Twisted (Never After #4)(93)

I know I won’t get any relief until I find answers. I breathe deep, trying to find my center and not react out of shock. I’ve spent my entire life running away from problems, and it hasn’t gotten me anywhere good.

It’s what got me in this mess in the first place.

I slide down the desk and just sit on the floor for a long time, staring down at the pages that say if I die, everything is left to Julian, and it isn’t until the doorbell rings that I come out of my daze, standing up and trying to hold myself together long enough to walk across the foyer and answer it. I’m sure my eyes are puffy and I look like a disaster, but I can’t find it in me to care.

I don’t even know who would be here in the first place.

Opening the door, I find Julian’s assistant on the other side, his eyes dragging slowly up and down my frame.

“You look like shit,” Ian states.

I move to the side, letting him in, even though now everything in me is screaming to keep him far away. Is he here to kill me?

“My father’s dead,” I reply blankly.

Ian spins around to stare at me, his gaze growing round.

“Excuse me?”

I tilt my head. “You didn’t know?”

He swallows, his hands sliding into his pockets as he glances around. “No. Where’s Julian?”

My forehead scrunches. “At the office. With you, I thought.”

He shakes his head slowly. “No. I came here to find him.”

“Call him, I guess,” I state, trying to keep my body from visibly trembling from the nerves. “Make yourself at home.” I wave my hand around. “I have to make a phone call.”

I leave him in the foyer and walk up the stairs back into Julian’s room, my heart beating out of my chest as I grab my phone and call Riya.

She doesn’t answer, but I leave her a message, peeking behind me and making sure my door is fully closed.

“Hey, Riya.” I keep my voice a whisper. “I need your help so call me back. I have this…” Groaning, I run a finger over my curls. “I don’t know what to do. Baba died,” I choke out. “And then I found a fake will for me, and…maybe I should be calling Randy, but I need you to come get me out of here. I have that lamp, and I don’t know what to do. It was one of my father’s last wishes to find it, and I just—I’m not sure who I can trust. So call me back. Please.”

I puff out my cheeks, place my hands on my hips, my phone digging into my side as I try to find my center. I head out of the room and down the hall, passing by Ian as I make my way into the kitchen.

“Do you want some tea?” I twist back around as I ask the question, but I never hear his response.

Because all that’s next is sharp, blinding pain across my skull, and then silence.





Chapter 39





Julian





I hated leaving Yasmin this morning. She spent the entirety of last night crying, and I spent mine trying to come to terms with the fact that the only man who’s been any kind of positive influence on my life is gone forever.

Everything I was trying so hard to take from him seems pointless now.

It was his legacy.

I’ve just left his lawyer’s office, having had him draft up a prenuptial agreement, one that protects her assets, not any of mine. I don’t care if she takes me for all I’m worth. She could burn Sultans to the ground with me inside, and I’d die happily, knowing she was queen of the ashes.

But I need to show her that for me, this is real. My penance for being so blinded by greed for so long that I couldn’t see the forest for the trees.

She’s under no illusion of what this started as, but I want to make sure she knows that if she isn’t in my world, it isn’t worth living.

She’s changed me for the better. In all the ways I care to change, that is.

I’m not sure that she’ll ever realize the impact she’s had on me. I’m a powerful man, and I’ve worked incredibly hard to get to where I am in life. To pull myself from rags to riches and make something of myself.

There’s a type of confidence that comes along with that, a sense of pride that I feel, one that I don’t think anyone can take away from me.

And the only person who can is about to no longer have access to my life.

I thought about driving to my mother’s house and seeing her in person one last time. All night long, as I was holding Yasmin in my arms, comforting her loss of her father, I imagined what it would feel like if the shoe were on the other foot.

If I lost my mother suddenly, would I cry? Would I feel pain? All that came was longing for the freedom it would provide.

She doesn’t deserve my time in person. I’m protecting myself and the little boy who’s still living and breathing somewhere deep inside my soul from ever dealing with her abuse again.

People only have the power you give them, and I’m done giving her mine.

She picks up on the second ring.

“Do you remember when I was little?” I ask instead of saying hello. “And you had to take me to the hospital because I had a broken femur?”

“Are you not even greeting your mother now?” she complains.

“Just answer the question.”

“I don’t know. You were sick a lot back then.”