“Their gigolo, then. In any event, I thought Maysoon viewed me differently. Her pursuit in spite of our class differences and the fact that I was hardly an ideal groom for a princess made me think she was one of those rare women who appreciated a man for himself. I thought this alone made up for all her personal shortcomings. And who was I to consider those when I was riddled with my own?” He emptied his lungs on a harsh exhalation. “Turned out she was just attracted to me as a spoiled brat would be to a toy she fancied and couldn’t have. Most likely because some of the women in her inner circle must have made me a topic of giggling lust, maybe even challenge, and being pathologically competitive herself, she wanted to be the one to triumph over them.”
Kanza’s eyes filled with skepticism, but she let it go unvoiced and allowed him to continue.
“And the moment she did she started trying to strip me bare to dress me up into the kind of toy she had in mind all along. She started telling me how I must behave, in private and public, how I must distance myself from my father, whom she made clear she considered the hired help.” He drew in a sharp inhalation laden with his still-reverberating chagrin on his father’s account. “And it didn’t end there. She dictated who I should get close to, how I must kiss up to Shaheen’s brothers now that he was gone, play on my former relationship with him to gain a ‘respectable’ position within the kingdom and wheedle financial help in setting up a business like theirs so I would become as rich as possible.”
The cynicism in Kanza’s eyes had frozen. There was nothing in them now. A very careful nothing. As if she didn’t know how to react to the influx of new information.
He went on. “And she was in a rabid hurry for me to do all that. She couldn’t wait to have me pick up the tab of her extravagant existence—which she’d thought so disadvantaged—and informed me that as her husband it would be my duty to raise her up to a whole new level of excess.” He scrubbed a hand across his jaw. “In the four months’ duration of the engagement, I was so stunned by the depths of her shallowness, so taken aback by the audacity of her demands and the intensity of her tantrums, that I didn’t react. Then came the night of that ball.”
She’d been there that night. In one of those horrific getups and alien makeup. He now remembered vividly that she’d been the last thing he’d seen as he’d walked out, standing there over Maysoon, glaring at him with loathing in her eyes.
There was nothing but absorption in her eyes now. She was evidently waiting to see if his version of that ill-fated night’s events would change the opinion she’d long held of him, built on her interpretation of its events.
He
felt that his next words would decide if she’d ever let him near again. He had to make them count. The only way he could do that was to be as brutally honest as possible.
“Maysoon dragged me to talk to King Atef and Amjad. But when I didn’t take her heavy-handed hints to broach the subject of the high-ranking job she’d heard was open, or the loan she’d been pushing me to ask for, she decided to take control. She extolled my economic theories for Zohayd and made a mess of outlining them. Then she proceeded to massacre my personal business plans, which I’d once made the mistake of trying to explain to her. She became terminally obvious as she bragged how anyone getting on with me on the ground level with a sizable investment would reap millions.” He huffed a bitter laugh. “For a mercenary soul, she knew nothing about the real value of money, since she’d never made a cent and had never even glanced at her own bills.”
There was only corroboration in Kanza’s eyes now. Knowing her half sister, she must have known the accuracy of this assessment.
He continued. “Needless to say, King Atef and Amjad were not impressed, and they must have believed I’d put her up to it. I was tempted to tell them the truth right then and there, that I’d finally faced it that I was just a means to an end to subsidize her wasteful life. Instead, I attempted to curtail the damage she’d done as best I could before excusing myself and making my escape. Not that she’d let me walk away.”
Wariness invaded her gaze. She must have realized he’d come to the point where he’d finally explain the fireworks that had ended his life in Zohayd and formed her lasting-till-now opinion of him.
He shoved his hands into his pockets. “She stormed after me, shrieking that I was a moron, a failure, that I didn’t know a thing about grabbing opportunities and maximizing my connections. She said my potential for ‘infiltrating’ the higher echelons of the royal family was why she’d considered me in the first place and that if I wanted to be her husband I’d do anything to ingratiate myself to them and provide her with the lifestyle she deserved.”
Her wince was unmistakable. As if, even if she knew full well Maysoon was capable of saying those things and harboring those motivations, she was still embarrassed for her, ashamed on her account.
Suddenly he wanted to go no further, didn’t want to cause her any discomfort. But she was waiting for him to go on. Her eyes were now prodding him to go on.
He did. “It was almost comical, but I wasn’t laughing. I wasn’t even angry or disappointed or anything else. I was just…done. So I told her that I would have done anything for the woman I married if she had married me for me and not as a potential meal ticket. Then I walked away. Maysoon wasn’t the first major error in judgment I made in Zohayd, but she was the one I rectified.”
He paused for a moment, then made his concluding statement, the one refuting her major accusation. “If your half sister has been wasting her life and self-destructing, it’s because that’s what she does with her capriciousness and excesses and superfluous approach to life—not because of anything I did to her. And she’s certainly not spinning out of control on my account, because I never counted to her.”
*
Kanza stared up at Aram for what felt like a solid hour after he’d finished his testimony.
She could still feel his every word all over her like the stings of a thousand wasps.
She’d never even imagined or could have guessed about his situation back in Zohayd, how he’d been targeted and propositioned, how he’d felt unvalued and objectified.
And she’d been just as guilty of wronging him. In her own mind, in her own way, she had discriminated against him, too, if in the totally opposite direction to those women he’d described. While they’d reduced him to a sexual plaything in their minds, or a stepping-stone to a material goal, she’d exalted him to the point where she’d been unable to see beyond his limitless potential. She hadn’t suspected that his untouchable self-possession could have been a facade, a defense; had believed him confident to the point of arrogance; equated his powerful influence with ruthlessness; and had assumed that he could have no insecurities, needs or vulnerabilities.
But…wait. Wait. This story was incomplete. He’d left out a huge part. A vital one.
She heard her voice, low, strained, wavering on a gust of wind that circumvented the shield of his body. “But you ended up doing what she advised you to do. She just didn’t reap the benefit of her efforts, since you kicked her out of your life on her ear and soared so high on your own.”
“Now what the hell are you talking about?”
She pulled herself to her full five-foot-two-plus-heels height, attempting to shove herself up into his face. “Did you or didn’t you seek the Aal Shalaan Brotherhood in providing you with their far-reaching connections and fat financial support on your launch into billionairedom?”
“Is this what she said I did?” His scoff sounded furious for the first time. So this was his inapproachable line, what would rouse the indolent predator—any insinuations maligning the integrity and autonomy of his success. “And why not? I did know that there was no limit to her vindictiveness, that she’d do and say anything to punish me for escaping her talons. What else did she accuse me of? Maybe that I abused her, too?”
Her own outrage receded at the advance of his, which was so palpable she had no doubt it was real. Her answer stuck in her throat.
She no longer wanted to continue this. She hadn’t wanted to start it in the first place. But his eyes were blazing into hers, demanding that she let him know the full details of Maysoon’s accusations. And she had to tell him.