Total pages in book: 67
Estimated words: 63046 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 315(@200wpm)___ 252(@250wpm)___ 210(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 63046 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 315(@200wpm)___ 252(@250wpm)___ 210(@300wpm)
The powder’s dusted into a glass filled with red liquid. The elderly woman mutters something to the youth.
“It’s tea,” the child translates.
“Drink, girl!” Noor shouts.
Fusing my lips tightly, I scream a silent cry, which rips through my soul.
The old lady’s hands frame my belly again. I slap them away and put all my energy into a single act—swinging up into a seated position.
“She just wants your seed,” Noor chides as if we’re the closest of friends. “Just Victor’s child. That’s all. I promise. I’ll return you to my father. We will keep the baby between us. You’ll have your wedding, sweetheart.”
“Why?” I sob, glancing the other way. Another two men with large submachine guns are on either side of the door. Even along the corridor, I can hear more armed guards. This is what Ahmad warned me of. He said that Noor would be a worse fate than Sheikh Al Rafi.
The servant child’s eyes stay cast toward the floor as what I must assume is her grandmother hands me the drink. The glass is cool to the touch and smooth to my lips.
“Just Victor’s child or you and Victor’s child,” Noor murmurs.
Before the liquid can touch my tongue, I toss the glass against the wall and spit in her face. Noor strikes.
I clasp her wrist, squeezing as I yank her arm behind her, coming to my bare feet. “You are evil!”
The butt of one of the guard’s guns slams into my stomach. Three times in succession, hard blunt, but stabbing, hits. Each vicious attack’s angled at my uterus. The swift strikes take me by surprise and cause my abdomen to throb like it’s on fire. Air explodes from my lungs as I unhand the princess.
In seconds, a tightening in my abdomen sends my piercing cry slashing through the room. The scream is so raw that I don’t even know if it’s mine. Warm wetness trickles down my legs. The old woman swipes a hand over my inner thigh. Before darkness takes me, she holds up crimson-stained fingers.
“It is finished.” The child translates her callous words.
When I come to, perhaps moments later, I have no idea, bullets wiz back and forth. My knees crunch onto the dirt floor, muddied by my own blood. A bodyguard guides Princess Noor out the back door. The older woman ordered to abort my child rushes along on their heels. The armed guard who’d punched me in the gut steps out right after, pushing the child to hurry up.
“Come back!” I scream. In my delirium, I want that cruel bastard to return. He could kill me in a matter of seconds, but I will try to take him with me.
I’ll never forget his face.
A scar botched half his eyebrow, and the man had tiny teeth.
He fires off a few more shots through the hallway before disappearing into the night.
At the sound of another firefight, I realize why I fell to the floor. The twisting of an imaginary knife in my abdomen reminds me that my child is—dying. I scurry toward the back door. This exit is now a clear shot from the house’s entry hallway. With the bullets pelting in every direction, I second guess chasing after them.
On hands and knees, I move toward a wooden chest at the foot of the gurney. With tear-salted cheeks, I open the chest and climb into the dusty, narrow oak passage. Hands over my mouth, I try not to sneeze. Every time a gun goes off, I jumpily whisper Psalms 23.
After forever, the chest begins to open. My eyes seal shut.
A voice that has signed itself across my heart and is more familiar to me than my own reflection whispers across my skin.
“Lux,” Victor gasps. Positive that this is my body’s reaction to trauma, like that PTSD crap I went through at the sight of blood in the past, I bite my eyes closed harder.
A rock-hard body scorches my cold sweaty skin. The sinew of muscles enveloping me causes my eyes to fly open.
“Vic, you’re bleeding,” I mutter. My mind’s a muddle of thoughts that extend to only him.
I push away any other considerations. “Vic, you’re—”
“Luxury, I’m fine!” he shouts. I know he’s lying for my benefit, but I quickly hoist myself down from his arms and onto a pair of wobbly legs.
His eyes venture to the dried blood on my thighs. My voice is but a whisper. “Please, don’t stare.”
“Luxury . . . Oh, God. The . . . the baby,” he murmurs. I’m no longer standing before the calculating man I loathed during the first introduction but the one who pined over his wife and child. Even then, there’d been a fire in Victor’s eyes when he finally spoke of Emeli. I understand something. The world he shared with her and Jude should’ve never collided with ours.
“We must go, Luxury.”