Page 19 of Her Irresistible Sheik (Al-Sintra Family #9)

Clyde emerged from the closet like a shadow melting into deeper darkness. He paused. Listened. Waited.

Three o’clock. The hour of stillness. Outside of the palace, there were probably some people coming back from parties, but very few. And inside the palace, the overachievers hadn’t yet arrived.

It was his hour.

He moved without sound, his footfalls practiced, weight distributed evenly to minimize floorboard creaks. He was a professional. Methodical. Efficient. A predator born not of emotion or need, but of purpose.

But even predators had to adapt. Hiding in that ridiculous supply closet again for hours hadn’t been part of the plan.

Nor had the putrid mop that had fallen directly onto his face, coating his mouth with the scent of lemon disinfectant and mildew.

Unfortunately, someone had passed by at that exact moment, so he’d had to wait to push it away.

He swallowed the memory—and the taste—with a curl of his lip. She’d pay for that. For all of it. For the insult of being captured on camera, his carefully constructed anonymity shattered and posted— revealed! —on a puppy adoption website .

His legacy mocked with glitter fonts and paw-print borders.

Unforgivable.

He moved through the corridors with surgical precision, ducking cameras, shadowing corners, until he reached the guest wing. Her suite was just beyond the two guards posted in front of those gilded double doors.

He didn’t falter.

Instead, he slipped into the suite next door, exactly as planned. He knew every angle of the palace blueprints. He had studied the air ducts for weeks, analyzing which shafts would bear his weight, which sensors were real, and which were ornamental lies.

He was a ghost. A scalpel in human form.

The vent groaned faintly as he slid inside, but Clyde froze, counted to three, and then kept moving, inch by calculated inch.

By the time he reached the duct above her sitting room, sweat dampened his back. Not from exertion—but from focus. He was minutes away from reclaiming his reputation with blood.

Unscrewing the grate one-handed, he caught it before it could drop.

Flawless.

He eased himself through the narrow opening and dropped silently into the darkened room. Then he started moving toward his goal.

Only to immediately slam his shin into something.

Pain shot through his leg, white and hot. He bit his tongue to suppress the cry, but a strangled grunt still slipped out.

Looking down, he glared at the offending object. A chair? Why was there a chair here?! The furniture layout had been clearly documented!

He reached down to steady himself—and tumbled again. Reaching out to stop an undignified tumble to the floor, Clyde grabbed the nearest object, then gasped in pain as he smacked his thumb against what he assumed was a low table. Hard.

The table didn’t budge. His thumb, however, was now bent in a direction it definitely wasn’t supposed to.

And worse… he’d made a sound.

Which meant the guards were already unlocking the suite doors. He had maybe three seconds to vanish.

Darting forward, Clyde sprinted to the bedroom, mentally recalling the layout—only to trip over something soft and uncooperative. His legs tangled. His shoulder slammed into the doorframe. A hiss of pain tore through his clenched teeth.

What the hell had he just tripped on?

Bed sheets. Why the hell were the bed sheets on the damn floor?

His thumb throbbed violently now, but he shoved the pain into the mental box where he stored things like feelings and childhood memories.

He limped toward the vanity and yanked the silk dressing panel forward to hide behind it, folding his lanky frame into the narrow space just as the door creaked open behind him.

Footsteps. Voices in Arabic.

Clyde didn’t speak a word of it—but he could interpret the tone. One guard was annoyed at being dragged into a false alarm. The other sounded like he was blaming a cat. A cat?! Did this woman keep animals?

There were no further steps, no barked orders. The door closed again.

Clyde didn’t move. His lungs burned from holding his breath so long. He’d never been this close to getting caught. Never ! His reputation was built on stealth, silence, and zero trace left behind.

Now here he was—hiding behind silk, bleeding internally (possibly), and smelling like lemon floor cleaner!

She would pay for this.

After several more moments, silence reigned. Clyde eased the panel aside, stepping carefully into the room again. But in his anger, he misjudged his trajectory and elbowed the edge of the makeup table. A single perfume bottle teetered… tilted… and thunked off his skull with unerring accuracy.

He nearly screamed.

Instead, Clyde slammed both hands over his mouth—only to immediately regret it as pain from his injured thumb shot up to his jaw like an electrified freight train. His knees buckled slightly from the excruciating pain, but still he didn’t make a sound.

Victory? Perhaps. But it smelled of lavender.

Literally.

He glanced down.

The shattered crystal bottle lay on the floor, the crystal stopper a few centimeters from the bottle. The contents had soaked the floor—and him—with oil-based perfume. The hem of his pants gleamed with it. His sleeves were damp. Even his skin glistened.

Lavender. Heavy. Sweet. Cloying.

He smelled like a damned tea party in a Victorian garden.

And worse—it lingered . The bitch’s perfume was expensive, the kind that seeped into the skin instead of laying on the surface like the cheap stuff.

His mouth twisted in horror. He would be wafting of lavender for days!

Murder. Definitely murder.

He moved again, stealthy now that he knew not to trust the layouts Leona had sent him, stepping over the broken glass and oily patch. Time to finish this. His patience was gone!

But when he pulled back the duvet on the large bed, ready to simply shoot the damn bitch…!

Empty.

She wasn’t there.

After all this, after hours of infiltration, creeping, easing through vents, dodging guards and toppling over rogue furniture… she wasn’t even in the room.

Clyde clenched his fists, one of them awkwardly because of his most-likely broken thumb. She had to die. Just as soon as he figured out where she was.

Slipping from the suite, he retraced his steps with meticulous care, once again avoiding sensors and guard patrols.

But there was no chance in hell he was hiding in that mop closet again.

He had standards. Instead, he made his way toward the older wing of the palace—the abandoned harem quarters, long since converted into storage.

A shame, really.

As he slipped into the stone chamber of the common area of the harem space, he glanced around at the carved pillars and sunken marble baths. He might enjoy having a harem. Quiet women. Obedient. Decorative. They wouldn’t leave sheets on the floor or rearrange furniture just to sabotage his plans.

Yes. A harem would be—

Sniff.

Oh god.

The scent was back.

His nostrils flared.

Lavender.

It clung to him with desperate affection, a floral death grip of humiliation. Clyde closed his eyes. He’d committed political assassinations, infiltrated embassies, and once poisoned a diplomat during a handshake—but he’d never felt so thoroughly emasculated.

Perfume-drenched. Thumb sprained. Hair possibly coated in cobwebs and more lavender.

He curled into a dark corner of the stone chamber and waited. One kill. That’s all he needed. Then maybe a shower.

A very, very long shower.

Preferably with steel wool.