‘We’re both alone now.’
She offered him a small smile, and it was a punch straight to his solar plexus. Kindness. He didn’t want it. He didn’t need it. Not any more. But he didn’t move. Didn’t speak. For fear she would somehow see the boy he’d spent nine years outgrowing. Pushing him into the shadows. Closing the lid...
‘What was he like?’ she asked.
His mouth gaped. ‘Who?’
‘Your dad.’
His jaw tensed. ‘He was a king.’
‘I know that.’ She frowned. ‘But was your dad everything you thought he would be?’
‘No,’ he answered honestly. ‘He was a selfish man and a selfish king.’
‘That’s so sad—’
‘No. It is anything but sad, Charlotte,’ he corrected, keeping his voice low. Neutral. ‘He taught me what not to be.’
Him, he added silently.
‘How did he teach you?’ she asked. ‘Were there lessons in royal protocol?’
He nodded, pressing his teeth together.
‘Were they hard?’
‘I received my first lesson on arrival in Taliedaa. It was the toughest and the most successful,’ he said, avoiding the impulse to grip his wrists, where he could still feel the pressure of his father’s guards holding him.
He blamed her, he realised. Blamed her for the anger he’d travelled with to meet his father.
You let yourself get attached to her.
He had let himself, he corrected.
He was attached to nothing and no one now.
But the day he’d arrived in Taliedaa he’d been hurting from her rejection.
He’d asked his father why he hadn’t rescued him from poverty the moment they’d presented him to the King. But it wasn’t only that he’d been asking about. He hadn’t been so naïve even as the boy he was. He hadn’t only been asking why his father had forgotten him. He’d wanted to know why they’d all abandoned him. His mother... The foster families...
Charlotte.
His father had answered him. Told him in no uncertain terms why he’d never come for him before. Why they’d all abandoned him. Because nobody wanted pathetic little boys or pitiful young men. He had been born into weakness, he had told him, and it was his nature to surrender to it. To be weak.
Like his mother.
Akeem had flown at him. In a heartbeat he’d unleashed a lifetime of hurt on the man—his father. Wounded. Crying. Screaming. The royal guards had caught him by the wrists and raised his arms above his head and the King had laughed.
There he had been, face to face with his father as he sat on his pretty throne, surrounded by men who would protect him with their lives, and every time Akeem had struggled, or sworn, he had instructed them to hit him—harder.
He had fought. He had cursed. And they had hit him with closed fists.
His father had had the clothes striped from his body to show him how primitive he was. He’d told him that he responded to his urges without thought or reason, acting on impulse like a basic dog, rather than thinking through his situation or how to respond to it to gain the best outcome for himself.
He was worse than a dog, the King had said, because dogs responded to stimulus. Akeem was a beast. Primitive. Untamed and useless.
His father had given him a choice. Forget the boy he was and the man he was becoming or go home. Back to his little English life. To his basic life.
Akeem’s outburst had meant nothing. His father had used it as a teaching tool. The only reason his father had sought him out, wanted to place him on the throne, was for his own ego. To continue his bloodline, however diluted or illegitimate, because he’d sired no other children.
‘What was it? The lesson?’ Charlotte asked, dragging him back to the reason she was here.
To see the person he was now. Rich. Powerful. Different not only in name, but in body, in mind. He’d chosen to become Akeem Abd al-Uzza, Crown Prince of Taliedaa. There had been no other choice.
Be nothing—unwanted—or become someone else.
A prince.
He didn’t shout any more.
‘It was a lesson to leave Akeem Ali behind.’
Charlotte nodded. ‘He wanted his son to have his name. Understandable...’ She narrowed her eyes. ‘But didn’t you want to keep it?’
‘That was not an option.’
‘But surely your dad must have understood how important your mother was to you? If not to him?’
‘All my father cared for was himself.’
‘And his people? Surely he cared for them?’ she asked, pushing for answers he didn’t want to give.
He didn’t want to tell her the disgusting parts of the King’s life. The open sex. Women draped all over him in full view of his men. The greed. Wanting his toys faster—shinier—while his people suffered. The total disregard for his people’s needs. His country.
His son.