Here in this study Khalid had wept for his mother.
For a short while he had been sixteen and flailing, scared and desperately sad, and Jobe had allowed him to be.
Jobe Devereux had been the only person ever to see him cry for, even as a child, tears had been forbidden.
Khalid had been an only child until he’d been a teenager and his brother, Hussain, had been born, lifting from him the full weight of being the only heir. Now there were twins but no mother to love them.
Yes, Khalid had cried.
But by the time the royal plane had arrived the mask had been back on and it had never, to this day, slipped.
‘Khalid?’
He realised that he had not heard Ethan come into the study and turned and offered his condolences to his business partner and friend, although they could never have been considered close.
Khalid was not close to anyone.
‘Thank you for coming, Khalid.’
‘Of course, I was always going to be here for Jobe’s funeral.’
‘I meant tonight. It’s appreciated. How long are you here for?’
‘Till the day after tomorrow.’
‘You have to leave so soon?’
‘I am increasingly needed at home,’ Khalid said.
‘Well, it was good of you to come.’
‘Enough small-talk, Ethan.’ Khalid cut straight to the point. ‘What’s going on?’
‘A lot,’ Ethan admitted. ‘And it cannot get out.’
‘You know it will go no further.’ Khalid was one of the few who could be trusted with bombshell news. He would never gossip—Khalid was far too remote and royal for that—and so Ethan told him what had been revealed since his father’s death.
Jobe Devereux’s life had been interesting, to say the least, and had played out in the press for all to see. His sons, Abe and Ethan, had seen it all.
Or had thought that they had.
‘There was an account we didn’t know about,’ Ethan told him.
Khalid listened as Ethan revealed they had found out that Jobe had had a penchant for gambling and showgirls. As it turned out, those long weekends away that Jobe had frequently taken hadn’t always been spent at the Hamptons; instead they had been taken in Vegas.
Sin City.
‘Are there debts?’ Khalid asked, for he always dealt first with business.
Ethan shook his head. ‘No, he was actually ahead, but this wasn’t an occasional thing, Khalid. There were a lot of women, oh, and a marriage we didn’t know about.’
‘A marriage?’
‘Between his first wife and my mother, it turns out he was married to a woman named Brandy for all of seventy-two hours.’
‘Ancient history,’ Khalid dismissed.
‘Perhaps, but it’s ancient history that might resurface tomorrow.’