stood there much longer than was wise. And then far longer than that.
But eventually he roused himself and made his way back up to the main floor. He retrieved his laptop from his briefcase and his second, private mobile phone. When the usual masking rituals had been taken care of and he was certain nothing he did could be tracked, he opened up his files and sent more pictures off to his partners in this enterprise back in Washington, DC, who used him as a lure in their dangerous trap as if he were merely an operative. As if he had no personal stake in this game.
And there were so many pictures. JPEG after JPEG of the girls he’d taken home with him. The girls who had helped him build his own deeply unsavory reputation, brick by brick, sordid night by sordid night.
The girls he’d pumped for information before letting his partners effect their rescue when it couldn’t be traced to him. A white knight one step removed, he thought, his lip curling in self-derision, which hardly counted, did it?
He could not prove who was at the center of the vast sex trafficking ring that had already consumed so much of his three former Harvard roommates’ lives. He only knew—as he’d known for far longer than Hunter, Austin Treffen, and Alex Diaz had, though he’d been unable to speak of it to any of them—that it was not contained to New York City and one law firm under the guidance of one perverse man. He’d heard whispers. Then he’d heard more pointed rumors. And all of them led back to his own country. To the highest levels.
Possibly to the highest level of all—but there was still a part of Zair that refused to accept that.
Because Azhil was not merely Zair’s ruler, his sultan. Twenty years older than Zair and the son of their father’s first and most cherished wife, Azhil had treated the illegitimate, ignored Zair like one of his own. He’d supported him, encouraged him. When Zair had gone to Harvard, Azhil had accompanied him but had done so completely under the radar, making Zair feel that he was a member of the family instead of just another bastard.
“I have a hundred courtiers already,” Azhil had told him when Zair was twelve and Azhil was already running the country. “Many of them are family. They claim my blood, they flatter my every word and deed, and they would each knife me in the back if they could. I need you to be anything but that.”
“What can I possibly be for you that you don’t already have?” Zair had asked, awed.
Azhil could have ignored him the way everyone else did. Zair was no more than another of their father’s numerous mistakes. Granted a place to live in the sultan’s vast palace complex and the money to strike out on his own should he wish it by virtue of the blood in his veins, but never an heir. Never anything more than a grudging obligation.
But Azhil had treated him like a brother.
“I don’t need any further flattery,” Azhil had said. “I need someone I can trust. A blade, sharpened and honed, to fit in my hand and no one else’s. I think this is you, Zair. If you wish it.”
He’d smiled at Zair then, and Zair would have done anything he asked. He had.
“I will be the finest blade a sultan has ever had,” he’d vowed then. He’d trained and he’d studied. He’d honed his body and he’d sharpened his mind. And he’d dedicated himself, body and soul, to his brother.
How could he accuse Azhil now? The fact that he could consider such treachery at all made him sick. The fact that he regularly funneled information to those who would hurt Azhil if they could made him loathe himself. He’d spent the first few years of this operation assuming that what he’d find would exonerate his brother. It had only been the last couple of years that had curdled him, changed him. Made him despair.
Made him understand that Azhil was likely not the man Zair had always believed he was.
Yet he’d thought he had a handle on it, this knife-edged tightrope walk of his. And then he’d looked up and seen Nora Grant, of all people, standing in the midst of all that ugliness. And something inside him had simply refused. There was a line he wouldn’t cross, apparently, and it was her.
Zair rubbed his hands over his face and sighed. He would keep Nora safe no matter what, even if it was from himself. He would keep her out of this mess. He’d do it even if he had to truss her up and ship her back home to New York in the cargo hold of his plane. He vowed it.
It was still so dark outside, though not nearly as dark as it was inside him, and it was such a little thing to cling to, Zair knew. Such a tiny, inconsequential thing. One blonde girl whose smile altered the world a little bit when she aimed it at him, when she believed in him. It made all this darkness that little bit brighter.
That smile was all he had left.
But the next morning there were pictures of Zair and Nora all over the papers. And that changed everything.
Chapter Four
NORA WOKE UP to find herself sprawled out in Zair’s absurdly comfortable bed, all by herself in a shower of sunlight.
The view from the tall windows—the whole of the Riviera arranged below her with the Mediterranean sparkling beyond as if for her pleasure alone—was as breathtaking as she’d expected, but what she hadn’t anticipated was how scrubbed-fresh-and-clean she would feel. As if Zair’s shower the night before had truly been magical—or perhaps it was the fact that he’d been there with her, washing her with all of that tenderness and intense focus of his, that had cast some kind of enchantment over her. As if this were some kind of love story after all.
She sat up slowly and breathed in deep, and she felt more like herself in that moment than she had since she’d realized Harlow was missing. She even smiled with a surge of something a great deal like joy—
And then felt sick with guilt in the next breath.
“I’m sorry, Harlow,” Nora whispered fiercely into the quiet bedroom, appalled at herself. Her own callousness. “I haven’t forgotten you.”
She had to keep looking. No matter what Zair thought. And no matter that she had an entirely different take on what “looking” might entail come the bright light of day. She rubbed her hands over her face and breathed out, long and hard.
Could she do it? Now that it wasn’t a throwaway rationalization—now that she’d stood on that yacht and felt all those harsh male stares, now that she’d been dragged away and had an envelope slapped in her hand—could she go through with this? Because this was her entire plan for finding Harlow. And it wouldn’t be Zair the next time.
She tried to imagine how she’d feel if all the things that had happened last night had been with some stranger. Someone who wouldn’t have stopped when Zair had. Someone who would have ignored her panic and her tears and her terror—or, worse, maybe wouldn’t have ignored it but would have handled it differently. Perhaps with a backhanded slap across the face?
What the hell were you thinking? she asked herself, incredulous. How could you have imagined this was a good plan?
Nora crawled over to the side of the bed and slid off, feeling very small. Very fragile. And deeply, profoundly embarrassed, too. A wave of it washed over her, making her feel tiny and reckless at once. Was she that careless? That stupid? That she would walk straight into the kind of situation so many women—women she knew, she thought as shame wound through her, like her brother Hunter’s new girlfriend, Zoe Brook, who had appeared on national television to talk about what she’d endured at Jason Treffen’s hands—had fought their way out of at great cost to themselves?
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