you need to call home.’
‘Is something wrong with the twins?’ Khalid asked, for he knew his mother was due to give birth any day now.
‘No. Your mother gave birth to twins this morning, but there were complications. Your mom took a turn for the worse and could not be revived. I’m very sorry to tell you this, Khalid, but your mom is dead.’
It felt as if the air had been sucked out of the study and though Khalid determinedly didn’t show it, he felt as if he could not breathe. It simply could not be, for his mother was so alive and, unlike his stern father, she smiled and laughed and loved life. Queen Dalila was the very reason that Khalid was here in NYC.
‘Call home,’ Jobe said. ‘Tell your father we can head straight to the airport and that I will accompany you back to Al-Zahan.’
‘No.’ Khalid shook his head, for Jobe did not understand that Khalid had to arrive aboard the royal plane. ‘But thank you for the kind offer.’
‘Khalid.’ Jobe spoke with exasperation. ‘You are allowed to be upset.’
‘With respect, sir, I know what is allowed. I shall call the King now.’
Khalid awaited privacy, but Jobe remained in his seat and then, to Khalid’s mind, did the oddest thing. Jobe Devereux put his elbows on the mahogany desk and buried his face in his hands.
Jobe, Khalid realised with both bemusement and strange gratitude, had found telling him hard. It had hurt Jobe to break the news, and he hurt for their mother, and his two-year-old brother, Hussain, and for the twins just born.
Then he heard the voice of the King.
‘Alab,’ Khalid said, calling him Father.
A mistake.
‘I am your King first,’ he reminded Khalid. ‘You must never forget it, not even for a moment, and especially in dark times.’
‘Is it true?’ Khalid said. ‘Is she dead?’
The King confirmed the grim news, but said there was much consolation that an heir had been spared. ‘We celebrate that this morning another heir to the Al-Zahan kingdom was born.’
‘So she had a boy and a girl?’ Khalid checked.
‘Correct.’
‘Did she get to see them?’ Khalid asked. ‘To hold them? Did she know what she had?’
‘Khalid, what sort of question is that? I was not with her.’
That he hadn’t even found out had Khalid fold then, and an agonised breath shuddered out of him that the King heard.
‘There will be no tears,’ the King said sharply. ‘You are a prince, not a princess. The people need to see strength, not their future King acting like some peasant who weeps and keens.’
As Khalid was being reminded he was royal, and so above emotion and pain, Jobe came around the desk and placed his hand on Khalid’s shoulder. Jobe did not know what was being said, for Khalid spoke in Arabic, yet his hand remained, even when the phone call had ended.
‘I’m so sorry, son. You’ll get through this. Abe and Ethan lost their mom too.’
‘They had you, though.’ It was the most honest admission.
‘So do you, Khalid,’ Jobe said, for having himself spoken to Khalid’s icy father he knew the young man would get no true support at home.
Here in this study Khalid had wept for his mother.
For a short while he had been sixteen and flailing, scared and desperately sad, and Jobe had allowed him to be.
Jobe Devereux had been the only person ever to see him cry for, even as a child, tears had been forbidden.
Khalid had been an only child until he’d been a teenager and his brother, Hussain, had been born, lifting from him the full weight of being the only heir. Now there were twins but no mother to love them.
Yes, Khalid had cried.
But by the time the royal plane had arrived the mask had been back on and it had never, to this day, slipped.
‘Khalid?’
He realised that he had not heard Ethan come into the study and turned and offered his condolences to his business partner and friend, although they could never have been considered close.
Khalid was not close to anyone.
‘Thank you for coming, Khalid.’
‘Of course, I was always going to be here for Jobe’s funeral.’
‘I meant tonight. It’s appreciated. How long are you here for?’
‘Till the day after tomorrow.’
‘You have to leave so soon?’
‘I am increasingly needed at home,’ Khalid said.
‘Well, it was good of you to come.’
‘Enough small-talk, Ethan.’ Khalid cut straight to the point. ‘What’s going on?’
‘A lot,’ Ethan admitted. ‘And it cannot get out.’
‘You know it will go no further.’ Khalid was one of the few who could be trusted with bombshell news. He would never gossip—Khalid was far too remote and royal for that—and so Ethan told him what had been revealed since his father’s death.
Jobe Devereux’s life had been interesting, to say the least, and had played out in the press for all to see. His sons, Abe and Ethan, had seen it all.
Or had thought that they had.
‘There was an account we didn’t know about,’ Ethan told him.
Khalid listened as Ethan revealed they had found out that Jobe had had a penchant for gambling and showgirls. As it turned out, those long weekends away that Jobe had frequently taken hadn’t always been spent at the Hamptons; instead they had been taken in Vegas.
Sin City.
‘Are there debts?’ Khalid asked, for he always dealt first with business.
Ethan shook his head. ‘No, he was actually ahead, but this wasn’t an occasional thing, Khalid. There were a lot of women, oh, and a marriage we didn’t know about.’
‘A marriage?’
‘Between his first wife and my mother, it turns out he was married to a woman named Brandy for all of seventy-two hours.’
‘Ancient history,’ Khalid dismissed.
‘Perhaps, but it’s ancient history that might resurface tomorrow.’
‘Jobe’s reputation
