It hurt.
It hurt more than she had expected.
It hurt so much that Mackenzie took a step back. “You know what?” Her throat tightened. There was no way. She was not going to plan a wedding while he planned for war. And she wasn’t going to sit idly by while the shelter was destroyed.
“Mackenzie?” His voice broke into her thoughts. She looked Issam in the eye.
“I’m leaving.”
“Leaving the party?” He narrowed his eyes.
“No. Leaving you.”
Mackenzie did walk out then, feeling his eyes on her every step of the way.
By the next morning, she had gathered her things into her rolling suitcase and climbed into a taxi in front of the palace.
17
He didn’t think she would take it this far.
Issam stared out the window at the view of the city below, his heart beating hard. The latest message to come in hadn’t made him feel calmer.
The florist? She was staying with the florist?
It wasn’t just a problem for him personally, though it did make him personally enraged. It was a problem for all the people who worked for him, too. Mackenzie running off to stay with Sahr in the city meant that he had to stretch his security forces even thinner to send another unit to cover both the women.
He’d even had to hire additional staff because, in light of her leaving, it had hit him full force that the family as a whole was too vulnerable. He’d doubled protective details and sent new restrictions to everyone in the family. They couldn’t go anywhere in the city without two hours’ notice, to begin with. Everywhere they went needed to be locked down before they ever set foot outside the palace. No more open football practices and games for Inan.
“Sheikh Issam?” Bahir’s tone was gentle, almost as if he were afraid Issam might explode if he spoke too loudly.
“If it’s another one of their complaints, I don’t want to hear it.”
The beat of silence told Issam the truth. Yes, his family was still complaining. Yes, they were sending him messages through Bahir. But his second-in-command was too smart to go down that road.
“No,” he said. “Not a complaint.”
“Then what is it?” Issam turned away from the window and watched Bahir. The man stood easily in the middle of the room, s
crolling through his tablet.
“A couple of updates on the new hires.”
Bahir took him briskly through the interview process—a hundred had applied, they’d narrowed the field to fifty, and the second round was progressing—and updated him on some tweaks to the schedule for the next day. Then he got to the end of his list.
“Is that all?”
Bahir cleared his throat. “There’s one more thing.”
Issam narrowed his eyes. “Out with it.”
“You have another meeting on your list.”
“For when?”
“Right now.”
“With who?”