“I see.” His voice was lowered in case her mother came into the room, she assumed.
“Do you think I’m bad, Papa?” She loved her parents. The last thing she wanted was to embarrass them or give them cause to feel shame because of her desire for Abram.
“Paige, what could make you ever imagine you are bad simply because you are a woman who deserves what her lover desires?” He gave a hard shake of his head and a hesitant smile. “Perhaps that did not come out as I intended, but I would never believe you bad because you are a woman.”
“Or because I’m in love with Abram Mustafa?” she asked.
He couldn’t hide it, and her father wasn’t a man who would lie to her.
The gray green of his eyes flashed with concern. His expression tightened with what she knew was disapproval and fear.
“That is a bit of a surprise,” he admitted as he raked his fingers through his hair with a hard sigh. “And does Abram feel the same for you, Paige?”
“No,” she admitted painfully. “Abram isn’t in love with me, Papa. And he doesn’t want to see me again because he’s afraid of the danger he will bring into my life. For him, it’s over.”
“Ah, my little princess,” he whispered, his arms opening to her. She had to swallow tightly to hold back her tears.
She rushed to him. She let him pull her into his embrace. His arms surrounded her, cushioning her against his chest as she fought to hold back her tears.
“He is a fool and a coward to walk away from a woman whose heart is as brave and as courageous as yours.” He kissed the top of her head gently. “Perhaps, Paige, he no longer knows how to love.”
She was saved from replying as her bedroom door opened and her mother stepped into the room.
Paige knew instantly that something was wrong, just as her father did.
“Marilyn.” Pavlos moved to her. Paige followed, her heart suddenly jumping in her throat.
Her mother was shaking and pale, her lips bloodless.
“Marilyn?” Pavlos gripped her arms, staring down at her worriedly. “Love, what has happened?”
Marilyn swallowed tightly as she stared up at her husband in fear. “Reaching Khalid was impossible. I finally got Abram to answer his phone.” Her voice turned ragged, and a tear eased from her eyes as she inhaled roughly. “Oh God, Pavlos, they hurt Khalid. They shot him and no one knows how bad it is.”
It was bad enough. Paige rushed to the hospital with her parents to find Marty, her clothes stained with Khalid’s blood, her eyes dark with fear as she sat with her mother, surrounded by men.
One of those men was the director of the FBI and had at one time been Khalid’s boss.
With her were both Abram and Tariq. They looked as exhausted as she still felt.
“Marilyn, Pavlos.” Zach Jennnings, the FBI director stood to greet her parents.
“Whats going on here, Zach?” Pavlos asked quietly.
“Khalid, Abram, Tariq, Marty, and I were leaving the Justice Department after Abram and Tariq were debriefed. Abram signed the papers disclosing his American citizenship for the past twenty years and his ineligibility and unwillingness to accept the guardianship of the Mustafa lands.”
Paige turned and stared at Abram in shock. “What does he mean?” she whispered.
Abram’s expression was closed and tight.
“He means Abram turned in the papers his mother filled out before her death and put in safekeeping for him. When he was twelve he lusted after America. He turned those papers in himself and his relatives from Saudi swore to their validity,” Tariq answered. “He’s been a U.S. citizen since he was twelve, and at eighteen he joined the army. He was secretly trained and sent back to the Mustafa province along with Khalid, to spy on his father and the terrorists moving in.”
Abram remained silent, his black gaze holding Paige’s as Tariq spoke.
She remembered teasing him years before about needing to marry an American to be able to leave Saudi forever, and his reply had been, “America would never let the son of a terrorist claim citizenship.” She repeated his words softly as his gaze flickered with icy anger. “You should have told me that didn’t apply to you.”
“It would have served my purpose,” he said. “Don’t you see, Azir will ensure neither Khalid nor I ever enjoy the peace we’ve searched for.”
“Even more than you know.” Zach Jennings stepped to them.
“There are reports Azir, Jafar, and a team of Jfar’s soldiers have stepped into the country. I’m sorry, Ms. Galbraithe,” he said simply. “You’re going to have to return to protective custody until they’re found.”
There was evidently so little that she knew about the man she loved, as well as her brother. While they waited for Khalid to get out of surgery, her father and Zach Jennings answered her questions while her mother interjected with what she knew.
The Mustafa lands were held differently than any other in the region. Because of a border dispute generations before with Iraq, the Iraqi king at that time negotiated an agreement that as long as the Mustafa family controlled the land, then it would stay within the Saudi border. The Saudi regime couldn’t turn the land over to any other family simply because of a claimed relationship to the Mustafa family, nor could the land ever be mined or in any way profit the monarchy unless a Mustafa male guarded it.
It was said the Iraqi king at that time had a son who carried the name of another man. The arranged marriage between his son, a Mustafa, and the daughter of a sheikh who controlled the land for the Saudi regime prompted this particular settlement.
Each generation, at the age of thirty-six the eldest heir would give his vow to the Saudi king and his emissary to protect the land and to ensure its borders remained a part of Saudi Arabia. The heir must vow to conceive sons to protect it and to ensure no one ever used the province to threaten the regime.
Only in the event that the heir had no sons to take the vow, would the land revert entirely to the throne for the king to decide himself which family or tribe would control it.
Abram was the only Mustafa heir to have had no legal heirs born. He could willingly abdicate the guardianship with no repercussions except those his father was now enacting against him and Khalid in revenge for the deaths of Ayid and Amam, the two youngest sons of Azir Mustafa who had died at Abram and Khalid’s hands.
“He’ll never give up,” Paige whispered. She looked across the room to where Abram and Tariq stood leaning against the wall quietly discussing Khalid’s condition.
As though he couldn’t stand to be around her, he’d moved from her, putting the entire width of the private hospital waiting room between them.
“Do they know Jafar was behind it for certain?” she asked.
She wanted to find a way to deny it but there was no way to excuse his actions.
Abram’s gaze suddenly lasered in on her as though he’d heard the question.
“Paige, darling, Jafar isn’t the friend you knew then.” Her mother laid her hand comfortingly against Paige’s arm.
“How o we know that unless we know for certain he gave the order to kill Khalid, Abram, and Tariq?”
“Khalid, Abram, Tariq, Marty, and you,” Zach stated gently. “The information and reports we received state that Jafar is unwilling to leave any chance of an heir being conceived or born that can later risk his, or his family’s control of the land.”
Paige lifted her gaze to Abram’s once more. God, she needed him. She felt as though she were losing her entire balance, and none of it made any sense.
Jafar owed her more than this. There had been a time when Chalah had been confused, so at odds with her brother and her family that she had nearly made a very unwise decision. At Jafar’s request, at his plea actually, Paige had returned to America from Spain, allowed Chalah to live with her, and encouraged the young girl to give college a try rather than returning to the Mustafa province and honoring a marriage contract Azir had arranged for her to a much older sheikh in another part of Saudi Arabia. Fear for her brother had guided her, but Paige had convinced her how much Jafar had been against her marriage to a man so old. He also objected to her marrying so close to the time he had chosen to leave Saudi Arabia himself.