“He doesn’t want to hurt Amit,” Raffa said, and something in the words filled her with ice. “He wants to take him away from me.”
Chloe’s jaw dropped. “But that’s outrageous! How can he? Amit is your child and you are the Sheikh! Goran has no business going near Amit!”
“I am Sheikh,” Raffa agreed with a dangerous softness to his words. “But Amit is not my son. He’s Goran’s.”
“What?” She stared at Raffa with all her confusion apparent on her face. “You can’t be serious?”
Raffa spun his head, to face her. “Perfectly.”
“But you’ve told me he’s yours. He lives in the palace. He’s…”
“Amit is my nephew,” Raffa said gently. “But I have raised him as my son almost from birth. I care for him as I would my own son – he holds that place inside of me.”
The rotor blades of the helicopter were whirring overhead, loud and insistent as it droned closer and closer. The sides of the tent flapped faster as it came lower, finally setting down outside.
“I don’t understand any of this. How can he be your nephew? Elena wasn’t your sister…”
“No.” Raffa reached for Chloe’s hands, and the grip he had on her palm was tight and insistent. “Goran is my half-brother.” He pulled her beside him, out of the tent, but her mind was ten steps behind.
He handed her up into the helicopter, and then followed, but her brain was furiously trying to absorb what he’d just said. It didn’t make sense.
“Your half-brother?”
“Yes.” He reached across Chloe and buckled her into place. It was a clinical, purposeful movement but that didn’t stop her body from responding instantly, it didn’t stop her from experiencing a jolt of pleasure. But urgency pushed that aside.
“Explain this to me?” How was it possible? His father and mother had been married- happily enough? She’d never heard talk of anyone else. Surely Raffa was mistaken. Or perhaps he was using the term ‘brother’ liberally, to describe someone who was raised as his brother but wasn’t biologically.
His eyes were tortured. “Later.” He gestured towards the helicopter and sure enough, the blades began to spin faster and faster, the noise almost unbearable until he reached across with a set of earphones. She put them on, but her look was beseeching. She needed answers, answers only he could provide. Yet, in a noisy machine with a pilot and co-pilot behind the controls, he was obviously not going to speak, regardless of the bombshell he’d just dropped on her lap.
Amit wasn’t Raffa’s son.
He was Goran’s.
Raffa hated Goran. She shivered, remembering the way her husband had exploded after the sight of Goran speaking to Chloe. Why did he feel that enmity towards his own flesh and blood? What had happened between them?
Her eyes sought Raffa’s, but he was staring resolutely ahead, his face a mask of cold composure even when she knew he must be flooded with panic. She’d seen it in him, the moment he’d heard the news.
Whatever had happened between Goran and Raffa, this news changed everything for Chloe, for Raffa, and for their future.
Amit wasn’t simply the illegitimate child Raffa refused to acknowledge. She couldn’t ‘work’ on her husband until he saw the foolishness in excluding the boy from the line of succession. Amit didn’t belong in it – he was not Raffa’s son.
If Goran was Malik’s son also, though, Amit was third in line to the throne – behind Raffa, and then Goran.
Ice ran down Chloe’s spine as Raffa’s desperate, obsessive need for an heir shifted into a new gear, as it began to make more sense to her. If anything happened to Raffa, heaven forbid, Goran would be Sheikh? Or at least be in a position to challenge for the title?
But his lineage had never been announced; she’d never even heard of him until the party at which they’d met.
I’ve heard so much about you.
From Amit? That was the only explanation. They saw one another; they were close. At least, close enough to talk.
If she provided Raffa with an heir then the line of succession was secured as Raffa wanted. There was no alternative – Amit couldn’t simply leap-frog his own father to take up the place she’d imagined he might.
Panic overtook her body in the guise of nausea. She gripped the side of the helicopter, and that had Raffa jerking his gaze to her.
“Sheikha?” He unbuckled and, uncaring for the helicopter’s stability, he crossed to Chloe, taking the seat next to hers. “What is it?”
“Motion sickness,” she lied weakly, sitting back in the seat and closing her eyes. It didn’t help. Wave after wave of dizziness made her want to be ill.
Raffa put an arm around her shoulders. “Drink this.” He handed her a bottle of water. She took it, had a sip, and then closed her eyes anew.
“Thank you.” It didn’t help; nor did his proximity.
Because everything was shifting into focus for Chloe, and the result was somewhat terrifying.
There was no ‘get out of jail free’ clause. If she didn’t conceive a baby, she had to leave him. She couldn’t stay with Raffa when he so desperately needed an heir. And she understood now how real his need was – how pressing. What if this month failed again? And the next?
She clamped her lips together. Her forehead was beaded in sweat, and she felt perspiration pooling between her breasts. Raffa watched her the entire journey. Only once they touched down on the roof of the east wing of the palace did he remove his hand from her shoulders.
“Come,” he said, stepping out of the sliding side door to the helicopter. When she would have done the same, he shook his head, reaching for her and holding her to his waist, cradling her against his chest and staring down at her with a frown.
“You’re ill.”
“Just travel sickness,” she reassured him once more.
But his eyes lifted in a way that spoke of disbelief. “Are you sure?”
She nodded.
