Page 51 of Desert King's Forbidden Temptation

‘Are you attempting to blackmail me in some fashion?’ he asked, surprised, because everything he knew of Graciano Cortéz spoke of a man of integrity and honour.

‘To blackmail you? Do you seriously think... To what end?’ He looked bemused. ‘Do you think I need the money?’

‘I couldn’t say. Why have you come here?’

‘Because you were not the sole survivor of that crash. Are you aware of that?’

He was drowning again, a voice, a laugh, so familiar, so achingly familiar, a voice with no face. His dreams were all around him, memories haunting him, taunting him with their opaque, impossible to reach hold of quality.

‘Who are you?’

‘Graciano Cortéz,’ he said quietly, moving closer. ‘I am your brother.’

It wasn’t true. It couldn’t be. ‘I have no brother,’ Tariq said angrily, lying, because as Graciano spoke, fragments were piercing him, shocking him with their strength. ‘My mother told me—she was told by the hospital—I was orphaned.’

‘Orphaned, yes, but not alone.’

Tariq crossed his arms over his broad chest. ‘Then why were we separated?’

‘I cannot say, for certain. An accident? Or perhaps because of the donation your parents made to the hospital—it was very generous. I cannot speak for the motives of anyone else, but I am your brother. That much is fact.’

Brother. He groaned, dropping his head forward. He had been so young when the accident happened. He didn’t remember his brother, and yet, he did. There was a sense enveloping him. A feeling of familiarity and comfort and, overwhelmingly, of love.

‘My brother,’ he said with a shake of his head.

‘Look,’ Graciano said, reaching into his wallet and pulling out an old photo, handing it to Tariq. He took it, but the force of recollection was so strong he almost blacked out. He gripped it harder, forced his eyes to focus. A man and a woman stared back at him, and two boys—one tall and gangly and the other just a chubby, dimply boy on his father’s knee. He saw his own face, unmistakably, and the eyes that had been just out of reach all this time, those of Graciano Cortéz.

‘Oh, my God,’ he muttered, dropping his head. He was almost identical to the man in the photo, their features so similar, their skin darker than the other two, their hair thick and black. ‘This is me.’

‘That’s us,’ Graciano said. ‘I have looked for you, from as soon as I had the means to do so. I have searched for you. But it was only recently that the truth was found—’

It brought Tariq back to the present, to his country, his people, his duties. ‘How? How was the truth found?’

‘I hired an investigator.’

‘The adoption was a secret—everyone involved went to great lengths to ensure that it remained so.’

‘You knew about this?’

‘Not about you, but after my father passed away five months ago my mother told me the truth. I always felt that a part of me was missing. I always felt that there was something, someone, a part of me I couldn’t make sense of,’ he said with a shake of his head. ‘It was all a lie. My parents were grieving in Spain—my mother had endured another miscarriage. They saw me, and they wanted to help me. That was all, at first. But days passed, with my mother coming to sit by my bed, and each day that went by without family coming to check on me made her certain she had to bring me home.’ Tariq’s eyes narrowed. ‘My mother didn’t mention you. I can’t believe she knew about you—’

‘Probably not,’ Graciano responded with a small shrug. ‘There was a lot of money involved. It would have been in the hospital’s best interests to keep me out of the picture. I came to see you once, in hospital, but after that, I was forbidden. I thought I’d done something wrong, but it turns out, they just wanted to keep us apart.’

Tariq swore, handing the photo back, his eyes lingering on the faces. They looked happy. Warm. A family.

‘Our father always said to me, “he’s your responsibility. You must take care of him”.’ Graciano smiled wistfully. ‘I adored you almost as much as they did. You were such a happy child—you smiled whenever we entered the room—but for me, it was different. You’d hold out your hands, wanting me to lift you up.’ He laughed on a quiet exhalation and Tariq was jealous then, jealous of his brother’s memories and knowledge of their family before this life. ‘When I saw you in hospital, all broken and bruised, I wanted to take care of you with everything I was. But I wasn’t allowed. I was too young to fight it, but I never stopped thinking about you, wanting to find you.’

‘I have had nightmares,’ Tariq said quietly. ‘There was a voice. Your voice, I now realise. I couldn’t see you, but you were there. I have had these nightmares for years, since I was a little boy. I thought it was because of the accident, but now I realise, it was my mind trying to make me remember. To look for you.’

Graciano moved closer, and they stared at each other for several moments before they embraced; two big, strong men wrapping their arms around each other, making the past disappear, so there was only this moment.

Emotion swamped Tariq.

There was love and anger and frustration and a total lack of comprehension. There was loyalty—to his birth parents and his adoptive parents, to his brother, to his people and kingdom, to his late, beloved father and the promise he’d made him, to care for Savisia with his dying breath. There was the realisation of how this news threatened that, because if Graciano knew, if an investigator knew, it was only a matter of time before this became more widely understood, and the threat to his reign was tantamount.

There was the crystallising of resolve, and an underscoring of the need of his marriage to Elana, and with that came despair, because he didn’t want to marry her. He didn’t want to be with anyone if it made it impossible for him to be with Eloise.

Everything swirled in a vortex. His past, present and the all-important future. The weight was immense.

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