And what about me? What’s my excuse?
Only the insanity from being jealous, which prevented me from seeing the obvious.
Feeling guilty, I put Adil’s phone in my pocket and decide to look for Madeline, but before I take two steps to the door, my phone rings.
“Your Excellency, we have a problem. Your fiancée, Miss Turner, has disappeared.”
“Disappeared? How?” I ask, already running out of the room.
“A servant said she hasn’t seen her since this morning. We’ve searched the entire palace but couldn’t find her, except for her broken phone lying in a corner of the garden.”
“Initiate an emergency alert and have the palace and surrounding areas monitored, but find her.”
When I reach the official vehicle, it’s already surrounded by bodyguards, probably at Raez’s orders. For the first time, I don’t know what to do or where to start looking for her.
And then, to make matters worse, the last person I want to run into appears in front of me.
Zarif.
“You need to come with me,” he says.
“Get out of my way, damn it. What I need is to find my fiancée.”
“I know. Just like Adil.”
“What?”
“I don’t have all the facts yet, but while you were away yesterday, Odin called me.”
He finally manages to catch my attention. “You’re not making any sense. Odin, Christos’s cousin?”
“Yes, we’re friends. Long before you asked him to investigate Hiba’s death a few days ago, he was already doing it for me.”
I look at him, the confirmation of what I’ve always suspected driving me mad. Not because ofher, the unfaithful one, but because Zarif is my blood and he betrayed me.
“I never touched her,” he says. “I didn’t even want her that way. I liked her as a friend.”
I look at him to detect any trace of mockery, but all I see is hurt.
“How could you believe I would betray you like that?”
I take a step back. “You did nothing to refute my suspicions. Quite the opposite.”
“My pride wouldn’t allow it. I wanted you to understand on your own that I would rather die than betray a brother.”
I’m not ready to apologize yet. I had no idea who the father of Hiba’s child was when she killed herself, but Zarif’s anger towards me made me think a few months ago that it could have been him. “If you had nothing to do with her getting pregnant, then why do you hate me so much?”
“You have no idea? I loved Hiba as if she were one of our sisters. Until recently, I thought the child she was expecting was yours, that you dishonored her and then ran away from the commitment, driving her to death. It took me a while to understand I was wrong, but then, because of your suspicion of me, I allowed you to think the worst.”
“You said you went to Odin. Why?”
“To find out who the father of her child was. I have no doubt it was the same man who drove her to kill herself.”
“Who is he, Zarif?”
“Adil.”
“What?”
