But Kareef would never make such an error. He was too careful, too responsible. He would make the perfect King for Qusay. Either of Tahir’s older brothers would.
Thank merciful fate their father wasn’t alive to inherit the throne! As brother to the old King and leader of a significant clan he’d been too powerful as it was—too dangerous. Having him rule the whole nation would have been like letting a wolf in amongst lambs.
A heart attack, Kareef had said.
No wonder. Their father had liked to indulge himself and hadn’t limited himself to one vice.
Tahir approached the gaming table. He saw his barely touched champagne and the two women waiting for him, both undoubtedly eager to give him whatever he desired tonight.
His lips curled. Perhaps he was more like the old man than he realised.
‘Tahir!’ Elisabeth’s voice was a shriek of delight. ‘You’ll never believe it. You won! Again! It’s unbelievable.’
The babbling crowd hushed. Every eye was on him, as if he’d done something miraculous.
Before him, piled high, were his winnings. Far larger than before. The croupier looked pale and rigidly composed.
Eager feminine hands reached for Tahir as his companions sidled close. Their eyes were bright with avarice and excitement.
Tahir slid some of the most valuable chips to the croupier. ‘For you.’
‘Merci, monsieur.’ He grinned as he scooped his newfound wealth safely into his hand.
Tahir lifted his glass, took a long swallow and let the bubbles cascade from the back of his tongue down his throat.
The wine’s effervescence seeped into him. He felt buoyant, almost happy. For once fate had played things right. Kareef would be the best King Qusay had known.
He put the glass down with a click and turned away.
‘Goodnight, Elisabeth, Natasha. I’m afraid I have business elsewhere.’
He’d taken but a few steps when the babble of voices stopped him.
‘Wait! Your winnings! You’ve forgotten them.’
Tahir turned to face a sea of staring faces.
‘Keep them. Share them amongst yourselves.’
Without a backward glance he strode to the entrance, oblivious to the uproar behind him.
The doorman thrust open the massive doors and Tahir emerged into the fresh night air. He breathed deep, filling his lungs for the first time, it seemed, in recent memory.
A hint of a smile played on his lips as he loped down the stairs.
He had a coronation to attend.
Tahir skimmed low over the dunes of Qusay’s great interior desert.
Alone at the helicopter’s controls, he put the effervescence in his blood down to the freedom of complete solitude. No hangers-on. No business minions seeking direction. No women with wide eyes and grasping hands. Not even paparazzi waiting to report his next outrageous affair.
Perhaps the barren glory of the desert had lifted his spirits? He even, for this moment, put from his mind what awaited him in Qusay.
His family. His past.
Yet he’d visited deserts in the last eleven years. From North Africa to Australia and South America, motor-racing, hang-gliding, base-jumping—always searching for new extreme ways to risk his neck.
Finally he recognised his mood was because he flew over the place he’d called home for the first eighteen years of his life. The place he’d never expected to see again.
But this realisation came as an almighty gust buffeted the chopper, slewing it sideways. Tahir grappled with the controls, swinging the helicopter high above the dunes.
The sight that met him sent adrenalin pumping through his body. The growing darkness filling the sky wasn’t an early dusk, as he’d thought.
If he’d been flying by the book he’d have noticed the warning signs sooner. Instead he’d been skylarking, swooping dangerously low, gambling on his ability to read the topography of a place that changed with every wind.
This was the mother of all sandstorms. The sort that claimed livestock, altered watercourses and buried roads. The sort that could whip up a helicopter like a toy, whirl it round and smash it into fragments.
No chance to outrun it. No time to land safely.
Nevertheless, Tahir battled to steer the bucking chopper away from the massive storm. Automatically he switched into crisis mode, sending out a mayday, knowing already it was too late.
Calmness stole over him. He was going to die.
The prodigal had returned to his just deserts.
He wasn’t dead.
Fate obviously had something far worse in store. Dehydration in the heat. Or, going by the pain racking him, death from his wounds.
The preposterous luck that had seen him win several fortunes at the gaming table had finally abandoned him.
Tahir debated whether to open his eyes or lie there, seeking the luxurious darkness of unconsciousness again. Yet the throbbing pain in his head and chest was impossible to ignore.