Rayan twitched, myriad expressions flickering through his dark features. “How?—”
Leighton spun to Owen and set her hands to his chest, urging him back. “No,” she said emphatically. “Please.”
Jaw clenched, he indicated toward the doors. Paced her across the lobby and down the hall to their suite. There, he punched in the room code and let them in.
Leighton moved robotically to the sofa, sat down, and dropped her face into her hands. Quiet sobs shattered whatever bravado had buffeted Owen into facing off with a prince whose uncle held both their lives in his hands.
Rawlins had it right—Owen was dumb.
10
Nairobi, Kenya
“I can’t do it,” she sobbed into her hands, shoulders bouncing beneath the torment. “I can’t do this, Apollo.”
“Do what?”
“Escape—I just can’t. I have to stay.” She lowered her hands, staring at him. “I can…feel it,” she said with a particular emphasis, followed closely by another shuddering breath. “In my core, I know it’s wrong.”
“What’s wrong? Getting out of here? Getting away from?—”
“No!” she balked, angrily smearing away the tears and more than a little irritated with the challenge in his tone. A buzzing tingled beneath her skin, like something trying to get out. It forced her to pace around the back of the couch.
Apollo exhaled heavily. “Okay—so, what is wrong?”
The irritation bubbled and simmered at having to explain. Again. Leighton struck a hand in the direction where they’d left the royals. “Him. All of them.” She motioned to Apollo. “You.” The man who was trying to get her to bail. Abandon and compromise the very purpose she’d served her entire life.
But what if Ummi was okay? What if she could do this? Worse—what if she fed into those beliefs and it turned out she was wrong—then Ummi got hurt or killed?
Leighton pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes and moaned. “It’s too much…too much.”
“Hey…”
Breath staggering and feeling miserable, she looked at him, perched on the edge of the table, those blue eyes laced with—sympathy! Ugh! “Don’t.” She turned away. “Don’t look at me as if I’m some weak, broken creature in need of rescuing.”
“I…never said that,” he muttered. “But look at the situation—they’re not your friends.”
Massaging her forehead, she knew he was right, but she so badly needed this to work out. So she could protect Ummi. Though guilt harangued her, she fixated on the guy hidden in the grass. “He was someone from your team, right?”
Apollo blinked. “Wha—oh.” He sighed. “Yeah.”
Anger again bubbled to the fore. “I can’t believe you completely disregarded my wishes in that regard.” Arms crossed, she resumed her trek. “But it doesn’t matter—I won’t go with you. Ummi?—”
“Is safe,” he ground out, frustration turning his tone into pleading. “How many times do I have to say that? What will it take to convince you?—”
“It doesn’t matter how many times you say it!” she railed, the edges of panic sawing at the thin threads of control she held. “I was safe. For twenty-five years, I survived, did everything exactly right. Obeyed the rules. Kept the secret. Lived the secret. Became the secret!”
She threw up her hands, tears pricking, and resumed pacing. Anything to deal with the volatility thrumming in her veins. “As a college graduation gift to myself, I visit London and Ummi for the first time—a lifetime-dream-come-true. It’s great! Everything I ever dreamed of—and trust me, I dreamed. Every night. Every holiday. Every Parents’ Day at school that she would be there. That I would know her. Know what she was like. What parts of me were from her. So, there I am relaxing, feeling like I can breathe for the first time in…ever!” Tears slipped down her cheeks, releasing the pent-up frustration. “Shopping, pastries, laughter. Me and Ummi as I’d always hoped. Then we visit a London shopping center where I try on a cute top. When I come out, I sense…something behind me. Next thing I know, I’m being beaten awake in a dungeon on the other side of the world!”
“I’m truly sorry this has happened to you.” A storm rolled into his expression as he came to his feet. “But if that isn’t a reason to escape—them kidnapping and beating you—then I don’t know what is. My team?—”
“Don’t you get it? You can’t protect me from them! They have everything—the money, the power, the control!”
“No, they don’t,” he said, stepping closer. “They don’t have?—”
“They do!” she shouted, winging away from him, too angry with his distorted view of her life and problem—and his arrogant belief that he could accomplish what no one had yet been able to do: free her of a lifetime imprisonment with the secret. “They’re planning something—that’s why Rayan and Aliyah are being nice. Even you said it.” Just saying it fed the panic but also gave voice to the nagging at the back of her brain. “I just…I can see it in his eyes. Feel it in the way they look at me. There’s…it’s just…augh!!”
Never had she felt so unhinged. What on earth was wrong with her?
