Page 28 of Filthy Hot Prince

Khalid

“Meet your new mother,” my father’s gruff voice rumbled through the room, a pale woman standing beside him, holding a cane in her hand. “Her name is Isabella.”

I glared at her, scoffing and crossing my arms in my hand.So this is why he was absent from the Palace for three months. He went and married someone else even though mother was his wife.

Zain squeezed my shoulder, giving me a look tobehaveand stepped ahead to introduce himself. Father smiled proudly at him, even ruffling his hair.

He never did that to me.

“Pst, pst, Khal!”

I glanced over my shoulder at the curls of Zayed’s hair. He was hiding behind a pillar and calling me over to play with horses. I smiled at his dimple and was about to sneak over to him when my father’s voice stopped me.

“Khalid Al Latif,” I mentally winced at his harsh tone saying my full name. “Have I not taught you any manners?”

I clenched my jaw and glared at his dark eyes. Isabella was smiling in my direction but she wasn’t looking at me. I had heard my mother’s maid gossip how Isabella couldn’t see. That she was born blind.

So I poked my tongue at her and ignoring father’s shout, I ran away with Zayed to play with the horses.

The dark room shifted and I was in the bed, frowning at the throbbing pain in my right foot.

“Your father told me you fell from the horse,” Isabella said, walking towards my bed, her cane tapping against the floor.

“Why did you marry my father?”

She laughed. I hadn’t heard someone laugh like that before. Softly and gently. Nowadays my mothers’ laugh seemed forced even though Zain and I tried our best to make her happy.

“I like his voice,” she stated, sitting on the edge of the bed, looking in my direction with that annoying little smile. She looked at me as if she could see through me. I hated that.

“That’s it? He sounds grumpy to me.”

“I like his charm, leadership and honesty.” Isabella placed her palm on the cast of my foot. “You are a lot like him.”

“No, I am not!”

She lifted her hand as if shocked by my outburst and placed her hand on her lap. “I didn’t mean to anger you, Prince Khalid.”

I glared at her but decided it was of no use if she couldn’t see I was glaring at her. I glanced at her cane. “You know… he is not even handsome. He is getting old.”

“You really dislike your father, don’t you?” Isabella chuckled, her voice lilting. “I didn’t marry him for his looks, Prince. He offered me love and safety.”

I didn’t reply to her, watching her leave my room as I wondered how he took everything he had promised to offer her.

How he ignored that Isabella was unfit to be a mother yet forced her to carry a child for nine months. How my father hated her and refused to hold my little sister, letting my mother comfort Isabella. How he moved Isabella to a closeted chambers with Zara, stealing what little freedom she had. How he beat my mother, Zain and me for his own hatred, greed and delusion of having another male heir.

It drove him insane. It pushed our mother to depression and Isabella to isolation.

My world fogged and I whirled until I saw him hold my sister’s dainty wrist, tears streaming down her pale face as she cried, calling her brother’s name. All I could see was flashes of my father hurting my mother and Isabella. Beating Zain, scolding him to be a better man, a better leader, a better Sultan until he refused to feel anything.

I couldn’t let that monster hurt my sister. Not my Zara. I had promised Isabella that I would take care of her when she had left with my mother to London and died in a plane crash. It was a death promise.

But it was Zain who moved first, who yelled at father, stood his grounds. I pulled Zara’s small body towards me, tears threatening my eyes when I saw the red marks of his fingerprints on her skin.

“I won’t let him hurt you,” I promised to her, wiping tears from her cheeks and pulling her behind me as she clutched my legs.

My father, Salman Al Latif, had hit his Zain on the head with his cane. I clenched my fists, my hands shaking as I met my own father’s eyes. Dark and angry and mad. He was not my father anymore. Just a shell of a person driven by greed, jealousy, anger and hatred toward his own six years old daughter.

He wanted to hurt my mother. Isabella. Zain and me. He wanted to hurt my sister. A kid.

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