Twisted (Never After #4)(9)

“No,” he interrupts. “I’ve done everything I could to shield you. To…protect you from the unsavory side of my life. And there are things you couldn’t possibly understand and things you could never forgive me for if you knew.”

My brows raise and I sit back in my seat, pulling my fingers from his. “I know more than you think.”

He chuckles, reaching out to pat the back of my hand.

Irritation pulls my chest tight. If I were a man, this wouldn’t even be a conversation. He’d probably have had me in all his meetings from the time I was little, teaching me about the “unsavory” things, expecting me to listen and learn. The fact that he doesn’t have the person he’s searching for—someone to take over Sultans that has Karam blood in their veins—is his own fault.

I’m not the delicate flower he wants to believe I am.

“If you marry, your husband can make the decisions on your behalf as the sole shareholder, and I can die peacefully, knowing the two most important things in my life are left in good hands. In the hands of family.”

My chest hurts from how quickly my heart is beating, and my head feels like a rubber band is being wrapped around my skull and tightened. But despite all that, I realize, this is it. This is the moment I can tell him about Aidan. I suck in a deep breath and steel myself through the nerves. “I actually have some— ”

Before I can finish the sentence, he coughs. And coughs. And coughs. It’s loud and grates against the rough edges of his diseased lungs before it explodes from his mouth. His hands leave mine suddenly.

I watch as he hacks until his eyes water. He grabs a handkerchief from his pocket, and the red that stains through the fabric has me swallowing back the words like bile, allowing them to singe my throat instead of taint the air. I can’t tell him about Aidan right now. I can’t disappoint him with a choice he’d never want for me. Not when he’s like this.

My nostrils flare, despair wringing through me as I watch my father fight through his pain to ask this one last thing of me.

But how can he ask this of me?

How can I say no?

Slowly, he wipes his mouth, a single teardrop rolling down his face and hitting his patchy beard, the one that just started to grow back when he came home on hospice and stopped his treatment for good.

In any other circumstance, his hair would be a sign of hope, of resilience. Now, it’s just another reminder that his days are numbered.

“Please,” he whispers, his voice weak.

A thought flares in my head, spreading through my brain like acid. This is why he wanted me to meet that man at dinner. He was matchmaking.

Betrayal sits on my tongue like dry powder. All this time, all these years, I’ve nodded and said yes to anything he’s asked, I’ve gone away like a good little girl to all the boarding schools and the etiquette classes, and I’ve never spoken out of turn. I went to college and got a “respectable” major instead of doing a bachelor of fine arts in photography like I wanted.

And when he became sick, I rushed home without a second thought, knowing that there was time for me to figure out my own life after.

After.

He’s dying, I remind myself.

I glance up, looking at his face, the weight of what he’s asking from me feeling like the world was just plopped on my shoulders.

His eyes won’t meet mine, and I know it’s hard for him to be like this in front of me. He’s always been the pillar of strength in my corner, and I owe it to him to give him this back.

I owe him everything.

“Okay, Baba. Whatever you wish.”





Chapter 4





Julian





My jaw clenches as I eavesdrop at the door, listening to Yasmin and her father. I’m not surprised to hear Ali say she needs to marry, since I already knew it was coming, but it burns all the same.

Honestly, I’m a little insulted that he hasn’t thought of proposing I marry Yasmin. I assume it has to do with our age difference, or the fact that he “sees me like a son.” But there’s a thought that’s taken root ever since I learned that he was bringing in suitors, whispering that maybe, just like everyone else always has, he doesn’t think I’m good enough.

My chest smarts at the idea.

Doesn’t matter.

There’s still time to snip the strings and rearrange them until the marionettes move to my liking. Once Ali has passed away, I won’t have a need for a princess who thinks the blood that runs through her veins and the money she’s been fortunate enough to grow up with make her better than everyone else.

My heart jumps into my throat when coughing rings out from behind the heavy wood of the door, and at the same moment, my phone vibrates against my leg, causing me to jolt back.

Taking a deep breath, I shake my head and pull the cell from my pocket.

I spin around from where I was eavesdropping and make my way down the ornate marble hall, decorated with oversize paintings by Monet and van Gogh, and lit with dim thousand-dollar lights. It’s cliché to have them hanging here, but that’s kind of the purpose. Well-known art that even a layman would recognize. That’s all any of this is, really— the lavish furnishings and the flashes of money— a show.

But it’s one I enjoy starring in.

I dreamed about being in places like this since I was a kid, growing up with next to nothing.