Page 33 of Her Irresistible Sheik (Al-Sintra Family #9)

Leona hesitated before answering the call. The number on the screen confirmed it was Clyde—and every instinct screamed at her to ignore it.

But she couldn’t.

Not when he was one of her top-paying clients. Not when he’d referred other deep-pocketed clients her way over the years. So, with a sigh and a flash of resentment, she answered.

“Yeah?” she said, voice flat.

“I need you to find her for me,” Clyde snapped.

Leona blinked, confused. “I already gave you everything I had on her. Full schematics of the palace, backdoor access to their security system, camera placements—everything. I’m tapped out.”

“She was at the palace,” he growled. “Now she’s moved. No one knows where. I need her new location.”

Leona’s pulse skipped with relief and joy. That was good news.

Over the past few days, she’d been digging deeper than usual, out of habit more than obligation—and what she’d found surprised her.

Princess Nahla was… good. Genuinely a kind-hearted person.

Unlike Clyde’s usual targets—crooked CEOs, corrupt politicians, human traffickers—Nahla didn’t seem to have a dark side.

The woman championed animal shelters, donated most of her income to charities, and actively worked on policies to support the homeless, not to mention helped other artists to earn a bigger share of the profits from their art.

A wealthy woman, yes, but one who lived with integrity.

And Leona knew all this because she’d done what she always did: dug into everything. The princess’s digital footprint, financials, donation records, even her encrypted private messages. All clean. All sincere.

For the first time in years, Leona felt sick about the work she was doing.

She wasn’t going to help Clyde find Princess Nahla. But she couldn’t tell him that, not directly.

“Hang on a sec,” she said, buying time. With a practiced flick of her fingers, she activated her custom-built caller-tracking system. Clyde used a cloaked phone, which made this trickier—but not impossible. She needed at least twenty seconds to break through the scrambling.

Returning to the call, she asked casually, “Where was the last place you saw her?”

A beat of silence stretched out, but finally, Clyde muttered, “The Tavista palace.”

Leona stiffened. If Clyde had seen Princess Nahla, then…

No. Wait.

If he was calling now, asking for the woman’s location, then he hadn’t succeeded. He hadn’t killed her.

That alone was bizarre. Clyde never failed. Never .

So why was Princess Nahla still alive?

Something wasn’t adding up. Her fingers flew across the keyboard, compiling metadata, analyzing patterns, looking for anomalies. Meanwhile, she kept the conversation moving.

“She hasn’t used her phone in over a week, Clyde. I’ve got nothin’ for ya,” she lied, watching as her system continued its work.

“She’s alive. Find her!” he snapped—and ended the call.

Leona leaned back in her chair, pulse racing. The temptation to track the princess’s new location was strong—she had a dozen ways she could do it. Follow the phone signals of her guards. Hack her assistant’s inbox. Set a crawler loose on the dark web. It would be relatively easy .

But that heavy pit in her stomach wouldn’t go away.

She stared at the screen, rubbing her forehead.

This wasn’t like the others. Nahla wasn’t a monster. She was a good person —and Clyde was trying to end her because of a damn photo . A snapshot caught while Nahla was helping a stray puppy.

A puppy, Leona reminded herself, that was still sitting in a shelter. Unadopted. Despite two hundred and thirteen applicants. That was criminal, too, in her opinion. The shelter was slow rolling the adoption process for some ridiculous reason.

No dog should be in a cage. Dogs were pure, perfect creatures. They loved, they ate, they pooped. That was their whole deal. And ninety percent of their lives were devoted to loving and protecting their humans. Which made them, in Leona’s eyes, sacred beings.

Her hands hovered over the keyboard. She was so done with helping people like Clyde.

She wanted out.

But first, she needed to fix this. Quickly.

Pulling up her private client tracking profiles, Leona started scanning Tavista’s palace personnel. Her goal wasn’t Nahla anymore—it was someone inside . Someone smart enough to help her from the other side of the wall.

That’s when she found him.

Hector.

A computer tech buried in Tavista’s lower security detail. Nerdy face. MIT grad. Quiet digital footprint. But his resume? That made her eyes widen.

The guy was good . Almost as good as her.

Her lips curled.

This… could work.

If she played her cards right, Hector might just help her turn this whole mess around.