Kamal had thought he was free and clear. And it was true that his money was. He was now an independently wealthy man with a well-padded set of Swiss bank accounts that no one could touch and that were in no way tied to his father.

However, the fallout from Teague’s master manipulations wasn’t going to be short-lived. Approximately thirty-two hours after the very last dime he could legitimately take was transferred, his father was on the phone, the video conference line, email, and even text. And his fury was substantial.

“What the bloody hell do you think you’re doing?” His voice thundered across the computer monitor in Kamal’s office, where he sat in his sweats at four a.m. because his father had called the overnight embassy staff and insisted they wake his son for a family emergency.

Kamal stifled the urge to defer to his father. Thirty-plus years of doing as he was told didn’t fall away easily.

“Good morning, sir. I assume you’re in London since you’re dressed and there’s daylight outside your window. Maybe you forgot that it’s four a.m. here?”

Kamal took a sip from the cappuccino his housekeeping staff had been kind enough to provide when they heard he would be taking a video call before the crack of dawn.

His father’s face turned an interesting shade of purple, and the vein on the side of his neck throbbed erratically. Kamal briefly worried that his actions might cause the old man to stroke out, and while he and father weren’t close, and he was happy to be free of the man’s machinations, he also didn’t want to be the one to kill the family patriarch.

“I don’t give a bloody shit what time it is. I want to know what you think you’re doing?”

Kamal cleared his throat. “I’ve taken the funds that are legitimately mine and put them in independent accounts.”

He could nearly hear his father’s teeth grinding through the Internet connection. “And why in the name of all that is holy to our family would you do such a thing?”

“Because I have reason to believe that both you and our esteemed President Abbas are involved in this mess with the Bratva that resulted in an assassination attempt on President Hampton while I sat a few inches from her.”

His father hadn’t become a billionaire by having a poor poker face, and his expression hardly flinched at the accusation.

“I would never be involved with an attempted assassination. Nor would I approve of any such attempts that put my own flesh and blood at risk—although I’m currently rethinking that policy.”

Kamal had to chuckle. He knew no matter what—even if he was cast out of the family forever—his father would never tolerate Kamal being harmed. But that assumed his father had any say in the matter, and Kamal highly doubted he did.

He leaned closer to the monitor, pinning his father with his sharp gaze. “I know you would never order something like that, but I don’t think you had any say in it, and I don’t think you have much control over the whole thing at all. I know that it’s Abbas’s freight trains that are taking those drugs to the Middle East, and I know that you’re in bed with the Bratva. I’m the ambassador to the US. I can’t be anywhere near this mess when it blows up in your face, and mark my words, it will.”

Mr. Masri made a disgusted sound in his throat. “Please. Even if I were involved in something that you find unacceptable, you’re an ambassador. You have diplomatic immunity. The worst the Americans could do to you is to send you home.”

Kamal twitched at the mention of the word home. What was home? He’d grown up in England, playing football, spending weekends in London and Cornwall. He’d come to the US for college and been here ever since. He really had no idea where home was for him at this point in his life. He knew he was more comfortable in the US, but did that make it his home?

“You really think diplomatic immunity will protect me if you or your money is tied to the attempted assassination of an American president? Especially this American president? She’s their darling, and a woman. If you think that doesn’t affect how they view what happened in the White House gardens, then you’re very out of touch.”

“Whether they want to or not, there is nothing they can do to you.”

“Bullshit,” Kamal spat out, using an Americanism he knew his father hated. “They will hunt me down like an international criminal, and I would deserve it. If you’re tangled up with the Bratva to the extent I think you are and I allowed myself to continue to be anchored to you, then I probably belong in Guantanamo. However, as of now, I am tied to you by DNA only, and whatever mess you’ve created is yours to fix.”

“And I suppose you are telling the US about your suspicions?” his father asked, fishing for information in an effort completely lacking in subtlety.

Kamal sighed, because here was the juxtaposition of the whole thing. He didn’t want to be associated with his father’s misdeeds, but he couldn’t bring himself to tell the US about those misdeeds either. He couldn’t bear to be disloyal to his country. And the fact that he slept in the bed of the president and still hadn’t told her that he thought both his father and the head of state of Egypt might be part of the clusterfuck that had gotten her shot at was reprehensible at best.

“I haven’t—yet. And I’m hoping I won’t be forced to.”

“You won’t, because there is nothing to tell,” Mr. Masri blustered.

Kamal shook his head. No matter what, his father would never admit to any wrongdoing. He would never tell Kamal the details of what he was involved in. It was the way he’d run his business as long as Kamal had been old enough to remember. And for just as long, Kamal had heard the rumors, things whispered in the dark corners of prep school hallways, the back rooms of congressional committees, and the snatches of gossip at high-end cocktail parties. Since he was seven years old, he’d heard it—your father does business with criminals.

At some point in his years in college, Kamal had decided they were rumors he couldn’t worry about. If things like that did go on, his father did an excellent job of keeping it from Kamal. And since Kamal had never been tapped to work for the business itself, he’d never known the internal operations. He wondered if his brother Amir knew more. He hoped not, but somehow he guessed that Amir was given access to a side of their father that Kamal had never seen.

“The bottom line is that I don’t trust your judgment, and I’m not willing to risk my career and my freedom on your word that none of this will rebound to me,” Kamal said.

His father gave a sharp nod and a grunt. “Then you’ve decided that your life there in the US is more important than your family? You’ve decided that you’re more concerned with the opinions of the Americans than you are with the opinion of your own father?”

Only one American, Kamal thought.

“I’ve decided that doing the right thing is always the better course of action to pursue.”

His father rubbed his hand across his jaw, and for a brief moment, Kamal saw that his cantankerous, virile, overbearing father look tired and lost.

“I let you stay too long,” Mr. Masri said softly.

“Father…”

“No, it is my fault. Your mother told me I left you alone too much, sending you off so young, allowing you to stay there after college. I should have had you take a seat in parliament instead of letting you live in the US. And now you are more concerned about yourself than your family, more interested in impressing the Americans than you are in impressing your own father. I see that I did you a disservice, and now I must pay the price.”

Kamal sighed. “I didn’t make this decision because I don’t love the family or you. I simply don’t want to go to prison.”

His father snorted. “And if I decide to take action regarding this flagrant display of disrespect?”

“I didn’t do it expecting that you’d invite me to come for dinner this weekend.”

“You’ll get nothing when I’m gone.”

“I expected no less,” Kamal replied calmly. His father didn’t often use money as a weapon, but he wasn’t above it if he felt it was warranted.

His father ground his teeth more, then finally held that famous finger over the disconnect button. “We will discuss this more later. Be expecting to hear from President Abbas.” Then the screen went black, and Kamal sat watching the sunrise over the quaint brownstones that surrounded the embassy, sipping his cappuccino, considering what he ought to do now.

He truly was a man caught between two nations. If he told Jessica about President Abbas’s involvement with the Bratva, then he could be charged with treason in Egypt. If he didn’t tell her, then not only would he be lying by omission to the woman he was sleeping with, but he would be violating American law. He was caught between his family and Egypt on one side, and Jessica and America on the other.

Kamal Masri wasn’t the kind of man who’d been faced with challenges much in his life. He was wealthy, attractive, brilliant, and powerful. He didn’t often encounter situations that he couldn’t control or master readily. And as he sat and looked out the window of the massive building full of staff and problems that he was solely in charge of each day, he determined that this situation wasn’t going to be the one that broke his streak. He had too much riding on it. His future, his happiness, and the woman who he was beginning to think he’d fallen in love with.

* * *

“Madam President,” the general said, frustration leaking into every word, “the Department of Homeland Security has botched this investigation at every turn. The people of the US and indeed the leadership of the world are demanding to know who tried to assassinate you. They want answers, and if Homeland Security can’t give it to them, then it’s time to let the military take over.”

Jessica rubbed at one of her temples, wishing like hell she’d listened to her secretary and taken that aspirin before coming to the Situation Room. “General, I’d be much more inclined to let you take over the investigation if you didn’t keep talking to me about bombing the Paradise Jihad without proof they were involved.”

“Madam President, even on the off-chance they weren’t involved, why would you mind if we bombed them? They’re an enemy of the state. They’re ruthless killers who keep an entire quadrant of Pakistan living under a bizarre form of martial law.”

Jessica’s chief of staff coughed delicately into her hand and gave Jessica a look of pleading. Please make the warmonger shut his trap.

“I understand that they’re the bad guys, General, but until or unless you can prove to me that they were behind the attempt on my life and that we’ve found a way to eradicate them without taking out an entire village of civilians, I’m not going there. Are we clear?”

“Yes, ma’am,” the general answered grudgingly.

“Good. Now, Secretary Wilson.” She turned to the head of Homeland Security, who sat looking smug because he thought he’d beaten the general. He was usually a smug little prick, so today wasn’t unusual. Jessica had only appointed him because he was a party faithful and longtime friend of her father-in-law. But she was losing patience with him now, and everyone who was complaining that he wasn’t performing up to par had legitimate concerns.

“Yes, Madam President,” Wilson said with a slimy smile.

“Why the hell haven’t you caught whoever did this? Because the general is correct that the American people and most of the leadership of the free world expect better than what we’ve given them so far. I’ve been patient, and we can count our blessings that there hasn’t been another incident, but it’s been two months. Tell me something I want to hear.”

The poor man sputtered and stammered while Vanessa hid a grin behind her hand, and the general chuckled into his coffee cup.

“Madam President. The Department of Homeland Security has been following every available lead on this, gathering the cogent information, interviewing dozens of possible suspects, having evidence logged and analyzed extensively—”

“Yes, Secretary Wilson. Spare me the song and dance, I’m not the press. Tell me what we do actually know, because if it’s no more than we knew last week or the week before, I’m going to seriously consider giving the entire investigation to the CIA.”

“The CIA?” The general yelped. Jessica gave him a quelling look, and he snapped his mouth shut.

Wilson scratched his pointy chin and sighed. “We gathered the information that the Egyptians provided, but while it’s an excellent hypothesis, we can’t find anything concrete to tie the whole thing together. The Bratva haven’t made any untoward movements in the region, and the ballistics we recovered at the site of the shooting are a dead end. We have no evidence to definitively tie a specific individual or group to the White House on that night at that time.”

Jessica thought for a moment, turning things over in her mind. “So, if I understand this, we’ve been going at this in the typical investigative procedural way —looking at the evidence, analyzing it, seeing if it provides any clues, then following those threads as far as they’ll take us.”

“That’s correct, ma’am,” Wilson said.

“Maybe it’s time to come at it from a different entry point.”

“Ma’am?”

She turned to the general. “What special ops do we have in the Baltic?”

The general obviously understood what she was suggesting immediately. “I can have a team of SEALS and covert operatives there within…” he checked the complicated watch on his left arm, “I’d say six hours.”

“Perfect. I want to infiltrate the Bratva. Can they do that?”

“Ma’am, it would take quite a bit of time if we were starting from ground zero, but I have operatives who do business with the Bratva on a regular basis—keeping an eye on things in the region. I think I could have them make the introductions and get a couple of men into the organization relatively quickly.”

“Perfect. Get the information on what business they might be doing in the Middle East. I want to know what the hell’s going on and whether our talks about the accord really did blunder into something or not.”

“Yes, ma’am,” the general said, glee in his eyes.

Wilson merely nodded at her as she stood.

“Good. Meeting adjourned.”

As Vanessa walked out of the meeting with Jessica, she grinned from ear to ear. “Nicely done, Madam President. You didn’t take the investigation away from the secretary, but you found a way to use the general’s bloodlust to our benefit.” She paused. “And you kept those two pompous asses in check.”

Jessica huffed out a laugh. “Well, don’t think I didn’t hear Wilson call me a bitch under his breath, but at least maybe we’ll finally make some progress on this. I want it wrapped up and some idea of who we need to be chasing.”

Vanessa nodded. “I’m sorry you heard that, ma’am. I hate that you ever hear anything like that.”

Jessica smiled at her earnest and committed chief of staff. “You know, it’s part of the job, and especially when you’re the first woman to have that job. The thing I remember to tell myself is that no matter what they say about me, I’m still the president, and at the end of the day, I can put them in Leavenworth for treason if I want to, so it’s all good.”

Vanessa stopped in the middle of the hallway and stared dumbfounded at her boss before clearing her throat. “Uh…”

“I’m kidding, Vanessa. It was a joke,” Jessica said, then grinned.

Vanessa broke out into laughter. “Ma’am, I don’t know that I’ve ever heard you make a joke.”

Jessica shrugged. “Maybe it’s time I did. I guess I have to get better at it before I debut it outside the Oval Office, though. You tell me when you think I’m ready for public consumption.”

“About ninety days before the next election, I’d say. Lame ducks can do whatever they want.”

“Good. I’m looking forward to it.”

“Then I’m looking forward to it for you.”