She almost kicked herself. What did she care if anything—if everything—was wrong with Haidar Aal Shalaan?
It seemed he wouldn’t answer. Then he exhaled. “A lot, evidently. Probably everything.”
She should say something borderline civil, get the hell away.
Instead she asked, “So what did I say that triggered your sudden retreat?” At his surprise, she rushed to add, “I’m asking only so I can replicate my success in the future.”
She expected him to slam her with something bedeviling. He didn’t.
“You…confirmed something Rashid said to me earlier. It wasn’t the only time I’ve noted your corresponding opinions of me.”
“We have more in common where you’re concerned. I heard you were friends once. Now you’re relentless enemies.”
She expected him to say they weren’t enemies, just no longer lovers. A state of affairs he had no problem reinstating.
Again, he thwarted her expectations, nodded, his eyes returning to the deadness, the defeat, that so disturbed her. “I somehow thought our enmity wasn’t such common knowledge.”
“Are you kidding? Even if my job didn’t revolve around keeping track of the honchos of economy, it would have been kinda hard to miss the two most meteorically rising players in the tech world butting heads. You’ve been giving Clash of the Titans a run for its money for the past two years.”
“It might be hard for you to believe, but I didn’t start it.”
“I believe you.”
He frowned. “You do?”
“You never ‘start’ anything. You drive people to the point where they want to take you apart. When they try, you retaliate, viciously, and to the world it seems it’s only legitimate for you to do so.”
His laugh was bitter. “Of course, that’s what you believe. And you might even be right. But not in Rashid’s case.”
“He is too powerful for even you to decimate and assimilate.”
“I meant I didn’t drive him to it. And since you asked, that’s what’s wrong—being unsure what did. And the…conversation we had.”
“It shed light on his motivations?”
“More like caused an avalanche that buried them totally.”
She hated feeling dismayed on his behalf, glared at him. “It’s not possible you don’t know.”
“I thought I knew. That it was another escalating, self-perpetuating train accident of a mess, which the sweeping majority of my relationships have turned into.”
Good thing to be reminded of that salient point.
He might be unable to connect his actions to the mess he made of people’s lives. Didn’t make him innocent of the crime.
Hackles rising, she smirked. “Why wonder if it’s your M.O.?”
“Because once I saw him again, it ripped me out of the depersonalized war we’ve been waging on each other and back to the realm of the personal. And none of it made sense anymore.”
A knot formed in her throat at his disconsolate tone. “Did you retrace incidents to what could have started this?”
His gaze clouded, as if he had plunged into his memories, before he said, “We were twenty, he was twenty-one.” Her chest tightened more when he said we, as if he and Jalal were one indivisible unit. “Rashid and I were taking the same courses, already starting up our tech-development projects. Then his guardian died. He hadn’t truly needed a guardian beyond early childhood—he’d been earning his own living since his early teens. But his guardian left a mess of debts. And Rashid took it upon himself to repay them. That was our first fight.
“I was angry that he’d take on the debts of someone who hadn’t taken him in willingly to start with. A man whose sons were living in the luxury their father’s debts had provided them with. It was they who should repay that money, not Rashid, whom they’d never treated like family and would have mistreated if not for his closeness to us. But Rashid would sit there and take my anger, and after I exhausted every argument, he would just say the same thing again. His honor demanded it.”
“But what did he think he could do? At twenty-one, without a college degree or capital, I can understand he could support himself, but pay off massive debts…?”
He grimaced in remembered exasperation. “He had it all figured out. An American military base was being erected in Azmahar, and the Azmaharian army was having a recruitment drive, promising top recruits incredible financial and educational advancements. He was confident he’d be among those, calculated he’d pay off the debts in five years while doing something he’d always admired and gaining an education he could have never afforded on his own.”
“That does sound like a solid plan.”
“Not to us. Not to me. It was a shock that he’d chosen his university not because it was close to his girlfriend but because it was what he could afford. We were determined to help him, said we’d get the money from our father or older brothers, or make them find a way to get the debts dropped. But the pride-poisoned idiot refused. He would honor his guardian at whatever cost.”
“I still don’t understand why you so objected to his plans.”
“Because the cost might have been his life.”
“Uh…come again?”
“At the time, due to some major stupidities by my uncle and clan, an armed conflict between Azmahar and Damhoor seemed certain. We took turns telling him what a self-destructive fool he’d be to join the army just in time to be sent to war. Ya Ullah…how I never throttled him, I’ll never know.”
Haidar mimed the violent gesture, his whole body bunching, his face contorting with relived frustration and desperation.
It was fascinating, shattering, this glimpse into his past. Another reminder that she hadn’t known him at all, more proof of how unimportant she’d been that he hadn’t shared this with her, clearly a major incident in his life.
But it was worse than that. She’d believed he’d been born without the capacity for emotional involvement. That had mitigated her heartache and humiliation.
But his emotions did exist. And they could be powerful, pure. Seemed it took something profound to unearth them, such as what he’d shared with Rashid. Nothing so trivial as what he’d had with her.
The discovery had the knife that had long stopped turning in her heart stabbing it all over again.
Which was beyond ridiculous. This was ancient history.
What was important here was the history in the making. This was an unrepeatable opportunity to learn vital information about two of the candidates for the throne. It could be crucial to the critical role she was here to play.
Swallowing the stupid personal pain, she forced out the steady words of the negotiator she was. “It sounds like he should have loved you more for caring so much about his well-being and safety.”
“Then you don’t know much about how young men can be with each other. Our response to fear, for him, of losing him, wasn’t pretty. I especially…got carried away.” He wiped a palm over his eyes wearily. “We were drawn to Rashid as children when we recognized that he had big problems, too. We had our share, growing up in Zohayd when our non-Zohaydan half belonged to a family everyone despised and a queen everyone hated. But we had a family. Rashid had only us. And we used that. Jalal pressured him through his loyalty to us. But I knew him better, knew pressuring him wouldn’t work, knew how to push his buttons. I played as dirty as I thought I had to.”
Another reminder what a prince Haidar could be. How he considered any means justifiable to get his end.
“And you failed?” He nodded dejectedly. “So he still left, only with your creative cruelty as his last memory of you.”
“Aih.” His eyes let her see into a time of personal hell. “Then war broke out. Zohayd and Judar intervened, but not before thousands died on both sides. Rashid was among the missing. We went insane searching for him for weeks. Then he returned, exhausted but unharmed, leading his platoon across the desert.”
Wow. Colorful past that Rashid Aal Munsoori had. And undocumented. Beyond basic data, he seemed to have popped fully formed into the business world two years ago.
Haidar went on. “He was decorated a war hero, paid off his guardian’s debts, accumulated graduate degrees and promotions at supersonic speed, and took part in two more armed conflicts by the time he was twenty-eight. We were still speaking then.”
Which meant it was around the time she’d left Haidar that his breakup with Rashid had also occurred. “So whatever you did before he joined the army wasn’t what caused the rift?”
“It caused a rift. He’d answer one call out of five, and when he came back on leave, our relationship was never the same. He wasn’t. He rarely went out with us, together or one on one, and when he did, he was subdued, weighing every word. It made me so resentful, so damn worried, I think I…” He gave an exasperated wave.
“Overcompensated?” she put in.
His lips twisted in agreement. “Then one day he told me he’d been offered a major promotion, wouldn’t say what it was, but that he’d be traveling all the time and off the grid for most of it. I sensed he was telling me not to expect to hear from him again. And again I…”