Shelly looked at Aleah, the baby tucked up close to her, and the fear in Aleah’s eyes. Shelly settled back and nodded. “He’s good,” she said. “We can trust him.”
“I don’t know how to trust,” Aleah said quietly, “when they lie, and they cheat, and they steal.”
“Not all of them,” she said.
Aleah nodded. “All of them.”
“Even the father of your child?”
“Well, no,” she said, stopping, looking confused. “But he’s young.”
“He doesn’t have to turn out that way either,” Shelly said. “Not all men are like your father or this asshole out here who bought you.”
“It’s often the way in my country,” she said. “This arrangement they spoke of would help to explain why my father rose so high up, becoming what he is.”
“He had a lot of backing, I presume.”
“Yes. It’s all making sense to me now. My family has royal heritage,” she said, “but no money to speak of, no real standing. This man had money and power but lacked the lineage. That is what he was buying me for, … access to the lineage. In the meantime, over all these years, my father used the dowry to become an even more terrible man than he was.”
“And now you’ve messed it all up by having a child,” she said.
“I didn’t even know about this arrangement of theirs,” she said, “and I wouldn’t have cared.”
“No, I get that,” Shelly said, “because I’d be the same way. But the bottom line is that he won’t treat you very nicely because you’ve already had another man’s child.”
Aleah’s eyes widened. “No,” she said, “he won’t. He isn’t a nice man anyway, and this has just made it all worse.”
“But would he still marry you and force having his children on you if he gets a chance?”
“Absolutely. Then he’ll take his children from me, and I’ll be an accidental death somewhere in the not-too-distant future.”
“And I presume your father won’t care either way?”
“No. He’s got his money out of me already.”
“In that case, why do you think he’s trying to rescue you now?”
“I don’t know that he is. It may be a matter of making sure I comply,” she said quietly. “When he found out I was pregnant, he was absolutely livid.”
“The baby’s father, do you think his life is in danger?”
At that, Aleah gasped, stared at her, and asked, “Do you think so?”
“Well, he’s the one who led you astray, in their minds, so to speak. Sorry to use such an old-fashioned phrase.”
“I think my father just wanted me as collateral again, to hold over the man he sold me to and to exploit the lineage of my baby’s father.”
“Could your father be trying to stop that man in any way?”
“Well, they could renegotiate a deal maybe? One that would get my father off the hook because, above all else, my arranged husband wants the lineage. He doesn’t so much care beyond that.”
“So even though you’ve given birth to another man’s child, he’ll forgive that?”
“Well, he says he will. But, once I’m married to him,” she said, “there’s absolutely nothing anyone can do to stop his abuse.”
“Maybe he won’t though.”
“He already has,” she said. “He was livid when he found out I was pregnant and hit me several times. At the time, I thought he wanted to sell me into the sex trade. So I worried that he would kill my child, to sell me sooner. But I made it very clear that, if he killed my baby, I would kill myself. Little did I know he wanted me himself.”
“Either way, he would never get what he wanted.”
She shook her head.
“I’m so sorry, Aleah. These past six months must have been even more horrible with all that hanging over your head. So, what’s the deal with your father?”
“That I still don’t quite understand, except maybe he feels that, as long as he saves me, he can take my baby, his grandchild, and maybe use that to his own gain. I don’t know.” She shrugged. “And it doesn’t matter. As much as anything I think he knows that I need to become this man’s wife to get himself off the hook.”
“And yet,” she said, “he didn’t wait until you were married to the man to get you out. That says something good, right?”
“There would be no point then because, if we were married, I would be deemed his property. No,” she said, “in our culture, it would shame him to marry a pregnant woman. He wants our lineage and the people’s respect. So he had to wait for the birth of the baby. Maybe that is what my father and he are arguing about? For he had me and my baby in a real sense, whether I had given birth yet or not. He was probably auctioning off my child to my father. Oh my. I didn’t think it could be worse than I already thought.” Aleah stared in horror, as Shelly patted her hand.
“My father must have realized, without even telling me about this arrangement, that I would never marry any man over some archaic dowry deal. He’s probably been stalling for years, but then my intended finally put his foot down and kidnapped me, hoping to marry, not knowing of my pregnancy. That’s why he held me for so long. Meanwhile, my father’s desperate to find some angle, some deal that he can make out of it that saves him and grants him possession of his grandchild.”
“I don’t think anybody’ll get saved out of this mess,” she said. “Your father may have planned to save you for whatever reason, but I don’t know if it was for your best interests or his.”
“His,” she said immediately. “It’s always about his.”
“In which case, either he’ll save himself or get something out of this deal.”
“That’s right. He’s bled the guy as much as he can, and that’s blowing up in his face. So now he’s discovered that my baby has wealth via her father’s lineage, so he’ll probably get me back, so I can have more children with Renault.”
“Wow, that all sounds worse and worse,” she muttered, “and I don’t see either of the two men outside stopping. We need to get rid of these guys.”
She gave a broken laugh. “And how am I to do that?”
Shelly asked, “What’s your father’s name?”
“Aziz,” she said.
Shelly lifted her voice. “Aziz, your daughter doesn’t want to go back. She doesn’t want to marry the guy you sold her to, and she doesn’t want to live with you.” There was silence.
“What she wants does not matter,” he said, his voice coming closer.
“How is it you feel you can ruin your daughter’s life? How old was your little girl when you sold her future to this evil man?”
“She’s my daughter. She’s my property. I will make the decisions.”
“You already made a decision. Then this man kidnapped her.”
“Yes, she is to marry him.”
“Then why would you even try to get her back again? Why go through that ridiculous testing process to make sure Shane was good enough to rescue your daughter, if her kidnapper is the man who’s to marry her anyway?”