Now he spoke Arabic as if he was convinced she understood, wanted more proof of the depth of her deception.

Her heart twisted until it felt it would tear out its tethers. “He—he was convinced it would ruin his family to have…your family know of…our existence. This is why he hid. This is why I did, too. I—I only sought you out because of Ryan’s problem, thought I’d get your opinion and leave. But things kept snowballing, then things between us…ignited, turning my position from difficult to impossible and I kept wanting to leave, to disappear, so you’d never know, never feel like this…”

“Too late now.”

Silence crashed after his monotone statement.

She waited for him to add something, to restart her heart or still it forever.

He only said, “Tell me everything about the last years since I lost my brother. Tell me about your life with Hesham.”

Gwen looked as if he’d asked her to take a scalpel to her own neck.

Fareed felt he’d be doing the same. Worse. That he’d be cutting out his heart. But he had to know. Even if it killed him.

He no longer recognized that dreadful drone that issued from him. “You met him in that conference?”

She cast her eyes downward. It was an unbearable moment before she nodded.

He felt as if a bullet had ripped through his heart, stilling its last jerking attempts at a beat.

He’d thought she’d recognized him that day, had ended her engagement because she couldn’t be with anyone else.

All that time, it had been Hesham.

“Did you love him?”

She collapsed on the bed, dropped her face in her hands.

She had loved him. The grief he felt from her now was the same he’d felt at first. Her anguish for Ryan seemed an insufficient explanation, if that could be said. It had been due to the loss of Hesham, the father of her son.

And even though it shredded his heart, he had to tell her. “He loved you. He lived for you, and when he was dying, his only thoughts were of you. Even though he gave up his name and family and whole life to be with you, he thought you deserved more. His dying words were that he was sorry he couldn’t give it to you.”

Tears came then. Hers. He wished he could shed any.

He bled instead, dark torrents of loss.

Two things had been sustaining him. The hope of finding Hesham’s family. And finding her and Ryan.

But they were one and the same, and his hopes for a blissful future for all were doomed to be forever tainted by the past.

It wasn’t because he believed the ulterior motives Emad had assigned her secrecy. He wished he could. It would have been a far lesser blow to believe her a self-serving manipulator. He would have been relieved Hesham had died clinging to his false belief in her and at peace. As for his agony at losing his faith in her, it would have been ameliorated if he could have coveted her knowing what she truly was.

But she was everything he could love and respect, the answer to all his fantasies and needs. And that she’d been the same to his brother, had been his in such an abiding love that she’d become a fugitive to be with him…that was despair.

For even if he could survive the guilt—and may Ullah forgive him, the jealousy—how could he survive knowing she might never feel the same for him? What did she feel for him? Beyond physical hunger? Had he been unable to fathom her emotions because they didn’t exist? Had she been unable to deny her body’s needs, while her heart remained buried with Hesham?

If it had, had everything she’d had with him been an attempt to resurrect what she’d had with Hesham? Had she found solace in their minor resemblances, taken comfort in sensing the love he had for him?

Had she ever felt anything that was purely for him?

He had to get away from her before whatever held him together disintegrated.

He found himself at the door, heard himself saying, “I’ll be at the center. Don’t try to leave.”

He couldn’t make this a request. It could no longer be one.

Even if it would kill him, she was staying. Forever.

Gwen raised swollen eyes to the door that had closed behind Fareed. Heartbeats fractured inside her chest as she expected him to walk back, take her with him where he could keep an eye on her.

After moments of frozen dread, she tried to rise.

She sagged back to the bed. The bed she’d never share with Fareed again. In the apartment she’d realized wasn’t his.

He hadn’t taken her to his private domain, had kept her in what was to him, for all its wonders, an impersonal space.

Relief had trumped the pain of knowing he hadn’t thought her worthy of sharing his own bed. She didn’t wish the depth of her involvement on him, wished him only the mildness of fond memories when she left his life, not the harshness of unquenchable longing she’d live with.

But as he’d said, it was too late. Whatever he’d felt for her had now been forever soiled and soured.

It wasn’t too late to escape. This time, she wouldn’t let anything stop her. She’d at least spirit Ryan and Rose away.

Panic finally got her legs working. At the door, her hand slipped on the handle…then she stumbled back.

The door was opening. Fareed. He’d come back as she’d feared.…

Next moment, she stood gaping at the stranger…strangers on the other side of the door.

The dark, imposing man who looked like the highest-ranking among them, advanced on her, said without preamble, “You will come with us. The king has summoned you.”

The ride to the royal palace passed in harrowing silence.

Her escorts wouldn’t answer her questions. They’d said the king had summoned her, but in reality, she was being abducted.

Even if she hadn’t heard enough from Hesham about his father, this act of blatant disregard for her most basic rights made her expect the worst.

She’d long dreaded this man. Her fear only deepened with every step through his palace’s impossible opulence and extravagance.

Then she was ushered into his state room.

As the door closed behind her, she felt engulfed by malice.

It didn’t matter. She’d fight him, king or not.…

“Harlots always had the intelligence and self-preservation to try to entrap my sons outside my domain.”

The voice was pure wrath and mercilessness, short-circuiting her resolve. It issued from the deep shadows at the far end of the gigantic room.

The owner of the voice rose from a throne-like seat and advanced to the relatively illuminated part where she stood. She almost cringed. Almost. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.

“But you’re here to steal Fareed under my very nose. You’re either recklessly stupid or unbelievably cunning. I’d go with the second interpretation because you managed to have my most-level-headed son eating out of your hand.”

This was about Fareed? He didn’t know who she was?

Relief almost burst out of her, but she couldn’t give any outward sign of it. She stood staring ahead, face blank.

This provoked him even more. She felt his rage encompassing her as he stormed toward her. Then she saw him clearly for the first time. It took all that remained of her tattered control not to recoil.

The man was an older version of Fareed, as tall but bulkier, must have been as blessed by nature once upon a time, but ruthlessness had degraded his looks, turning him forbidding, almost sinister. And he was incensed.

“You think I’ll lose another son to another American hussy? One who wants to foist her bastard child on him, too?” He snatched at her. Her heart hit her throat as she stumbled out of reach. He brought himself under control. “But I’ll give you the choice I would have given the trash who deprived me of my youngest son. Leave, disappear, and I’ll leave you alone. If you don’t, what happens to you and yours will be your fault.”