EPILOGUE
“One thing still bothers me, and I didn’t want to ask about it until after we were married,” Kathryn said to the Sheikh on the morning after they were declared husband and wife by a Justice of the Peace in Birmingham, Alabama. “It occurred to me when Mel joked about Yuri Gorka getting mild hypothermia and frostbite but still having all his fingers.”
The Sheikh took a breath and clenched his fists, but Kathryn grabbed his hand and pried his fingers open. “Get away from me,” he snarled, pushing her away and balling his fingers into a fist again.
“Tell me,” she whispered. “The fingernails. Who did that? I said once that it was the key, that whoever did that to you is the key to all of this. I still believe that, and now I want to know. Tell me, Hyder. I’m your wife now. I’m committed to you no matter what the answer is, no matter who’s after you or us, no matter what you might have done or said when they tortured you. That’s why I didn’t ask you until we were married. You need to know that I’m fully committed, heart and soul. One hundred percent.”
The Sheikh closed his eyes and exhaled. He uncurled those fingers and finally looked at her. “Commitment,” he said, “is what it took to do this. And commitment is why I did it.”
Kathryn blinked as the reality of what he was saying dawned on her. “What?” she muttered hoarsely, taking a step back. “You did this to yourself?”
The Sheikh flexed his fingers and shrugged. “Well, none of my men agreed to do it, even though I ordered them, begged them, and even threatened to flog them in the streets if they refused. So finally I had to strap my arm down and operate the pliers myself. Ya Allah, I will say that it is as painful as it looks.” He smiled, and there was a hint of madness in those green eyes, madness that made Kathryn tingle all over because she knew that dark wildness existed in her too, the ability to commit wholly and completely, to go all-in, to put yourself on the line every time, all the damned way.
“Why?” she said, even though she was already starting to understand why.
“Because it created a mystery that no one could solve. Not the CIA, not Saudi Intelligence, not Russian spies. No one could imagine I’d do it to myself, and so anyone who saw this figured I’d been captured by some country’s Intelligence Bureau and interrogated or picked up by a terrorist group and tortured. But no one would know who interrogated me, and they’d have no idea what I said to get out of there with my life. No one would be certain they could trust me, but they’d never know for sure which way I lean, which country or group I’ve cut secret deals with. Sometimes the mystery that has no logical solution is itself the solution, yes?”
Kathryn shook her head and rubbed her eyes. “Shit. I’ve married a madman,” she groaned. “That’s what I was afraid of.”
“Good,” he whispered, mischief in his voice, wildness in his eyes, those gnarled fingers of his clenching and releasing and then grasping the neckline of her white nightgown and pulling it open. “You should be afraid. Now come here. I command you.”
“I’m not your whore,” she gasped, arching her back as those strong fingers of his pinched her nipples so hard they turned bright red as they peaked. “But I am indeed yours.”
“Actually,” he said, grinning wickedly as he ripped her bra off and roughly rubbed her crotch through her soaked panties. “You are my queen now, which means that in a way you have accepted my offer.”
“What offer?” she groaned as she spread her legs for his thick fingers, looking down as she watched them slide beneath the sides of her panties and into her slit.
“The offer I made to you that dark night in the tent of the Hashimi,” he said. “That I will offer you my kingdom in return for your sex. And since you are now my wife, with an equal claim to my kingdom, in a way you have accepted my offer.”
“So in a way by marrying you I have become your whore. Is that what you’re saying, you disgusting brute?” she muttered as she lay on the carpet and shamelessly spread for her husband, her king, the man who’d offered her his kingdom for her sex.
“You are bloody right that is what I am saying,” he growled as he unzipped, unleashing that brown beast of a cock, its red tip oozing with clean oil.
“All right then,” she whispered as a slew of dark clouds blocked out the sun, casting everything into shadow. “All right, my husband. Then take me like a whore. Take me like a whore.”
And Kathryn fell back onto the rough carpet of their hotel room, a nondescript Marriott in downtown Birmingham with free HBO and a continental breakfast. After their strangely exhilarating private wedding, where no one but Mel knew or cared who they were, this hotel room completed the story in a way.
Because even when they stepped onto that main stage they would always be together in the shadows. And even when they stepped into the light they would always have one foot in the darkness. Always and forever.
Always and forever.
∞