LITMIR.BIZ

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with laughter, but tears. Tears as she told Chloe of her most recent miscarriage. Of how she kept losing her babies. Of the depth of her desire for a child of her own, of her need to give birth for the kingdom.

      And then she’d made her request. So big. So altering.

       You’ll be compensated, and of course, once the child is born he’ll return to Attar with us. But you’ll be a part of bringing your nephew into the world. More family. For both of us.

      And Chloe ached for family. For a web of support like she’d never had before.

      And so she’d convinced herself that being pregnant for nine months really wouldn’t be a hardship. And that at the end of it, Tamara and Rashid would have everything they needed and that Chloe would have helped bring a new life into the world. And that a whole lot of her financial problems would be solved.

      It had seemed an easy thing to do. A small thing for the only family who seemed to care about her at all. Simple.

      Of course, once the morning sickness had hit the “easy” thing had seemed a long-ago, laughable thought. Then there had been the weight gain, the sore breasts, the stretch marks. And of course, labor and delivery.

      Nothing about it had been easy.

      But in the peaceful quiet just after giving birth, that brief surreal moment in time, before she’d found out about Tamara and Rashid’s deaths, as she’d looked down at the tiny, screaming baby in her arms, all of the fragmented pieces in her life had seemed to unite, to create a clear and beautiful picture. As if she’d done what she was here to do. As if Aden was her finest, most important achievement. Now or ever.

      That was before the world had broken apart again, before things had been smashed, destroyed so utterly and completely that she had no idea how it would ever be fixed again.

      She’d been a zombie for six weeks. Caring for Aden, caring for herself when she could, studying, sort of. Slipping beneath the surface, certain that she was going to drown.

      Sayid’s appearance was both a salvation and damnation rolled into one.

      “I know. But right now he…. What do you want to do with him?”

      “I intend to do what was always meant to be done. To take him back to his home. To his people. His palace. It is his right, and it is my duty to protect those rights.”

      “And who will raise him?”

      “Tamara had hired the best nannies already, the very best caregivers in the world. After I announce that he is… alive, everything will go as it was meant to.” There was a strange sort of calm to his voice, one that made her wonder what was going on beneath the surface.

      “When did you find out?” she asked.

      “Yesterday. I was going through my brother’s safe, his most private documents, and I found the surrogacy agreement. For the first time in six weeks… some hope.”

      “You really did find us quickly.”

      “I have sources. More than that, you aren’t very well hidden.”

      “I was afraid,” she said, her voice a choked whisper.

      “Of what?” he asked.

      “Everything.” That was the honest truth. Her life had been marked by gut-churning anxiety and fear since Tamara’s death. Every day felt temporary, and like an eternity. “I was afraid you wouldn’t want the competition. That you wouldn’t want to lose your new position.”

      Sayid’s dark eyes hardened, his lips thinning. “I was not raised to rule, Chloe James, I was raised to fight. In my country, that is the function of the second born son. I am a warrior. The High Sheikh must have compassion and strength. Fairness. I was not trained to have those things. I was trained to carry out orders, to be merciless in my pursuit of preserving my people and my country. Which I will do now, at any cost. This is not about what I want, it is about what is best.”

      She believed him. The evidence of the truth was there in his voice, in the flat, emotionlessness. He was a soldier, a machine created to carry out orders with swift, efficient execution.

      And he wanted to take Aden with him.

      She blinked, feeling dizzy. “So, essentially, you’re the ax man of the al Kadar family?” It just slipped out. She wasn’t prone to speaking without thinking. Thinking was her stock-in-trade. But she felt off balance now, not sure what to say or do. There was no textbook for this situation, no amount of studying that could have prepared her for it. No amount of reasoning.

      “My path was set from my first breath.”

      “And so is Aden’s,” she said, her lips numb, cold shock spreading through her. She’d always known that the little boy sleeping in the bassinet in her bedroom was meant for greatness, greatness that had nothing to do with her. But these past weeks… they had been out of time. Something so different from anything else she’d experienced. Miserable, and beautiful. Temporary. And in them, it had been easy, necessary even, to ignore the reality of his destiny.

      “He needs to come back home. Your life can go back to the way it was. To the way you planned for it to be.”

      She could finished school, get her doctorate. Take a teaching position at a university, or maybe get a job at a research institute. A girl and her whiteboard. It would be a beautiful and simple existence. One where she spent her time analyzing mysteries of the universe that had a hope of actually being solved, something that seemed impossible in interpersonal relationships. Which was one reason she rarely bothered with those, not beyond casual friendships at least.

      That was the future that Sayid was offering right now. The chance to go back to the way things were. Like nothing had changed.

      She looked down, saw the rounded bump where once her stomach had been flat. And she thought of the child, sleeping in the next room, the child who had grown inside of her body, the child she’d given birth to, and she knew that everything had changed. Everything.

      There was no going back.

      “I can’t just let you take him.”

      “You were going to let Rashid and Tamara take him.”

      “They were his parents, and they were… meant to be with him.”

      “His place in Attar goes deeper than that,” he said, his voice uncompromising.

      “He’ll be confused, I… I’m the only mother he knows.” She’d never put voice to that thought until now. But she’d been caring for him. Breastfeeding him. She’d given birth to him, and even though, genetically, he was not her son, he was something, something that was essential in some ways.

      “You do not wish to go back to your old life? To get back to how it was?”

      In some ways she did. Badly. Just thinking about it, about what she’d have to give up, to either have Aden or to have things the way they were, made her feel as if she was being torn in two.

      “I don’t think it can,” she said, the truth, another thing she’d left unacknowledged for as long as possible. “It’s not the same. It never will be again.” A fact, irrefutable as far as she was concerned, no mathematical equations required to prove it.

      “Then what do you propose?” he asked, muscular arms crossed over his broad chest.

      Just then, Aden stirred, his sharp cry loud in the silence of the apartment. That single, shrill cry, pierced her heart, made her ache everywhere.

      “Take me to Attar.”

       CHAPTER TWO

      “ABSOLUTELY NOT,” SAYID said, striding from the living room and heading toward the bedroom, where Aden was crying plaintively.

      “Where

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