man had been much older and married. Hena had been a complete innocent, in America for the first time and too-easy prey.
“She said the support proved you cared about me even if you couldn’t be in my life.” Though that had been his choice, hadn’t it?
He’d kept his affairs secret; he could have kept a minimal relationship with his illegitimate daughter just as heavily under wraps.
“It sounds to me like your mother said a great deal, much of it fabricated.” He sounded unimpressed and too matter-of-fact to be prevaricating.
Sick realization washed over Liyah in a cold, unstoppable wave that made her feel like she was drowning. She was breathing, but couldn’t get enough air. Betrayal choked her.
Her mother had lied to her.
The one person in her life Liyah had always trusted. Her only family that mattered.
Something inside Liyah shattered, loosening feelings and entrenched beliefs like flotsam in the miasma of her emotional storm.
Liyah’s entire reasoning behind following through on Hena’s last wish was false. Her father didn’t know about Liyah, wanted nothing to do with her and never would.
“I can only repeat, I never made any such payments.” There was no compassion, no understanding, in his cold blue eyes. “If you really were my child and I had elected to help support raising you, you can rest assured the monetary stipend would not have been negligible.”
She stood, her legs shaky—though she wasn’t about to let him know it―her heart a rock in her chest. “I’m sorry I bothered you. I won’t do so again.”
“See that you don’t. Your regret would far outweigh anything you might hope to gain.” He rose, as well, towering over her, despite the slight stooping of age. “If you attempt to cash in on our supposed connection in any way, I won’t hesitate to prosecute you to the fullest extent of the law.”
She reeled back, feeling as if he’d struck her. “My mother was wrong.”
“She certainly was to send you on this wild errand. Is she even dead? I doubt it?”
“Yes, the only parent that will ever matter to me died four months ago.”
“And it took you this long to come find your supposed father? More like you worked out how to cash in on some convenient coincidences.”
Drawing on the brittle exterior she’d had to show to the world too much in her life, Liyah lifted her head and looked at Gene Chatsfield like the worm he was. “The only convenience is the fact your hotel paid for my trip here.”
“I will expect you to put in your notice tomorrow. I won’t have a would-be blackmailer working in my hotel.”
“I would leave right now but unlike some of the children you raised, I have a work ethic.” With that, Liyah swept from the suite on legs that barely held her up.
Not that she’d let the man in the suite see her weakness. He’d gotten the single moment of vulnerability from her she would ever give him. The moment when she’d asked him in so many words to be her father.
She was on the elevator before Liyah remembered she’d left her mother’s locket with Mr. Chatsfield. Only, when the elevator doors opened to the lobby, she found herself incapable of keying in access to the hotelier’s floor again.
She stood there in a fugue of inner turmoil as two men got on the elevator with her. Liyah should have stepped off, not ridden it with guests.
She did nothing, turned away from them as one keyed access to the presidential level.
Realizing there was no way she was returning to the suite, she managed to press the button for her concierge level, not at all sure what she was going to do when she arrived there.
She only knew one thing with certainty. Liyah wasn’t asking Gene Chatsfield for the necklace. She wasn’t ever going to ask that man for anything again.
He’d most likely see she got it back via employee channels, anyway. And if he didn’t?
Liyah would let go of the memento the same way she’d had to let go of her belief Hena Amari would never lie to her.
Her entire childhood had been influenced by the deception that her father knew and cared about her in even some minimal way. The realization he did not shouldn’t be so devastating, but shards of pain splintered through Liyah’s heart.
Only then did she realize how much it had meant to her to believe she had a father, no matter how distant and anonymous.
Liyah tried to tell herself that her life was no different today than it had been yesterday. Gene Chatsfield had never been anything more than an ephemeral dream.
So, he denied his paternity? It didn’t matter.
She wanted to believe that, but she’d never been good at lying to herself no matter how impenetrable the facade she offered the rest of the world.
Cold continued to seep through her, making her shiver as if she was standing at the bus stop in the winter’s chill. Her usually quick brain was muzzy, her hands clammy, her heart beating a strange tattoo.
If she didn’t know better, Liyah would think she was in shock.
Sounds came as if through a tunnel and colors were strangely sharp while actual details grew indistinct.
She felt like if she reached out to touch the wall, her hand would go right through it. Nothing felt real in the face of a lifetime and what amounted to a deathbed confession marred by lies.
Deceptions perpetrated by the one person she would never have looked for it from destroyed Liyah’s sense of reality, Gene Chatsfield’s denial a blow she would have never expected it to be.
Despite her inner turmoil, clipped tones managed to draw Liyah’s attention. Perhaps because they came from the one man who managed to occupy her thoughts more than her biological father.
Sayed spoke in Arabic to his personal bodyguard, the man she’d heard called Yusuf.
So furious he seemed unaware of Liyah’s presence, she realized why as the import of his conversation hit her.
Apparently, Liyah wasn’t alone in facing betrayal today. Unbelievably, the future emira of Zeena Sahra had eloped with a palace aid.
Another kind of shock echoed through Liyah. What woman would walk away from a lifetime with Sayed?
The doors whooshed open and she stepped onto the floor that had been blocked off for the harem of Sayed’s entourage, one thought paramount. The no-longer-future emira’s rooms would not be occupied. Not tomorrow, or any day thereafter for the next week.
Liyah’s overwhelming need to be completely away from the potential of prying eyes had an outlet.
She kept her eye out for anyone in the hall, but it was blessedly empty. As much as she liked Abdullah-Hasiba, Liyah felt an almost manic fear of being forced to speak with the older woman, or anyone else related to Sayed.
She
