If he had to stand here another moment and listen, then he might lose the last hold on his murderous temper.
Turning, Abram stalked from the room Khalid’s mother had once shared with his own mother for a short time. His own suite was above it with a private entrance to the secured quarters that had once held Azir’s harem.
Abram moved up the stairs with a deliberately calm pace. His fists clenched and unclenched at his sides while the tightening of his teeth actually had his jaw aching with a hard burn from the stress of the pressure.
He needed to regain control. He needed to still the rush of adrenaline and come down from the high of the black icy fury that had filled him while he was with Azir.
He had to do it before he made it to his suite, before he saw Paige.
Because there was another side of the black ice.
There were consequences to the thaw of that icy rage.
And if he didn’t get a handle on it, then it would be Paige that felt the full force of it.
6
The other side
of black ice.
Abram had been forced to learn to hold back that killing,murderous rage the day he found his mother beaten to death, and knew it had been Azir’s fists that had killed her.
He remembered feeling it. Freezing, like shoving his entire body into an icy black nothingness and forcing himself to stay there rather than trying to find the man he called father to shove the knife his mother had given him straight into his black heart.
How many times over the years had he wished he had done exactly that?
Retribution would have been taken. He would have been punished severely, maybe even killed himself. But had he taken that punishment then so many other lives may have been saved.
The Mustafa lands would have been saved for Abram as Azir’s legal heir, and Ayid and Aman would have been sent away to be raised by aunts and uncles who would not have pampered their criminal habits nor risked their own families to aid their terrorist proclivities.
That icy nothingness had enveloped him, allowing him to see past the fiery, brutal pain and into the logic of his actions.
Punishment for Azir would be so thorough, so perfect, if only he could follow through with it. Abram would be free of the land and the land itself would return to the monarchy and be given back to tribal control.
But allowing Azir to live was becoming harder by the day. And today. He stopped as he reached the top of the stairs and stared down at the fist his fingers were still formed into.
Today, he’d almost given in to the impulse.
Today, he had almost become a murderer and God knew that wasn’t what he wanted. Not now, not this close to freedom. Because if he killed Azir, the monarchy would have no choice but to punish him. Jafar and his men, supposed members of the Mustafa family, would eagerly step forward and demand his punishment.
Because Abram had plotted and worked against Jafar and Azir, and even though Khalid had taken responsibility for both Ayid’s and Aman’s deaths, there were those that suspected Abram had killed Aman.
And they would have been right. Fortunately, there were very few who knew the actual truth, but if his half-brother’s co-conspirators had a chance to strike out in such a way, they would eagerly take it.
There was no doubt that he had run out of time. He would have to find a way to get both Paige and Tariq out of Saudi Arabia and into America and take his chances there.
He didn’t know what the hell Azir thought he could accomplish by kidnapping Paige and gifting him with her, or by “ordering” Tariq to aid him in whatever manner Abram required in bedding her. One thing was for damned sure, it wasn’t out of the kindness of his heart.
More like, the minute he made his vow to the emissary both Jafar and Azir would have the authorities waiting to arrest him, Paige, and Tariq for sexual misconduct. And that was a killing offense.
Tearing the keffiyeh from his head and bunching it in his hand, he inhaled deeply and moved slowly to the securely locked door of his bedroom suite.
The electronic security was the only defense he possessed in the fortress now. There were less than half a dozen of the men that had once been loyal to him and Tariq. Those men couldn’t be identified or step forward publicly if anything happened because of their own families.
He couldn’t trust the guards, and he couldn’t trust the men he had grown up with, or those he had attended college with who had returned to the Mustafa lands after him.
Throughout his life there had only been Khalid, Tariq, and Paige that he could depend upon to accept him as he was. And two of those, Tariq and Paige, were awaiting him now.