She suddenly heard her voice, the distorted sound of a zombie. “I want a favor, Bill. I want to use your helicopter.”

Bill’s eyes narrowed. “He’s waiting downstairs for you. You don’t want to see him.”

“No. Never again.”

He exhaled heavily, nodded, reached for his intercom. His hand froze over the button. “You’ll let me know where you are.” She gave a sluggish nod. He persisted. “And you won’t hurt yourself…in any way.”

She looked at him out of someone else’s dry-as-stone eyes and wondered how he’d even worry.

How could she hurt a self that had already been destroyed?

Shehab gave in, stormed into the skyscraper after Farah.

She’d been inside for three hours. And for the past hour, her cell phone had rung with no answer.

Inside, he met with evasions until he resorted to threats. Only then did he discover she’d left the building by helicopter.

He stormed outside again, telling himself to calm down.

She must have left on the urgent business her boss had called her all the way back there to deal with. She’d call as soon as she was done. She probably hadn’t thought he’d wait for her to get off work. And she probably hadn’t heard the phone over the helicopter’s din.

Nothing he told himself worked. So he did what every self-respecting, madly in love man in pursuit of the woman who held his fate in her hands to confess his crimes and beg forgiveness would have done. He tracked down her phone’s GPS signal.

Even with the endless resources at his fingertips, it took four hours to locate her, and then fly to her location. A bungalow hotel in Orange County.

After a good look at Shehab’s diplomatic passport and a short explanation about the situation, a duly awed desk clerk told him where to find Farah, even gave him an extra card key.

Shehab walked there, his heart’s pounding escalating as he caught her scent on the wind. He could have followed it, and her vibes, to her exact location without being told where she was. Doubts intensified with each step, too.

This didn’t look like a place where any business of Hanson’s could be conducted. So why had she come here? Why had she not called him in so long?

Before he slotted the key card in, something made him knock on the door instead. After long moments of silence, steps neared, slow, almost dragging. Then the door opened.

A stranger stood across the threshold.

A stranger who looked exactly like Farah.

So it’s true, Farah thought.

She’d opened the door and found Shehab there. And she hadn’t felt a thing. Not shock, not surprise, not anger, not pain. Nothing. It was over.

“Habibati…” he groaned as he surged forward, surrounding her, his impossibly handsome face, the face that hid all his cruelty and deceitfulness, contorting on another array of those expressions so uncannily simulating emotions. “I almost drove myself insane when you didn’t answer your phone. Why are you here? Is this where Bill sent you? What for?” When she didn’t answer, only slipped from his arms to close the door, turned to look at him out of some other entity’s eyes, he moved closer like a panther careful not to let its prey realize it would be a meal in seconds. “Hayati, what’s wrong?”

He still didn’t realize. Or he was still trying to bluff his way out of it? He probably thought he could. She was too stupid to live, after all. She’d proved it for six long weeks.

But something terrible was happening. The sight of him, his scent, the feel of him, the very idea of him was seeping through the layers of numbness. The total anesthesia was lifting. And damage began to spread through her, expanding, taking shape, endless in scope, in details, the enormity of his betrayal, of her gullibility.

Crazed with pain. She now knew what that meant, felt like. She could feel everything that made her a person, that formed her mind, disintegrate as each memory of the past six weeks regurgitated to the surface like oozing acid, until her brain was a mangled mess.

And he took her in his arms again, shuddered as she filled them. As if he cared if she lived or died.

She visualized an escape. A version of reality where she was the woman the rumors painted her to be. The woman who wouldn’t only survive this, but who would walk away laughing. Invincible like him, playing her roles to gain her ends. Ending each without feeling or remorse. Heartless.

But she was heartless now, too. He’d hacked out her heart.

She pushed out of his arms. “I want to thank you.”

His gaze wavered. He couldn’t read her for the first time. And he was worried. “What for, ya habibati?”

Habibati. My love. His love. When she was his nothing. Just an instrument, a means to an end. Every word a lie. Every touch and smile and moment-worse than a lie. A cold-blooded, abhorrent role he’d had to play, to get her to succumb to her role in his kingdom’s politics. She was a chess piece he’d maneuvered with inhuman skill, premeditation and indifference.

And she couldn’t let him go on laughing viciously at her expense, knowing he’d made her his grateful, worshipping fool.

She channeled his female counterpart, heard herself murmuring coldly, “You did what everyone before you failed to do. You’re the only one I had a liaison with who Bill knew was a real threat. But then you’re the first crown prince I’ve ever been with. Of course, I knew. I went along because you wanted to play it that way, and I wanted to play, too. But it really made him panic. He called me back to offer marriage at last.”

Before Shehab doubled over in shock, he realized.

Farah had found out who he was, was teaching him a lesson.

Now she’d slap him for keeping his identity from her, rant and rave, then end up laughing at his deserved horror. And he’d sweep her in his arms and let her have whatever revenge she saw fit. Then much, much later, he’d show her how he’d take anything from her, but there were certain things she should never joke about, or use in his chastisement. One thing. Her love for him.

But she didn’t slap him, didn’t rant, didn’t laugh, just looked at him with those unfamiliar eyes, spoke again in that unfeeling tone. “It’s been fun while it lasted. You’re a great host and an OK lover. I’m sure you didn’t mean your marriage offer, but even if you did, Bill is by far the better proposition. You’re too…demanding, you understand.”

He couldn’t breathe. He wouldn’t until she yelled at him, or until she made a face and stuck out her tongue, as he loved to see her do. But she did neither.

She passed him, opened the door. “Bill is very sensitive about you right now, and I have to humor him until he writes up those prenups. Maybe after everything is settled I can see you again. If I don’t hook up with someone else meanwhile, that is.”

Everything he’d heard about her. The rumors as she’d called them. She was admitting to them all. And she wasn’t joking.

“Of course, if we do hook up again, you’ll have to excuse me when I drop the wide-eyed, adoring idiot act. I strained to keep it going and won’t be trying it again any time soon.”

Stop. Stop. The roar bloodied his throat, even when it went unbellowed. But she didn’t stop.

“I would have invited you in for goodbye sex, but Bill’s joining me in an hour, and you don’t do quickies, so…” She made a dismissive gesture, showing him the door.

He couldn’t have moved if his life depended on it. An avalanche had buried him, made up of all the moments since they’d met. Every one twisted around, grinning hideously, showing him its true macabre face. He’d deceived her about his intentions for the best of reasons. She’d deceived him about her nature, seamlessly, for the basest ones.

The woman he worshipped didn’t even exist.

But he couldn’t stagger to his knees and bleed to death now. It didn’t matter if she was a perverted soul who thrived on entrapping men only to destroy them. It didn’t matter that she’d pulverized his heart and soul. Those were the man’s. The crown prince of Judar didn’t need them to fulfill his role as future king. And he’d make her fulfill hers-as future queen.

He took the door from her, closed it with a calm that only losing everything can bestow. “So you think you can just send me on my way. Interesting. More interesting is that you seem to think any of the last six weeks was actually for you. A woman’s ego is boundless, especially when enough flimsy men give her the impression she is irresistible. I would have preferred to do this my way, the painless way, but since you think I’ll let you merrily go on to your petty agendas, I will have to apply pressure. It’s up to you how much I do apply. You can come with me now, without further persuasion on my part, and spare yourself the unpleasantness, or I can make you, and your senile lover, live to regret it. Then you’ll do what I want, anyway.”

Farah almost smiled. How easy it had been to make him take off the mask. Bare his true face. The soulless sheikh who used and abused people to his ends.

With the morbid fascination of someone mortally wounded and wondering how her murderer would release her from the pain, what the killing blow would be, she cocked her head at him.

“You’re drunk on your power, aren’t you? How would you do any of that? We’re in America now, not your island, or in your kingdom.”

The smile he gave her would have been scary, if she could feel a thing. “Can I give you a list? How about starting with grinding Hanson into the ground, until he’s filing for bankruptcy? If I show him how I’ll do it, and how he could stop it, he’ll throw you aside in a blink. Then I won’t leave you anywhere else to turn and you’ll come crawling to me. And I’ll take you, marry you, a repulsive duty for my kingdom’s sake. I only endured your so-called inexperience and your odious character to obtain my end. The highest end. Retaining the throne of Judar, and with it the whole region’s peace.”