And with four years’ worth of anger and agony and betrayal churning up his insides, he told them.
As they gaped at him throughout his account, one thing became indisputable. They hadn’t known.
They’d had no hand in what had been done to him.
He’d lived for years poisoned by the belief that they’d brutally betrayed him, for nothing.
Finally, a shell-shocked Haidar said, “Ya Ullah ya Rashid—you spent all these years thinking we did that to you? And we’re still in one piece?”
Jalal, seeming as stunned, nodded. “That’s what I’m wondering, too. That you believed what you did, and only tried to destroy us in business, gives me a whole new insight into your character. You must be part saint.”
Rashid couldn’t bear another word. “I don’t care about what happened or who did it or why anymore. I only care about Laylah.”
Haidar approached him tentatively. “But if you tell her what you just told us, she’d—”
“No.” His shout went off like a gunshot. “She will never hear anything about this. I’m not getting her back at this price.”
Jalal approached from the other side, as if helping his twin contain the volatile quantity that was Rashid. “It might be the only price that’s good enough, Rashid.”
“I said no. And if you tell her, I will stop at nothing this time to punish you for breaching my confidence.”
Haidar ventured a hand on his shoulder. “Settle down, will you? We won’t say a thing.” He squeezed his eyes. “Ya Ullah—what I really want is to wipe everything you said from my mind. But then, a mental scar is nothing compared to what you suffered.”
Any other time, Rashid might have felt relief that the scar of losing them would heal, that he could have them back in his life and heart. But now that he no longer had Laylah there, nothing meant anything.
Haidar leveled his gaze on Rashid, anguish and regret gripping his face. “I can’t tell you how powerless I feel that I can neither change the past nor punish the culprits. But I will put this right if it takes the rest of my life. You’re my other twin, Rashid, and I’ve been...bereft all these years without you. I swear to you, we’ll make up for lost time.”
Jalal joined his twin in his pledge. “That goes for me, too. But you’re right, Rashid. What matters now is Laylah. I swear to you, we’ll do everything to reunite you with her.”
* * *
Everything hadn’t been enough.
It had now been eighteen days in a hell worse than anything he’d known, sinking deeper in the quicksand of Laylah’s rejection.
Amjad had given him quarters close to hers so he could “stalk” her, or they’d do a “pincer” on her, with everyone herding her toward him until she was forced to confront him.
She didn’t. She’d let them push her to within inches of him, only to pass him by as if he didn’t exist. A punishment for his present transgressions and past avoidance. Feeling nonexistent to her, no matter if it was on purpose, was excruciating.
So he’d written his confessions in what had amounted to a small volume, which had been fated to the bin.
And he’d been forced to do what he’d thought impossible.
He’d poured his heart out to anyone who’d listen. That ultimate exposure had felt like he’d “stripped himself down to the bone” as Amjad had said. Not that it had any effect.
She’d treated the explanations everyone transmitted with the same disdain she had his written ones. She’d had to grudgingly believe he hadn’t orchestrated the attack on her, under the deluge of proof he’d provided. But she believed his withdrawal from the race for the throne to be another convoluted plan to gain more sympathy and strengthen his position.
He’d hit rock bottom when he’d realized how completely she’d lost her faith in him.
“There is no line you won’t cross, is there?”
His whole being seized in shock. In delight. Laylah. Here.
His heart boomed so hard it swung him around to her.
“Laylah...”
She was closing the suite’s door and turning to him, indescribable in a floor-length silk turquoise dress that offset the perfection of every inch of skin it didn’t cover, intensified the burnished gloss of her hair.
Brutal longing paralyzed him as she stopped two feet away, her eyes those of a stranger.
“It was almost embarrassing, watching how far you went in ‘exposing’ your ‘inner self’ in your damage-control efforts. But what really surprises me is how totally you’ve taken my family in. I thought they, especially Amjad, were shrewd. I guess no one is immune to your powers of emotional manipulation.”
“They are shrewd people,” he rasped. “That’s why they recognize my sincerity against all damning evidence.”
Her laugh was mirthless. “You know, I was delusional to think someone with your life experiences had any emotions left. Logically, you can’t be faulted for that. The first thing you must have learned in order to deal with your personal situation, then your life as a soldier, was to turn off your emotions. It only makes sense that you feel nothing but ambition and hunger for power now.”
He reached an aching hand to the thick lock of hair undulating over her breast. “If only that was true.”
She stepped away, making the silk slip through his fingers just as she kept doing. “Please, stop the pretense. I’m not angry at you anymore.” She wasn’t? “Actually, most of my anger was directed at myself. For believing what I so fiercely wanted to believe. Nothing you did ever added up, but I was so desperate for you, I silenced my disbelief that you could fall for me at all, let alone that fast, that you’d tie yourself to me for life. Disillusion and damage were the only possible outcome for my stupidity.”
He took her by the shoulders, wouldn’t let her shake him off this time, his grip gentling until she let him hold her.
“Laylah, you have to listen to me. Not so that I can beg your forgiveness or exonerate myself. You need to listen for you. What pains me most is that this has reinforced your belief that no one has ever wanted you for you, when the reverse is true. You are valued and loved by everyone who knows you. You are worshipped by me. Even if you choose to never forgive me, please be secure in that, and that my crimes are a reflection on me, never on you.”
For a long moment, as the setting sun struck russet in eyes that gazed at him as if realizing something profound, he started to hope that at least he’d succeeded in this endeavor.