Authors: Amber Bardan
A whirling sound whistled above us.
I broke the kiss and glanced up. A small airplane soared through the clouds.
Haithem exploded into movement.
Standing with me still in his arms, he ran to the cabin. He set me down and turned to the doors, his pants still open, and peered outside.
He panted, stared up at the sky then moved to the intercom, doing up his zipper.
I scrambled for my robe and pulled it on, belting it at the waist.
“Close the curtains,” he said, glancing at me before switching languages as he spoke into the intercom.
I ran to the windows and drew the curtains, then sat on the edge of the bed.
Haithem put the intercom receiver down and crossed the bedroom toward his office.
“What’s going on?” My pulse rushed, but not from the sexathon.
He paused and came to me, leaned over and held my face. “I’m not sure yet. Just sit tight. Don’t go outside.”
He didn’t give me a chance to answer, just kissed my forehead and left.
I threw my hands up, then flopped on the bed. I stared at the roof and my head swirled with possibilities of all the things he’d never tell me.
TWENTY-FIVE
Haithem
I
STORMED
THE
BRIDGE
.
Emilio stood at the helm. I set the instructions beside him. “There’s been a change of plans.”
He glanced at the instructions and nodded.
I folded my arms and stared out at the view. Watched the sea part for us as we cut a new course.
Footsteps raced to the bridge. “What is this?”
My jaw set. I offered no response. None was owed. This was my war, my mission and my heart.
Karim approached the helm and skimmed the instructions. “What have you done?”
“What I had to.” My chin curled. This was the only way. “I’ll do what it takes to protect her.”
He strode up behind me.
“Your destiny is greater than this, my friend.” A firm hand took my shoulder. “There’s no hiding from it.”
I took in a breath that filled me to the bottom of my aching heart. No, there was no hiding. There was no escape. Not for me.
Angelina’s destiny had now been sealed as firmly as mine.
But there was one last choice.
A choice only she could make.
A terrible choice.
“I’d never try.” Even if it broke my heart. There was no hiding. I’d protect her.
Even if it killed me.
TWENTY-SIX
H
AITHEM
SPOKE
TO
E
MILIO
. I watched them from a distance. We had three days remaining together, but I may as well have lost him already.
He’d slipped away from me.
Days ago we’d been so close that my lungs filled when he breathed in, and he tasted whatever passed between my lips, but now the space between us seemed indomitable.
Ever since the airplane, it was as though we’d already said our goodbyes.
Haithem’s gaze flickered from Emilio to where I stood, but he continued speaking, didn’t acknowledge me standing there.
My ribs ached.
Maybe this was for the best. Maybe he was trying to ease out of us gently.
Because in three days, I’d be going home.
As much as I dreaded leaving, I also craved it, needed to extract myself from this closed-in world and go home, put myself and my family right.
Then I could look forward to the day when we’d be together in the
real
world.
Start a real life.
On land.
With friends and family.
Because I missed them.
I missed my mum and dad. Missed my home. Missed Emma. I owed them all a proper explanation, one that was actually from me.
For the first time, I had the nerve to do it, too. Put everything in my own words, be honest. I didn’t blame them for not being perfect.
Not anymore.
Haithem and Emilio finished speaking, and Haithem moved out of sight. I waited for him to come upstairs.
He didn’t.
* * *
M
Y
BODY
DIDN
’
T
want to move. Everything felt weighed down, heavy, painful. Kinda like I’d been run over—run over and now had a gut full of hurt and road rage.
I’d be leaving tomorrow.
I dug in the wardrobe for the boxes and bags I’d stored in there. Pulled out all the boxes, unfolded all the good-quality cardboard and linen bags and sorted the plastic ones. Shoes first, back in original boxes. I stacked them in the corner of the room, then moved on to dresses.
I tried my best not to crease them.
Because yes, I’d be wearing them again.
Yes, I’d be taking them with me.
Even if Haithem was too chicken to spend this precious time with me, I wasn’t leaving anything behind.
This was all mine, from him, just as he was mine.
Even if he acted like an ass.
I packed underwear, maybe even sneaked one of his worn shirts in with my bras. Packed the special bag with the toy inside, too.
I’d be needing it.
Celibacy no longer suited me.
I stacked the bags with the shoes. The cabin door opened behind me. I kept moving, although my spine seemed to stick for a moment.
“What are you doing?” His voice filled the room.
If I’d ever doubted his feelings, they all rang out in that one question.
I cleared my throat. “Packing, since I’m leaving tomorrow.”
“Stop.”
I turned, dropping a bag. “Why? Aren’t I allowed to take anything with me now you’re done?”
He came toward me, picked up a bag and dumped the contents onto the bed.
My stomach twisted.
He opened a drawer and shoved things randomly inside.
“Don’t you want me to leave?” I said, following him to the drawer and scooping out what he’d put in. “Could have fooled me, the way you’ve been avoiding me.”
Maybe I was cruel, but I needed him to say it—that he’d miss me.
That he didn’t want me to go.
That this killed
him
inside, too.
“No, I don’t want you to leave,” he said, then he turned to me. Hit me with a gaze both breathtaking and immobilizing. Half old Haithem, half my Haithem. “There is so much you don’t understand.”
I found my voice and threw the clothes on the floor. “Then explain it to me, or must everything be a complete goddamn secret?”
His jaw set. Now he was completely old Haithem. “You won’t like my secrets, not most of them.”
There was no way to miss the warning, not with the hairs prickling up the back of my neck or the way his words slithered through the room.
“I never thought I would.” I stepped toward him. Went against the current pushing me away. “I always knew there were things about you that would hurt me.”
I reached him. My bare toes knocked against his polished shoes. “I love you anyway.”
His chin curled, but he only stared at me.
“You don’t need to be perfect, because you’re perfect for me.” I took a handful of his shirt. “So, I’ll take the good with the bad.”
He made a sound in the back of his throat, then leaned down and kissed me. Grabbed me by my nape and kissed me as though he could wipe the slate clean with sweeps of his tongue. My lips bruised against his mouth.
I kissed him back.
Kissed him as if it was the last time.
He walked me backward until my knees hit the bed.
I pushed against his chest. “No.”
“No?” His hands came off me as though I’d caught fire, the look on his face as though I’d just kneed him.
“No,” I said again and found balance on my feet. “You asked me once how I knew I loved you.” I ran my hand down my stomach. “How I knew that it wasn’t just this.”
I cupped myself.
His fists closed at his sides.
“I know because as tempting as it is to lose myself in what you make me feel, as lost as I already am, I want to know all of you.” I took his fist and held it between my hands. “I want to love you with my eyes open.”
His hand opened between mine, and he pushed his fingers between the fingers on my right hand. “Do you really want to know?” He stared at our joined hands. “I’ll give you that choice. Let you choose.” His fingers flexed, squashed mine a little. “I’ll tell you everything—put all my secrets in your hands.”
I nodded and flicked my drying tongue between my battered lips. “Yes.”
“It’ll hurt more than you think it will.” He pressed his lips to my knuckles, then rubbed them. “I could lie. Protect you. Make you happy. It’d be nicer.”
“I’ve had enough nice. I want real.”
He caught my gaze, held me there with it. “Very well.” He let go of my hand, held my waist and just stared at me. “Tell me you love me.”
“
I love you.
”
The words ground, raspy and raw, from my throat.
His chest rose, then fell. “One more time.”
“I love you.”
“Come then,” he said, and touched my bottom lip with his thumb. “Come and see all the things I have done.”
TWENTY-SEVEN
H
E
LED
ME
to the bowels of the yacht. Down to a place that could only be for maintenance, into an area we had to crawl inside. I breathed in the stagnant, metallic air.
Haithem opened a cupboard and pulled out a beaten tin toolbox.
I wasn’t sure what I’d expected him to show me. A dungeon full of slaves or some other heinous discovery.
Not an old toolbox that wasn’t even big enough for the most modest pirate’s booty.
We went upstairs to our cabin. He set the toolbox on the table.
Queasiness rose in my belly.
Because now my mind raced with possibilities. Tried to explore all the monstrous things one might hide in a toolbox.
He flicked the latch.
The box creaked open with a groan.
I stepped closer, peered inside.
The contents shocked me—truly they did.
Tools
.
All kinds.
How unexpected.
A hammer, screwdrivers, pliers, a wrench. Others I didn’t know the names of, because let’s face it—I wasn’t exactly a carpenter’s apprentice.
He moved the larger tools aside and fished a large box of nails from the bottom. My heart beat faster.
Perhaps the tools were to pry up the tiles, floorboards, wall panels or whatever, and get to wherever he’d stashed his secrets.
He opened the box of nails—and slid out a black device the size of a pack of cards.
I stepped into his side, staring at the object.
He held the device out to me, and I took it.
This was
it
.
The big secret.
I turned the box over in my hand. “What is it?”
“What do think it is?”
I glanced at him then back at my hands. The smooth surface cooled my palm. A bit like aluminum but perhaps sturdier. I turned the box and looked at the end. There was a finger groove. I pressed my index fingernail to the groove and slid it open.
A counter flashed a series of numbers.
“Holy fuck.” My hand shook in an effort not to drop it. “Is this an explosive?”
“No,” he said, a frown sweeping across his face. He turned the device over and opened the other end. “Try again.”
A plug, similar to the one in the center of my laptop charger.
“An adapter?” I looked back at the counter. “It measures something?”
“Closer,” he said.
“Contains something?” I looked back at the plug. “A portable charger?”
Haithem smiled, although it didn’t reach his dark eyes. “Almost. It’s a self-replenishing energy cell.”
I glanced at Haithem, and suddenly everything clicked into place. “Self-replenishing, as in it doesn’t run out?”
“No, Angel, it doesn’t run out.” He took the device. “It’s a whole new energy technology.”
“Oh my god,” I said, watching him slide one end closed. “So, it’s like a battery that lasts forever.”
The end closed with a soft click. “Not forever—like all technology, it has a life expectancy.” He closed the other end. “Ten years, fifteen at most for this.”
He laid it on the table, and my mind whirled. The little black box looked way too innocent for something so revolutionary.
“What can it actually power?” I gasped. “Could it power a car?”
“This particular cell,” he said, touching the top, “could power a hospital or a large shopping mall.”
Excitement sizzled in my blood.
I’d expected ugly secrets, not an epic treasure.
How could something so small be so powerful?
“Should we be handling it?” I asked.
Haithem’s lips curved. “It’s perfectly safe.”
I glanced back at the innocent-looking device. So much energy in one place had to be volatile. “What if I smashed it with that?” I pointed to the hammer on the table. “What would happen then?”
“If you smashed it with a hammer, it would break.” He moved the hammer, placing the tools back in the toolbox. “Break...and no longer work. Not break and explode.”
I pushed my hair behind my ear. “This is insane.”
“The insane part is that I’m five months away from being able to mass-produce these.” His voice grew lighter. “In a year, I can have one of these in every home in Australia and the United States for the price of a new smartphone.”
I glanced from the energy cell to Haithem, the full impact sinking in.
My heart lifted.
Five months.
Now I understood.
Why had I been so worried some terrible thing was happening?
“Three years and I can supply the world. Five, and I’ll have a modified version for all automobiles on the open market.”
Automobiles
.
Replacing fuel.
“I can’t imagine how valuable this must be...” My heart skipped. “There must be people who’d kill to get their hands on it.”
Click, click, click. “
That’s why you were so secretive. Everyone must want it?”
“No.” Haithem turned to me fully. Looked right down at me. “This isn’t valuable—it’s invaluable.” His voice grew so cold it could have frosted the windows. “I’m not worried about the people who’d kill to have it.” He took me by both arms. “What worries me are all the people who are desperate to ensure no one ever has access to it.”
The chill seeped into my heart, freezing it for a moment.
“The ones who’d do anything to destroy it.” His eyelids hooded. “Kill me, you, anyone who’d ever heard of it and anyone who they ever even thought had.”
My pulse came rushing back with a vengeance.
He hadn’t simply handed me his secret.
He’d handed me power.
Knowledge that could kill him.
He trusted me that much—with his life.
I pressed myself forward and hugged him. “Do you know what this means, Haithem?” Tears welled. “You’re saving the world.”
I loosened my grip on his middle to look up at him and grin. “You’re a real-life Captain Planet.”
Haithem’s features clamped tight, and he pried my arms from around him. “No.” He backed away from me and dragged the empty nail box closer and fished inside. “This, Angelina, was the hero.”
He handed me a small photo.
Haithem, younger, softer, with a man who was a shorter, grayer, broader version of himself.
“My father spent his life working for this.”
I held the image closer.
The Haithem in the photo smiled freely.
“His greatest dream was that his legacy would become my legacy.”
I glanced up from the photo.
“But do you know what I was doing instead of working with him on what I thought of as a fruitless pipe dream?”
I frowned, seeing something on his face I’d not seen before. Something I recognized from my own life—guilt.
“I was off making my fortune halfway across the world.” A snarl moved to his lips. “And make it, I did. With gadgets and apps and useless things that make our privileged lives more entertaining.”
He took the edge of the photo and tugged it from my fingers.
“The day I returned home for my mother’s fiftieth birthday, my father and I worked together for the last time. I saw the problems he’d been too close to see, and we finished it together.” He rubbed the photo with his thumb, then pushed it into his shirt pocket. “He’d asked me so many times to come home and work with him, but even though I had his scientific brain—my heart was all business, all greed.”
My breaths sped up.
His pain was palpable. I wanted to reach out to him, touch him, but I wouldn’t stop him speaking. Not this man who so rarely spoke. Not like this.
He stepped back, picked up the empty nail box. “That night, I flew back to resume my business in the States, excited at the new possibilities for us.” He put the energy cell back inside the box. “But I understood greed well enough to appreciate the need to proceed delicately.”
He looked down, his fist closing around the box. “Father didn’t understand. Greed wasn’t his thing. Sharing knowledge was.” He moved again and slid the nail box into the back of the toolbox. “They were dead within the week.”
The toolbox closed with a slam.
“This only exists because my father entrusted his research to me. Knew I was the one who’d bring it to life. Because I was the one with the resources to be careful and the cunning to prevail.” He finished his tale, his voice brittle and cracked.
“It’s not your fault, Haithem.” I stepped forward and touched his arm. “It is not your fault that bad people did bad things.”
The full, devastating power of his gaze landed on me. “But what about the terrible things I have done?”
My chest felt as though I’d breathed smog, something poisonous creeping into my lungs.
His voice grew soft again yet still as insidious. “My love, you said you wanted to love me with your eyes wide-open.” He moved to the wardrobe and collected his briefcase. The locks popped open with a snap. He removed a file thick as a magazine and laid it on the table. “So open it. I’m no spandex-covered hero.”
He slid the file toward me.
“What is this?”
I stared at the folder.
“It’s the full, ugly truth of who I am and what I will do, Angelina.”
Now this file, this was the thing I knew would explode if I touched it.
I didn’t want to touch it.
What could it give me?
I tore my gaze from the file and looked at Haithem.
Every cord in his neck stood up, and his eyes were wide and blazing. I’d seen him angry but never like this. Because this wasn’t anger or even pain. This was fear—the kind you feel when everything essential to you is about to be torn away.
I knew. I’d experienced this kind of fear before.
For Haithem to be afraid?
It had to be something worthy of terror.
And I was terrified.
Terrified my heart was about to experience failure after weeks of such ups and downs. Terrified that I’d come to the limits of what I could take. Terrified that the one thing I’d allowed to become essential to me was about to be annihilated.