Is he going to tell my father?
It’s the first thought that races through my head after I’ve come back down from the most intense orgasm of my life.
Julian Faraci was spying on me. And I let him.
“Are you okay?”
Aidan’s voice is muddled, both because my ears are fuzzy from how hard I just came and because my mind is a fog trying to compartmentalize what just happened. Nausea curdles my stomach when I meet Aidan’s deep brown eyes.
Is it considered cheating if I couldn’t control it?
I didn’t do anything wrong, but the way my thighs are still slick from what his eyes caused has disgust and guilt mixing and sinking like a rock in my gut.
“Princess,” Aidan continues.
Shaking my head slightly, I reach up and press my palm against his cheek. “Yeah, I’m fine.”
I almost tell him what happened, the words sitting heavy on the tip of my tongue, but at the last second, I swallow them back down, deciding to bury the memory somewhere deep inside me where I won’t be able to reach it. After all, it’ll never happen again.
Julian really has nothing to lose, but if he tells my dad, then I’ll be loud too and force him to admit he was watching me. And I can’t imagine he’d want anyone to know he was rubbing his dick while watching his boss’s daughter get eaten out. I’m not even sure why he was watching me when he’s spent most of his time actively trying to get me out of his sight.
A sick feeling washes over my skin and pricks at my insides like needles when I think again about how I got off because he was there.
About how much I liked it.
It was only because he’s attractive. A temporary lapse in judgment, caused by the heightened senses of my arousal and the unfortunate picture- perfect features of Julian’s face.
A shot of something strikes between my legs and my pussy spasms.
Dammit.
“When can I see you again?” Aidan whispers, leaning in and pressing his sweat- slicked forehead against mine.
Warmth spreads through my chest and I press my lips to his. “As soon as I can sneak away.”
I hate that it has to be this way with Aidan, hiding in dark corners and whispering promises of when and where. But the thought of even bringing it up to my father makes my hands clammy and my heart sink.
How do you tell a man you’re terrified of disappointing that you’ve been sneaking around beneath his nose with a boy who’s worked in your house for years?
He’d never be okay with it. He’s always been vocal in the past about me protecting myself from people without money because they’d be the first ones to try and take it from me. He wouldn’t understand that Aidan doesn’t care about any of that.
And honestly, disappointing my father is the least of my fears of what he would do. He could send Aidan away. Fire his mom. Leave them out on the streets with no job and no opportunities.
I’m under no illusion that Baba is an upstanding citizen. His morals are flimsy at best and nonexistent at worst. And I couldn’t live with myself if something happened to Aidan or his mother because of me.
Aidan’s jaw clenches, a tumultuous emotion flitting through his gaze. “Let me go to your father, Yas.”
Panic seizes my throat and makes my hands clammy, the way it does every time he brings it up. “N- no. Not yet.”
Aidan shoves himself back, jumping from the bed and rummaging through the pieces of clothing on the floor until he finds his pants, pulling them roughly up his thighs. I watch him in silence, the guilt feeling like a thousand boulders tied to my middle, dragging me down until I drown.
“He wanted me to meet a man tonight at our dinner,” I force out.
I’m not sure why I bring it up now or why I bring it up at all, other than maybe if I tell him this, then I won’t feel so bad about keeping what happened with Julian close to my chest.
It isn’t until he’s fully dressed, throwing his basic white T- shirt over his head, that he speaks again. “And…did you?”
I shake my head. “He never showed.”
Aidan sighs. “You can’t let your father control your life forever.”
A spike of rage flashes through me, and I lick my lips, turning my head to the side. “You don’t understand.”
“Because you won’t let me!” He spins to face me fully as his fists ball at his sides.
“He’s sick, Aidan!”
He scoffs. “Believe me, I know.”
My gaze softens as I stare at him, wishing I could wipe the hurt look from his face. But what Aidan’s asking isn’t something I can give.
Sighing, I run a shaky hand through my tangled hair, the thick, curly black pieces fighting against my fingers. “I don’t want to cause him any stress. It’s not good for him to be stressed.”
A little slice of anger wedges its sharp edges into my chest from having to verbalize it. Saying it out loud makes it real, and I’m still trying to pretend that it’s not.
My dry tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth. “I’ll tell him, okay? I just need time.”
Aidan stares at me, the smooth planes of his face drawn tight before he finally blows out a breath and walks over, sitting next to me. His hands cup my cheeks, and he wipes away the few stray tears I couldn’t keep in. “Princess, how much more time do you have?”
His words smash through the grief like a wrecking ball, spreading the shattered pieces until they splinter my skin. “Don’t use his lung cancer as a weapon to get your way, Aidan.”
“I’m not.”
My bottom lip trembles and I pull it between my teeth, twisting my head from his grasp.
His grip tightens and he brings me back to face him. “I’m not. I just… I’ve loved you since I was thirteen, and I’ve respected your wishes, waiting on the sidelines, having you in secret all these years while you figured out a way to tell him. I don’t want to lose the chance of getting his blessing. Let me prove to you I’m good enough, Yasmin. For him and for you.”
My stomach churns.
“I can give you the world. But you have to let me actually be with you in public.” He peppers small kisses along my jaw, causing goose bumps to sprout down my neck. “I love you, Yas. Surely, your dad will see that you love me too.”
Nodding, I push down the fear and run my fingers through his silky brown hair. “Okay. I’ll talk to him tomorrow.”
But the next morning, when I’m sitting in my father’s office…I don’t talk to him.
Despite what Aidan may think, it isn’t that easy. I’ve tried a thousand times over the years to make the words pass my lips: “Baba, I’m in love with Aidan Lancaster.” But they never come.
At first there was nothing truly to tell. It was just a deep friendship, one that blossomed soon after he showed up at the estate, his mother becoming the head of our household staff when he was six years old. We were two kids spending our free time together in the summer and sneaking out to make snow angels in the winter. And when it turned into something more, I became protective, afraid of what I’d do if I lost Aidan all together and, if I’m honest, afraid of making my father upset. There’s a need for my dad’s approval that spawns deep in my gut, bleeding through every single one of my good intentions until it snuffs out all the light. He’s not a coldhearted man— at least not with me— but he expects a certain type of person to exist in our circle, and people in a lower income bracket don’t fit the mold. They’re staff members, meant to be seen and not heard. And definitely not meant to sweep in and steal his daughter’s heart.
I’m not sure where the insecurity stems from. Maybe it’s because my mother died in childbirth, leaving him to be the only one in my orbit, or maybe it’s because despite the less- than- ideal vision he has for me, he’s loved and supported me every day of my life.
He’s never not been there.
I would give my dad the world because it’s what he’s given me. I’d be selfish to pretend otherwise.
“Habibti, are you okay?” My father’s voice coasts through the air, skating along the tops of his dark wood furniture until it settles heavily on my shoulders, forcing me deeper into the rich burgundy leather of his oversize chair.
We’re in his home office, the place he spends most of his days now that he’s ill, and flashes of my time as a young child sitting in my father’s lap behind his desk while he taught me about the four C’s of diamonds— cut, color, clarity, and carat weight— come to the forefront of my mind. A warm feeling of love fills me up when I remember the way he’d bounce me on his knee while I stared into a magnifying glass and looked at the jewels he’d bring home.
“Yes, Yasmin,” Julian cuts in. “You look positively flushed. Care to share?”
I cut my gaze over to him, annoyed that he’s always here and clearly trying his best to get under my skin. I’ve always known that he’s my father’s sidekick, but until I got back from university, I didn’t realize that meant he would be forever lingering like a bad habit.
He stares at me with a challenge, his tall frame fitted in a perfect suit and his shoulder leaned against the wall like he doesn’t have a single care in the world. As if he didn’t become the world’s worst Peeping Tom last night as he watched Aidan fuck me, then get me off with his tongue.
“Don’t you have your own house to go to?” I snark. “Your own family to bother?”
He chuckles. “Why be there when there’s so much to see where I am?”
Embarrassment flows through me, my blood pressing beneath the surface of my skin.
“Does me being here bother you?” He tilts his head.
I shrug. “You’re like a roach, always lurking in dark corners.”
He smirks, straightening off the wall and sauntering toward me, leaning down slightly as he picks up my hand and presses a small kiss to the back. “I could teach you a lot about what happens in dark corners, gattina,” he murmurs.
My heart shoots to my throat.
“You two are like siblings,” my father says with a laugh.
Julian frowns as he stands up straight again. He smooths down the front of his black suit jacket, the veins on his hands pronounced from the ink that weaves around them. Squinting my eyes, I realize it’s a tattoo of a snake peeking out of his sleeve, and I track my gaze along his arm, wondering how far up the art goes.
A snake.
Fitting, I think.
A tingling sense of foreboding slithers up my spine and wraps around my neck.
“Baba,” I say, tearing my eyes away from Julian. “Can we talk in private?”
I keep my attention on my father, but the side of my face burns, and I can tell just from the feeling that Julian hasn’t taken his gaze off me.
“I was just leaving,” Julian states. “Rest up, old man. I’ll call you with any important news.”
My father nods as he watches Julian leave, and my fingers dig into the sides of the leather chair to temper the urge that’s whirling through me, telling me to follow him and make sure he never speaks about what he saw. To ask him who the hell he thinks he is.
“I wanted to speak with you too,” my father says. “I’m not sure how much time— ”
“No,” I cut him off, panic suddenly filling up my chest like wet cement. “I don’t want to talk about this.”
His gaze softens. “We have to talk about this. There’s no cure here, sweetheart, and there are things I need to say before I… before I can’t.”
My fingers curl into fists until my nails break skin, hoping the sharp bite of pain grounds me.
“I need you to listen with an open mind,” he continues. “Can you do that for me?”
The knot in my throat swells until it feels like it will burst through my esophagus. I swallow around the pain. “I would do any…” I suck in a shaky breath. “Anything for you, Baba.”
A dark emotion hits his eyes, and even through the ashen skin and the dried-up lips, I see a spark in him, one that I thought was gone forever.
“Do you mean that?” he asks.
I nod, straightening in my chair, desperate to make him see the truth. “With my whole heart.”
“Then I do have one request.” He stops, a heavy cough breaking free. It makes my lungs cramp tight as I watch him struggle through the harsh sounds and rattly breaths before he pulls himself together. He gives me a sad, small smile. “Consider it a dying man’s last wish.”
My heart aches.
“Anything,” I whisper.
“I need you to marry.”
Shock rushes through my middle like a flooding dam.
“Wh- what?” I stutter.
He smiles softly, sitting back in his chair. The clock on the wall is ticking audibly, muddling up my already- racing thoughts as I try to figure out what it is he means. It must be a metaphor or a euphemism, because I know it’s not what it sounds like. He wouldn’t ask this of me. Not this.
My father nods and stands up from where he was sitting behind his desk, walking slowly around the edges and making his way toward me. My heart is beating so loudly I can hear it in my ears, and the sound makes me sick to my stomach.
Am I going to throw up all over his Persian rug?
Sighing, he sits in the chair next to me, reaching out and grabbing my fingers, his frail thumbs smoothing over the backs of my hands.
I glance down at the movement, my chest tightening from the affection. From the way his grip isn’t as strong as it used to be and the fact that every single thing he does is another reminder of just how sick he is.
“You’re my daughter, Yasmin. The most important thing in my life. I need to know you’ll be taken care of,” he murmurs.
I swallow around the dread that’s creeping through my pores. “I can take care of myself.”
“Listen, I…” He pauses, his gaze flicking from my face to something behind me and then back again. “I don’t trust outsiders. My legacy is you and what our family has built. Sultans has been ours since my father came here with a dream to build an empire, knowing one day it would pass down to me and then to a son of my own.”
His words slap me in the face and are a stark reminder that for all the things I am to my father, there’s also one thing that I’m not.
A son.
“Sultans belongs in the family,” he continues. “Everything I have is yours.”
“Then let me have it,” I say, my voice growing strong. This is my moment to prove to him that I’m more than what he sees. It’s not my dream to run a multibillion-dollar conglomerate. My degree was in psychology, not business, and I’d have no clue what in the hell to do, but I could learn. I’ll do anything to make sure his name lives on, that our family’s legacy lives on, if that’s what he needs me to do.
He chuckles, but it’s an empty sound. “You’re the light in my life, Yasmin. But you aren’t meant to live in my world.”
“That’s not fair, Baba. I— ”
“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.”
