A Secret Birthright

“It was mutual, I assure you.”

Gwen winced. “Yes. Then he met Hesham’s mother and they fell in love on sight.” Fareed’s jaw dropped. That he surely didn’t know. He believed his father was love-proof, let alone to the on-sight variety. “But even if his marriages were to serve the kingdom, she wouldn’t be a fourth wife. So he divorced his wives wholesale, and dealt with the catastrophic political fallout.”

He was only six when this happened. He still remembered the upheavals. “My mother and the other two women say it was the best day of their lives when they finally got rid of him.”

She nodded. “It was how he convinced Hesham’s mother to marry him. She feared if he could divorce the mothers of his children so easily, that she couldn’t trust him. So he let her interview them and they told her it was what they longed for, how they, like him, had felt trapped in the marriages, that he’d never loved anyone but her in his life. He pledged only death would part them.

“Their marriage was deliriously happy, and when she got pregnant, he told her he’d love her child the most of his children. But she died, and he almost went insane. He at first hated the son he blamed for killing his love. Then as Hesham grew up and he saw her in him, he transferred all his love and expectations and obsessions to him. He ordered no one to mention her because it made him crazy with grief.”

Fareed felt more disoriented than when his father’s guard had struck him. “And it seems I will keep finding that I know nothing about those I considered my closest people.”

She shut her eyes. “Th-there’s more. Much more.”

“Then arjooki, please, tell me everything.”

She drew in a shaky breath. “What nobody knew is that a few years after Hesham’s mother’s death, her tribe, the royal family of Durrah, invoked an ancient Jizaanian law. That if a king married more than one woman, the sons of his highest-ranking wife would succeed him to the throne, with no respect to age. Since Hesham’s mother was a pureblood princess, that made Hesham the crown prince.”

He stared at her, beyond flabbergasted.

This…this…explained so much. Yet was totally inexplicable.

Not that he considered disbelieving her for a second.

But he had to ask. “Kaif? How could my father hide something like this? How is that not common knowledge?”

“Your father pledged to Hesham’s maternal relatives that Hesham would be his crown prince. On one condition—that they reveal this to no one until he prepared his kingdom and his other sons, especially the one who lived his life believing he was his heir, for the change in succession. But most important, until he prepared Hesham for the role he’d be required to fill. They agreed, in a binding blood oath. The king told Hesham when he turned fifteen and your oldest brother, although still in confidence. Hesham said Abbas was sorry for him, if relieved for himself. He didn’t relish being crown prince.”

Fareed could believe that. Abbas was a swashbuckling, extreme-sport-loving, corporate-raiding daredevil. He dreaded the day he’d have to give up the wildness and freedom of his existence to step into their father’s shoes. He always said, only half-jokingly, that the day of his joloos on the throne he’d turn the kingdom into a democracy and be on his way.

But it was making more sense by the second, explaining the infuriating enigma of his father.

“So this was why Father pressured Hesham to that extent. He was trying to turn him into the crown prince he knew he wasn’t equipped to become.”

“Yes, and this was why he so objected to…to…”

“To his choosing you. He must have had some pureblood royal bride lined up for him, too. This does explain why he reacted so viciously to Hesham’s news that he was marrying you.”

“But even with Hesham gone, Ryan…”

“Wait, Hesham meant Ryan’s name the way I pronounce it, the Arabic version, didn’t he? But he picked it because it worked in your culture, too, with a different meaning.”

She nodded, her urgency heightening at what she considered unimportant now. “What I was saying is that Ryan might still be considered the king’s first-in-line heir. And this is why he might never give up trying to get custody of him.”

He ran his hands down his face. “Ya Ullah. I see how your fear of our father is a thousand times what I believed it should be. But you no longer have to worry. Even a king’s claim to his rightful heir wouldn’t trump our combined custody.”

“You might be wrong…”

His raised hand silenced her. Ominous thunder was approaching from the darkness that had engulfed the sea.

A helicopter. He would bet his center it was carrying his father. This had to be Emad’s doing.

His fury crested as he turned to Gwen. “Go inside, please. I’ll deal with this.”

“Fareed, let me tell you first…”

But he was already running to meet the helicopter as it landed, needing to end this before it started. And to end Gwen’s worries once and for all.

The moment his father stepped out of the helicopter that, to Fareed’s fury, Emad was piloting, Fareed blocked his way.

“Father, go back where you came from. Gwen told me everything. And it’s over. Ryan will never be in your custody.”

Challenge flared in his father’s eyes. “I’m surprised you even think your ‘adoption’ is a deterrent. Our laws don’t sanction adoption, just fostering, and adopting him according to another culture’s laws means nothing.”

“The deterrent is not only that Ryan has the Aal Zaafer name through me, not Hesham. It is that I’ll give up my Jizaanian nationality if it will make my adoption binding anywhere in the world, starting with here. But most of all it is that I, a man of equal status to you and superior wealth, am married to Ryan’s mother.”

The king only transferred his gaze behind him. Gwen had followed him, was almost plastered to his back.

Then, without taking his eyes off her, his father said, “That is not your greatest weapon but your greatest weakness, Fareed. Gwen isn’t Ryan’s mother. She’s his aunt.”

Chapter Thirteen

Fareed heard his father’s declaration. He understood the words. He couldn’t make any sense of them.

Still looking at Gwen, his father addressed her this time, “It was your sister, Marilyn, who was Hesham’s woman.”

After all these months, Fareed had a full name for Hesham’s Lyn. Marilyn. Not Gwendolyn.