He hadn’t let Maram go.
But he was about to.
The hours it had taken to fly back to the capital, with her huddled away from him, had been a new brand of hell.
He’d taken her where she’d demanded. The airport.
She was now walking ahead of him, looking over her shoulder every few steps, as if she couldn’t bear having him shadow her, hating him more for knowing she couldn’t shake him.
Before she entered the main terminal, he caught her arm in as careful a grasp as he could manage.
“Come with me, Maram. My mansion is vast and you won’t see me if you don’t want to. I’ll wait. For as long as it takes. Please, just stay near.”
“I was never near, Amjad. I will now stay as far away as I can until I forget you exist. Maybe I’ll stop feeling so…defiled.”
He couldn’t even flinch, feeling numb with too many blows. He could only do one thing. Curtail the damage, stop gaining more of her disillusion and hatred.
“At least take my jet.”
“Surveillance wrapped in a pompous gesture of fake chivalry?”
He still couldn’t get his head around how she’d turned from total trust to distrust on every level. He reeled with it, felt unable to function anymore without the safety net of her belief.
He exhaled his dejection. “Now you think I’m stupid as well as an all-around monster? If I want to know where you’re going I can no matter what transportation you take.”
“Maybe. Maybe not. I’m not without my resources.”
“Will you at least let me know that you’re safe?”
“How touching.” She shook his hand off her arm, turned away. Before she went out of hearing range, she said, “As for safety, who cares. As you say in the region, ‘what does a sheep care if it’s skinned after it’s slaughtered.’”
Amjad sat in the back of a limo, shell-shocked, Maram’s last words, her last look, the way she’d looked as she’d walked away, ravaged by misery, injured beyond healing, expanding inside him like seismic waves.
He couldn’t even hope time would make her see things differently, and him like she used to. Time seemed only to escalate her agony at his deception.
Harres had called him, asking for an update. He’d told him to invade Ossaylan. Or tell their father that come Exhibition Day he’d be minus one throne.
Harres had thought he was being his obnoxious self, had joked that he, Mr. Crown Prince, would be minus a future throne, too.
Amjad had told him in obscene detail that he couldn’t care less.
He’d lost Maram. No other loss would ever matter.
His phone rang. Had to be Harres. Again insisting that he stop fooling around.
He’d almost reached the palace. He’d answer him face to fist.
The phone rang again and again. He fumbled it on with fingers numbed with rage, bellowed, “If I don’t find you dying when I arrive, Harres, and this is not you croaking for help—”
“You are as caring an oldest brother as you are everything else.”
“Maram…”
He couldn’t go on. He suffocated with the hope. That she’d changed her mind. With the fear…that there was no changing it.
“I just wanted to inform you. I’m going back to my father.”
A thousand questions flooded his mind. But one thing trumped all. Relief. That he wouldn’t go out of his mind worrying about where she’d be. That she’d be safe in familiar surroundings, with family, even such as Yusuf was.
Then she dealt him another blow.
“So, how does it feel now that you’ve been had but good?”
Ten
Amjad’s heartbeats piled up.
Maram was taunting him.
Something he hadn’t felt since he was a child burned behind his eyes, almost threatening to liquefy them.
He shut them on the melting, whispered, “It feels…far better than I deserve. To have you talking to me again, even if only to gloat over my gullibility.”
“You bought it, didn’t you?” Her voice was a monotone of emptiness. “My whole breakdown act.”
“I bought it so much, I almost bought it.”
He expected her to scoff his head off at his claims of almost fatal distress at hers.
She only said, “Too bad you’re too hardy.”
He bit his lip. On the surge of agonizing hope. “It would have been what I’ve done my level best to deserve.”
A beat of silence. “You don’t believe I conned you, do you?”
“So I would release you and you could go back to your father and continue your plot? No. Not for a second.”
“Then you’re an even bigger fool than I thought. And you’re a run-of-the-mill man after all. All it took to bring you down was some persistence, a few well-placed touches and a couple of strategically timed tears.”
“There weren’t some or a few or a couple of anything. There were deluges of everything. I was destined to be brought to my knees from the moment you had me in your crosshairs.”
“Interesting that you’re taking it so philosophically.”
His delight at sparring with her again came out on a ragged sigh. “You should have hit me, Maram. Or better still, used some heavy, blunt object and knocked me over my fool’s head.”
“To expend my alleged agony at your betrayal? I guess you haven’t heard anything I said. It seems you’ve been deafened by a lifetime of listening to your own voice booming inside your head.”
“I’ve been listening to you far, far closer than you think, Maram. I may be intractable, but you stuck with me long enough, tried hard enough, you penetrated my foot-thick skull. You rewired me where you’re concerned. And I’m never getting scrambled again. I wish I could have given you your pound of flesh, raved and ranted at your implied ‘manipulation’ and ‘betrayal.’ But I can’t distrust you even in pretense now, not even to appease you.”
Silence unfurled, pulsed, then stormed, until he felt he might crush the phone in unbearable anticipation.
She finally exhaled. “Seems this was the only thing I was right about where you’re concerned. You are a far better judge of character than I am, Amjad.”
A smile trembled on his lips at her implied admission. “You’re no slouch yourself.”
“Oh, but I am. You took me in completely.”
“I didn’t—”
“You just pretended not to see through me from the start.” She drowned out his voice, not interested in hearing his redundant protests. “To make me pant extra hard to ‘convince’ you of my ‘innocence.’ But what’s one more pretense, right? Anyway, now my childish effort to get back at you failed because there is no getting back at a total fraud, taunting you with what you never felt, I return to the real reason behind my call.”