Sheikh's Command Read Free

said, and this time there was a sweetness to it that even she could hear.
    “You pay me back by being yourself, and no one else,” he said, meeting her eyes. She looked half-stunned, or perhaps slightly hypnotized. “You pay me back by being an excellent musician, one that could leave the current professionals on the stage in the dust.”
    She swallowed hard, and for a moment, Makeen wondered if he could glimpse tears in her eyes.
    “All right,” she said. “Okay.”
    Olivia laughed self-consciously, pulling back into that tough shell he had seen earlier. The fact that he had been allowed to see her vulnerable was, he thought, something special and rare.
    “You are a strange man, Makeen. Very strange.”
    “So I have been told,” he said. “Look, here is my card. I happen to believe in supporting artists, and perhaps if you are ever in need, you can call me again.”
    Instead of taking the card, she watched him set it on the table.
    “I can take of myself,” she said, prickly again, and he sighed.
    “As you like … Only a woman should have options. I wanted to give you another …”
    At that inopportune moment, his phone rang. He glanced at the screen and then gritted his teeth.
    “I am sorry, I must take this,” he said, and she waved away his apology.
    “Yes?” he asked, turning away slightly. “Have we found them?”
    “Affirmative, sir,” said the man on the other line. “Found and captured the whole lot. They are being processed right now.”
    Makeen had to keep himself from punching the air in victory. The result of almost a year of hard work had paid off, and now they were going to put an old wrong to right.
    “I'll be down there inside of an hour. Good work.”
    He hung up the phone, ready to make his apologies to Olivia, but she was gone, her plate empty and nothing to show that she had been there at all. For a moment, it felt like a heavy loss that struck his heart, but he shook it off. He had known her for less than an hour. It wasn't something to mourn.
    As Makeen got up to call over the waitress, however, he smiled. She had taken his card.

CHAPTER TWO
    Olivia took the long way back to the apartment she shared with her family. It wound through twisting streets and dark alleyways, and she comforted herself by thinking that it was only a matter of time until she could escape this, escape all of this. This wasn't going to be her world for much longer.
    When she walked into the dark apartment, met with the smell of stale cigarettes and spilled alcohol, Olivia was reminded very clearly that it was still her world for now.
    “I'm home,” she called, and she could see from the door that her father was asleep on the couch. Asleep or passed out drunk, it didn't matter much, and she was content to let him lie. In the kitchen, however, she found her mother, pacing back and forth, chewing on her cigarette butt and listening intently on her phone.
    Olivia had her mother's dark hair and rich complexion, but where Olivia was curvy her mother was rail thin, as if life had worn her away. Olivia sometimes wondered if her mother had been soft and gentle once, and how long it had taken for that to wear away. Perhaps she had still been kind when David was a little boy, before Olivia had come along. She certainly hadn't been when Olivia was born.
    Finally, Mayellen ended the call, turning towards her daughter with bloodshot eyes. Olivia braced herself, ready to hear a diatribe about how useless she was, how she was leeching off of her family's resources, how she wasn't earning her keep with her silly little violin.
    Instead, Mayellen wavered as if she was on a boat at sea, and her hand gripped the back of the kitchen chair.
    “Mom?” Olivia asked, and her voice came out soft and scared as it hadn't been in years. “Mom, what's the matter?”
    “That was Stavros,” she said, her voice hollow with fear. “The cops conducted a sting on the warehouse. They took your brother.”
    Olivia gasped, her fingers