Page 58 of Twisted (Never After)

Aidan: I miss you too. Can’t talk, bill would be too much. Where’d you find your phone?

Frowning, I type out a reply.

Me: Julian had it. Is everything okay?

Aidan: You’re still hanging around Julian? Princess, I’m taking care of everything here. There’s no need.

I inhale a shaky breath, not knowing what to say. It doesn’t feel right to lie to him, but I don’t want him to lose faith in what we’re trying to do, to lose faith in us. Not when my goal is still to be able to be with him freely.

Just as soon as I figure out how to get out of the mess I’ve made and meet with the lawyer Riya said she found. I have no intention of keeping the Faraci name.

Me: I really don’t want to talk about this on text.

Pausing before I press Send, I think about what I want to write. I could hold off on saying anything, but then, I’m not sure whether Julian’s goons will tell him. And I’d rather him find out from me, even over text, even if he’ll be mad, versus finding out from somebody else.

My stomach cramps and my hands grow clammy as I type and erase, then retype a message out.

Me: I had to do something that you’re not going to like. Something I didn’t want to do. But it’s to keep you safe, to keep everyone safe, and I need you to not be mad at me. I need you to understand.

Bile rises through my esophagus, and I swallow around the sour taste in my mouth, my stomach tossing and heaving.

Aidan: You can tell me anything, princess.

Me: I married Julian today.

And then I drop my phone, running to the toilet just in time to throw up.

Chapter20

Julian

I’ve been trying to get ahold of Ali all week, but he hasn’t returned my phone calls and I haven’t had a chance to stop by his house. He’s been a ghost on email, having gone from working from home to not really existing within Sultans at all, and I wonder if he’s taken a turn, one that has him unable to do things that require focus and energy.

A twinge of unease smarts in my chest when he doesn’t answeragainwhen I try to call, and my leg shakes beneath my desk. I’m not sure if he’s just feeling worse for the wear or if he’s avoiding my calls because he wasn’t quite as accepting of my relationship with Yasmin as he made it appear.

Either way, I need to break the news that we’re legally wed, and I want to do it in person.

Ending the call to Ali, I dial Yasmin’s cell instead. She forwards it to voicemail, and I grit my teeth, taking a deep breath to keep the annoyance from suffocating every pore.

She’s also been avoiding me; stubbornness obviously runs thick in the Karam family line. I haven’t minded much, since I don’t need her to do anything other than exactly what she has been, sitting in my house and sending message after unanswered message to the boy for the past seven days since we were married at the courthouse.

I haven’t had much time to care about her silence because I’ve barely been home as it is. Sultans can only run for so long without me focusing on what’s important there, and with Ian gone to Egypt, I’ve been up to my neck in meetings both within Sultans as well as after-hours meets in an empty warehouse I own on the outskirts of town with the Romanos, the Italian outfit that’s based in New York. They supply us with the weapons we use to trade for access to the mines across the world.

And that’s how this business works. Everything is a negotiation, and there’s no true good and evil. The separation is an illusion created by those of us in power to keep the masses at bay and feeling as though there are people fighting for what’s right.

But the truth is that one hand always washes the other, and I’m the water that rinses both clean.

In the few spare moments I’ve had, I’ve taken to pulling up her string of texts and call logs. She hasn’t done anything crazy, other than act like a desperate girl eager to regain the attention of that street rat.

Itissurprising how he’s ignoring her, however. An odd one- eighty from the eager kid who was willing to turn the world upside down to prove his love just a couple weeks ago.

But I’m sure that when he returns home, she’ll snare him again.

I remember peering at them through the thin slat of the door in the room where they used to have their secret rendezvous.

Blowing out a breath, I try to shake away the image of her naked body, but it keeps dragging me under, and as usual these days, I can’t clear it from my mind.

Frustrated, I slam the phone down on the receiver, half- hard from just the singular thought of her, my hand running slightly over the growing bulge to temper my arousal.