmen for a stunned moment.
He had heard about the power of tears before, had had them shed for his benefit on countless occasions, by both women and men. The only power they’d held over him was that of testing the limits of his goodwill. But her tears …
Ya Ullah, hada mostaheel—it was impossible the way they affected him, the way her outburst had.
She thought he intended to take her baby away.
It was only in this moment that he realized he’d stormed in here not knowing what he intended.
He’d gotten the intel sixteen hours ago, had been on his fastest jet within an hour, had spent the time on the nonstop transcontinental, transatlantic haul seething with realizations and convictions. Some of the latter had been of how an exploitative mother didn’t deserve to keep her child.
He now realized those thoughts had colored the way he’d stated his intention of having his daughter, making it sound as if he’d snatch her away from Carmen.
He believed that drastic action should be reserved for women who were a danger to their offspring. But, couldn’t he equate a mother who used her daughter to maintain a luxurious lifestyle with an alcoholic or a drug addict?
Rage shot to another zenith as he looked down into her drenched eyes. Then, to his further fury, her anguish fractured his grip on his convictions.
As their eyes meshed, all he could think of was that this was no act. This wasn’t someone afraid for her income. This was someone who feared something far worse than death.
Could it be true? She’d conceived Mennah for an ulterior motive, but she now loved her? And that much?
He could take her—his—daughter from her as easily as taking a toy from an infant. Considering what she’d done to him, he should at least entertain retribution. The thought only scorched him with mortification.
She had to be some sort of witch.
But then, all he’d meant when he’d declared she couldn’t fight him was that she couldn’t deny him his right to his daughter. She’d taken his words to their worst possible conclusion. That was in keeping with the fear she claimed had driven her to run away. So could he believe that had really been the reason she’d run?
Laa, b’Ellahi. He couldn’t. He knew the truth.
Still, whatever her motives then, for some maddening reason, against a hundred insisting he shouldn’t, he believed her fear now. Worse, he had no desire to see her so anguished. Though he had every right to hurt her, he didn’t want to. Not this way.
Damning himself for a fool a thousand times for feeling he should kneel and beg her forgiveness for making her feel this way he rasped, “I won’t take her away. Now stop crying.”
Among the crashing