Page 8 of Beauty and the Billionaire

Father looked at me with clear pain in his eyes. “I wished I could spare you that, Zain, but I couldn’t. You never should have been troubled with this.”

“I shouldn’t have studied if we couldn’t afford it,” I said, my voice squeaking as I was torn between raising it in a desperate plea and keeping it low for the sake of my sleeping family. “Don’t you see I can’t just sit and wait?” The plea was unmistakable now.

Father clenched his fists on the table and squared his shoulders. “You will do nothing, Zain. This is not your mess to unmake.”

I sat still as my father stood and left the kitchen. The pit of desperation opened in my stomach like a black hole. He wouldn’t let me, and I was powerless. I had been powerless all my life.Respect your father, respect your mother, provide for your siblings, be a good student, and pray to God for a better tomorrow. But where did all that leave me? When could I be myself if not in a time of crisis?

For the rest of the day, Father was mostly gone. After I had done my round of deliveries in the neighborhood, I took over the store and sat alone for the rest of the day. It was a typical rainy day around here; under the table, Mary Renault’s books about Alexander the Great and his lovers were safe enough that my parents wouldn’t question their contents, although they were tantalizing reads to me. They filled me with the yearning for a passionate love I could never have outside the books.

It was Saturday morning, and my father sat in the office with an envelope full of borrowed cash, and my mother and siblings were upstairs when Dominic Blackthorne strolled into the shop as if he already owned it.

“Good morning,” Blackthorne said. “Is your father here, Zain?”

“What do you want?” I growled, closingThe Persian Boyunder the counter and standing up.

“Oh, let us not go through this again,” Dominic said tiredly. “I wish to speak to your father. And have what is owed to me.”

Resignation came over my face. I looked into his cold eyes. “You are ruining our lives.”

He might have said that our lives were not of concern to him. He might have said it hadn’t been his choice to get to this point. He might have defended himself in a million ways, except that my father chose to enter the shop just then. “Zain, apologize to Mr. Blackthorne.”

“No need,” Dominic said, waving his princely hand through the air. “He is young. He’ll learn.”

“Forgive him, Mr. Blackthorne,” Father said in what was almost a meek tone. I hated to see him like this. He had come to this country in search of freedom and prosperity, but he bowed to a rich man who fancied himself a lordling.

The footsteps coming down the stairs were many, so I gathered that my entire family would observe the spectacle. “Amar?” Mother called from the hallway in the back of the shop, the three kids huddled behind her.

“Mr. Blackthorne is here, Maria,” Father said. “Would you make us coffee?”

“Not necessary,” Dominic said crisply. “I am returning to Harringford Manor when we are finished, and not a moment too soon, I’ll tell you.”

Father hesitated, almost as if fighting the urge to dry-wash his hands before Dominic’s cool gaze. “Mr. Blackthorne, I am collecting money to pay you back. I hoped to meet you at Harringford next week.”

“That won’t be needed, Amar,” Dominic said. His mustache and the beard on his chin were darker and longer than the stubble on his cheeks and jaw. It gave him a deceptively elegantlook. “I am here in person, as you expressed you would prefer the last time my man visited. So? How should we do this?”

Father looked stricken. It broke my heart in ways I didn’t think I could ever truly fix. “There is a problem, Mr. Blackthorne. If you would only accept what I have collected so far and extend…”

“Amar,” Dominic said and blew a breath of air in disappointment. “We had an agreement.”

“Let me work for it,” I heard myself say.

“Zain,” Father snapped, and Mother repeated my name a heartbeat later. She added, “Silence.”

Dominic’s gaze shot in my direction with something like interest.

“Forty grand, huh? I can work that off in a year, can’t I?” I suggested, my mouth dry with fear. I wasn’t scared of doing this. I was scared that the words came out of me without any thought at all. It was like my mouth was enchanted.

“A year?” Dominic asked, offended. “Think of me what you will, but my gardener’s assistant makes that much in half the time.”

“How generous,” I said tightly.

“Why should I let you work for me when I can settle the debt with so much less inconvenience?” Dominic asked. He was willing to play this game. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have asked. His gaze was solidly on me now, black pupils dilating with curiosity.

“Don’t listen to him, Mr. Blackthorne,” Father said.

Dominic didn’t let that distract him. Looking into my eyes, he replied to my father, “He is an adult, Mr. Rashid. And a noble one if he wants to help solve your mess.”

This was the first time Dominic extended any courtesy to my father, addressing him as mister instead of that patronizing one-way use of the first name. I wondered if it meant he was showing some respect.

---