Stolen Lives (Blood Brothers Book 1) (43 page)

I shake my head quickly, immediately regretting it as daggers of pain shoot through me. It’s laughable, thinking back; I had never got anywhere close to feeling about anyone the way I felt about Cara. So I have an honest answer.

“No,” I snort, flashing back to our relationship. “She needed a place to stay and I was in lust with her. It was convenient available sex, nothing else.” I ignore her look of censure. “I’d been away for a week or so, and came back earlier than expected. What I found was Chantelle waiting for her lover. Worse, I found her lover was also her drug dealer.”

I hold up my good hand to stop her as she tries to make a comment. “Her lover arrived with her fix of cocaine. I saw red. I got hold of him and tossed him out of the apartment. I started packing her bags. I was so angry...”

I hesitate. It’s not that I don’t want to tell her, but I’m going to be repeating what they told me happened, not what I remember experiencing.

She seems to be holding her breath, waiting for me to finish my story. Her eyes are wide, concerned. “What did you do?”

“What didn’t I do is more like it.” I look away, unable to meet her gaze. Seeing is believing, as they say. “Pass me my wallet.”

She tilts her head to one side, evidently considering it an odd request, but does as I ask. My head tightens as I gather my resolve and take out the evidence of my crime, the proof I carry with me always as a reminder of the depths of depravity that I can sink to. I don’t fucking want to show it to her, don’t want her to look at me with the repulsion I’m so used to from others who know the evil that lives inside me. But I have to, it’s the only way to save her. Calling on all my resolve, I open the wallet and extract a tattered, folded photo from a zipped compartment. I hold it out to her.

Hesitantly, she takes it from me with shaking hands and unfolds it. She flattens it out, and immediately her hand covers her face. A quick glance is enough for her. She almost throws it back as if she can’t stand to touch it any more.

“You did that?” Her voice is just a whisper.

“It would appear so. I can’t remember what I did; it’s all a blackness. I came round in hospital to find I’d severely beaten her. She was badly bruised, with a damn- near broken jaw, cracked ribs and a broken arm. She stood no chance against me.” I pause, looking at her. “She was no bigger than you, no match for me. Luckily, fuck knows how, she managed to get hold of a heavy lamp and hit me over the head. I was knocked unconscious and had no fucking memory of what I had done. PTSD they call it, in this case when your mind blocks out a traumatic event. That’s why I can’t live with you, Cara. I know what I’m capable of. But I don’t know when I’ll fucking flip, or what the fucking trigger will be. Anything could set me off. All I know is that I can’t control myself. I can’t trust myself around you, and you shouldn’t trust me either.”

I’ve shocked her. She’s sitting so still, only a slight trembling of her hands gives away her emotions.

“She called the police and made a charge against me. She called the papers as well, and sold her story. The headlines told of ‘the savage sheikh’. My father got his lawyers involved and, predictably, she withdrew the charge when a seven-figure sum was laid on the table. I was called home and banished to the desert. The tribes accepted the marriage contract between us because they knew I would hurt, maim or kill you if you stepped out of line. I thought we could make a go of it, Cara, but I got so angry when I found you hadn’t trusted me. I couldn’t be near you. I don’t feel angry now,” I look at her intently: she has to believe me, “But I care too much about you, Cara, to trust myself around you. It’s me I don’t trust, not you. I have no faith in myself. I never want to hurt you so, for your safety, you must go.” I settle back on to the pillows and close my eyes. “Take her away, Jasim.”

Jasim had entered the room while I’d been spilling my fucking guts to her. I close my eyes. I can’t watch as he leads her away, can’t watch as another man comforts my wife, touches her, even if it is only taking her hand and helping her to stand.

“Come,” I hear him tell her, quietly.

Cara

I don’t say a word as Jasim leads me away from his brother, unable to rid myself of the image of the woman in the photograph; her injuries so terrible it makes the contents of my stomach swirl, and I nearly vomit. It’s not just the thought of the suffering he inflicted on Chantelle, but the fact that I was forced to marry to the man who caused such injury. The face that his family, as well as the people of Amahad, had condoned the possibility that he’d hurt me in the same way.
That
was to have been my punishment to bear on my father’s behalf.

As I walk through the white corridors, enveloped by the smell of antiseptic, I remember my protestations against annulling that bloody contract. My desire now is to see it shredded into tiny pieces. While the man I’d come to know didn’t seem capable of committing such an appalling crime, he’d shown me evidence of what he had done, and admitted the actions himself. How could I doubt that? They didn’t care. Kadar, Jasim, presumably everyone I’d met, knew the potential for such horrific violence in the man I’d married, and no one said a word to warn me.

As we emerge from the entrance into the harsh sunlight, I push Jasim away. Nijad’s rejection, his confession, counteracts the joy I felt when I knew he was going to live – the opposing emotions whirling through my brain suddenly fuse together in a burst of anger.

“But why tell me? Why tell me now? Why not just let this fiasco of a marriage continue? You!” I pull Jasim round to face me, “You knew he could hurt me. When you kidnapped me in London, you knew you could be sending me to the same fate as that poor woman! Why, Jasim, why? How could you do it?” I wipe my hand over my sore, tired eyes. “The poor woman…”

He can’t look me in the face. I grab his arms and shake him. “Answer me. Why?” I’m screaming.

“Hush, Cara.” He tries to calm me. “Nijad’s my brother; I know him as well as I know myself. I never understood what happened in Paris, but truthfully didn’t think it would happen again. It had to be a one-off. I couldn’t accept what happened at the time, and I still can’t believe it. He couldn’t have been in his right mind. The Nijad I know would never hurt a woman.”

“Maybe you didn’t, but everyone else thought he would hurt me. They expected and condoned it. He didn’t just beat that woman. It was a savage and prolonged attack.” I’m so angry; my fists are clenching and unclenching by my sides. I want to hit something.

Running his hand down his face, Jasim looks at me with such sympathy it makes me even madder, especially when he admits, “Nijad gained a reputation over that one incident, and it was enough to convince our father, the tribal leaders, and maybe even Kadar. Yes, they thought it was a fitting punishment, the fact that Nijad could be relied on to keep his wife under control. But Nijad knew then he wouldn’t be able to trust himself, and had plans to keep his new wife, you, safe. It wasn’t going to be a real marriage; he’d have set you up in luxury in the desert palace, here in Z̧almā. He’d have kept himself to himself, and far away so he’d never have the opportunity to hurt you. That was the plan.”

“So why did he change his mind? Why keep me so close to him? Why, when there was any danger of him doing
that
?”

He sighs deeply. “Because he fell in love with you, and couldn’t bring himself to stay away.” He puts his finger to my lips, knowing what I am going to say. “When he found out your secret he put you in the harem as protection from him, to keep you safe. He couldn’t have you close; he couldn’t trust his temper.”

The limousine draws up in front of us, and Jasim guides me down the path. The driver has the door open. I swing round. “But why end it all together now then? He knows the truth; I’m no thief.”

“You can buy out the contract, Cara. You can be free. Nijad doesn’t want to hold you prisoner, or risk that he will hurt you. He loves you too much. You heard what he said: he can’t trust himself.” He sighs. “It’s all down to the fact he can’t remember what made him flip. He’s living his life never knowing what could set him off again.”

My hand moves to my stomach and the new life that’s growing there. The news I’d been so excited to share seems to be mocking me now. “I’m carrying his baby.”

“I know.” Jasim had apparently been eavesdropping for a while. He puts his hand on my arm as I go to get in the car. His dark eyes are full of compassion. “I’m so sorry, Cara. It’s an absolute fucking mess.”

****

An absolute mess. An absolute fucking mess. And it wasn’t going to get cleared up any time soon. Our return to Al Qur’ah was uneventful, our arrival at the palace unremarked. After a brief chat with Kadar, during which he repeated the offer of a permanent job, I decide to stay in the palace and continue to work, at least temporarily, with their finance department. My position is awkward. I’m carrying a royal child yet, due to the clause I’ve added to the contract, I would be allowed to raise him or her outside of Amahad, something that generally would not have been permitted. I don’t see the emir; he seems wary of getting involved with a grandchild he might never see.

My initial disgust at the reason the tribes had been satisfied with my marriage to the savage sheikh, and my reflex decision to tear up the contract, dulls. However disturbing Nijad’s story, I find I just can’t stop loving him. The man he described to me was not the man who came to me on my wedding night, nor was it the man I got to know. He showed no sign of violence towards me when he discovered my ‘crime’. Even that night in the harem he was cold and cruel, but never violent. I’d sensed he was forcing himself to be distant from me. I can’t relate the sordid tale Nijad told me with the man I call my husband.

I just can’t make that final decision to go back to England, the place I no longer think of as home. Nowadays I have no clue where I belong, but it certainly isn’t command central; the thought of going back there makes me go cold.

As the days pass I’m in a state of inertia. I don’t know what to do. It would only take my agreement for the contract to be deemed fulfilled, but something is holding me back. Something is preventing me from cutting that final tie with Nijad. I never expected to meet and fall in love with anyone like him, and now I never will again. He owns my heart, now and for ever. And I’m carrying his baby. Maybe it’s stupid to want to hold on to that one thing that connects me to him, that piece of paper with both our signatures on it. If Jasim hadn’t told me Nijad let me go because he loves me too much, it would be easier. But the whole damn situation seems so bloody stupid when two people can’t be together because there is a possibility that one of them could be violent.

But I am not Chantelle. I would never betray him in the same way! I can’t stop it going round and round in my mind; I even find myself looking into anger management classes for him; any chance to keep us together. Until I remember the photograph and know that Nijad’s inner rage is probably too deep-seated to be helped by just any old therapist.

It’s difficult to come to terms with the knowledge that the Kassis family had happily condemned me to marriage to a man with Nijad’s reputation. For a while I treat both Kadar and Jasim coldly, but the crown prince continues throwing work my way and I carry on doing it, more as a way to pass the time than anything else. But as I become more involved in the way the country works I’ve started to understand that people here think in ways it’s hard for the Western mind to comprehend. As my work draws me closer to the Amahadian people, I start to realise just how primitive some of the desert tribes are, and what seems barbaric to me as an Englishwoman is everyday life to them. Dealing with the country’s finances and being involved in discussions about the allocation of a sizeable budget to the military, I’ve become acquainted with the details of the struggles to prevent war, both with neighbouring countries and within Amahad itself. If the tribes of the desert revolt against the Crown, the border with Ezirad would be left wide open to invasion by jihadists. As I get a better understanding of the reasons for what they did, I realise that my kidnapping probably had gone against the grain with the forward looking royal family, but that they had little option as they had to appease the tribes. I know they are working towards bringing these tribes into the twenty-first century, and my job allows me to be a small part of that. Surprisingly, I find that instead of resenting what has happened to me I grow to love this country, and appreciate the efforts to maintain its unique identity, tolerant of all religions and cultures.

Kadar gradually becomes my rock. At times, I get annoyed at the amount of work he keeps pushing my way, but helping Amahad sort out the mess that is their finance department keeps me busy. I have top-of-the-range equipment and a number of staff reporting to me, together with the problems that go alongside that. In the first few weeks I resented what I saw as them seizing the opportunity to utilise my skills, to squeeze every last bit they could get from me before I left. Then the scales fell from my eyes and, at last, I realised that Kadar was helping me make a life for myself here, giving me a purpose and a place. When he eventually admits he doesn’t want to see me leave, doesn’t want to lose my skills, and doesn’t want to miss his niece or nephew growing up, I don’t know what to say.

Weeks go by and I’m no closer to deciding what to do. As busy as the days are, by stark contrast my nights are empty. As I lie in a restless sleep, without fail, my dreams play on the same loop, screening visions of our honeymoon in the desert, which then morph into dungeon scenes. But in my dreams Nijad doesn’t use his toys to pleasure me, instead he utilises them to hurt and mark me, to maim me. Each dream ends as I know he’s approaching to kill me, his face twisted and brutal, his eyes red, glaring like a demon’s. One night it will be his fists, the next a dagger ready to slice into my veins. But always before that final strike I wake up screaming. Then, when I wake, all I have in my head is our last conversation, and his revelations going round and round my head. Gradually the lack of sleep and my inability to eat properly start a downward spiral. I recognise the symptoms and attempt to remain active, and to fight against the depression that is sweeping over me. I try to concentrate on the baby, but even the thought that I’m pregnant is a bittersweet one.