* * * * *
It was an overwhelming amount of information to absorb and soul-crushing knowledge just to be cognizant of. Viviana didn’t doubt the truth behind Muhammad’s confessions…she just wasn’t altogether certain how to process them. Had she been a civilian who’d never seen firsthand the sorts of barbarisms her government—hellanygovernment—was capable of, his tale would have been difficult to credit. Unfortunately and fortunately, she wasn’t. Muhammad’s words had merely caused the pieces of the puzzle to click together and form a coherent picture for her.
Letting her body sink into the warm water of the bathing pool, Viviana didn’t hear Muhammad’s return. She stayed submerged as long as she was able, the inviting bathwater relaxing her tense muscles. Broaching the surface when she needed some air, Viviana kept her eyes closed as she took in a large gulp and forced her body to sink back down under the liquid as far as possible. She bobbed back up quicker than she would have liked.
“My fucking tits and ass,” Viviana muttered to herself. “Have to make it impossible for me to stay under, don’t you?”
“I love your big tits and ass.”
Viviana screamed. She instinctively splashed water at Muhammad and threw a sponge at him. “Oh my God,” she squeaked. “You scared me to death!”
He was dressed only in serwal pajama pants, which fell below his navel. His happy trail had grown in, which she found sexy. Apparently he’d been too preoccupied to shave lately.
Muhammad squatted down on his thighs. “What was the sponge going to do if I had been an intruder?”
Viviana gave him aha-ha-halook. “Clean you to death maybe?”
He grinned. “I need a reason to be dirty first.”
“Hmmm…”
Jamila and Aaliyah burst into the room. Aaliyah was wielding a knife and her mother a semi-automatic weapon. “What has happened?” they screeched in unison, both of them wide-eyed and disheveled.
Viviana’s lips formed an O. Muhammad grunted.
“I scared her by accident,” he informed the duo. “But thank you for protecting her, Rambo and Crocodile Dundee.”
Jamila let out a sigh. “Why do you upset your mother so? It’s one o’clock in the morning, Muhammad. Your sister and I heard your wife’s scream all the way from the west wing. Have I not taught you it is impolite and ungentlemanly to scare a woman?”
Viviana covered her smile with a pretend yawn. Muhammad wore the expression of a sheikh too exhausted to argue with his mother.
“Naam, ummi,” Muhammad mumbled. He sounded more the obedient five-year-old son than the ruler of a sheikhdom. “My apologies.”
“Vivi,” a sleepy but armed Aaliyah called out.
“Naam?”
“Have you eaten?”
“Laa.”No.She sighed. “I was preoccupied.”
“I will stop in the kitchens on my way back to bed and have a food trolley sent down.”
Viviana smiled. “Shukran.”Thank you.
“Have them leave it outside the door,” Muhammad instructed. “She is still bathing.”
“I’m tired, not blind, Momo.” Aaliyah shook her head and smiled. “Let’s go, ummi. No gunning down madmen tonight. Maybe tomorrow.”
“Goodnight, daughter,” Jamila said to Viviana. “And goodnight to my son who’s lucky my eyesight is better than my aim.”
“Goodnight,” Viviana and Muhammad said in unison.
