Chapter 37 - Farid

Her heart felt heavy as Mac snapped closed the passage door to Harm's room. The click of the latch sounded so loud in the early morning stillness that it made her jump. She was back to wearing the niqab and headress, back to being Naznin if only in Farid's eyes.

Every step she took closer to her entryway made Mac's heart beat faster and an overwhelming sense of dread was making it hard for her to breathe. Something was wrong, she knew and the second she pressed down on the latch Mac felt the door being yanked open from the opposite side.

There was nowhere to go, a male hand had wrapped around her arm and was pulling her before Mac could try to fight. The headdress blocked her vision, the niqab prevented her from mounting a defense. She could only scream and kick but her struggles were useless as she was picked up and hauled across the room then dropped roughly onto the sofa in the seating area.

A slap came next and the feeling of hands wrapping around her throat squeezing hard enough that she began to blackout. And then, nothing. Her attacker stopped and let out a wail so anguished it made her heart lurch.

Mac dropped to the floor coughing hard, she tore off the headscarf and brought a hand to her throat in an effort to stop the awkward sensation. In the room she could still hear the cries and then felt her attacker's arms wrapping around her. "Why? Why did you go to him? You are mine. Mine. Only I love you Sweet Nazanin."

She let him hold her for a time until the tears all but stopped and his hands were gently stroking up and down her back in the most comforting fashion. Inside that part of her that created Nazanin longed for this touch, the gentleness Farid could often share. But, the real her, the woman whose husband was locked just a few doors down could no longer accept this farce.

She was Sarah MacKenzie and no one else. Nazanin was gone forever.

Farid was blubbering incoherently when she pushed him away, reaching for her so desperately but Mac simply side stepped his attempt and put the sofa between them. "I am not Nazanin...I may have been once but I am not any longer. My name is Sarah, Sarah MacKenzie and the man you have held hostage is my husband."

She spoke in English, punctuated her real name so that there was no mistaking who she really was. Farid cried even harder, dropping to his knees as if in prayer or reverence, both felt equally patheric. "Sweet Nazanin, what has he done to you?"

"Stop! Stop it... I won't do this anymore! You know who I really am. You have to know. You have to know that I wouldn't forget forever."

Farid took a deep breath and as quickly as the crying began, it simply stopped. Tears still ran down his cheeks unchecked but they were brushed away with the back of his hand as he stood. There was an odd kind of calm when he settled ibto the armchair across from the sofa and leaned his head back. His eyes were closed and yet a stray tear rolled down his cheek until that too was angrily brushed away.

It seemed like an eternity passed before he opened his eyes and an expressionless mask covered Farid's face. "The doctors told me that you would never remember. Others weren't so sure."

His words weren't spoken in Farsi, Mac realized and her mouth dropped open as Farid cracked a wide, knowing smile. "You speak English."

"I do, fluently and can rid my accent after a time. I was educated in the States for about ten years, even went to one of your fancy 'Ivy League' colleges with all of the elitist who bought their way in... Father believed I needed to be amongst our enemy for me to succeed. I must admit, I miss some parts of it but Iran is my home."

"You fooled me."

"I've fooled many, even my own family." He brushed away one last tear before motioning to the sofa across from him. "Sit. I won't hurt you."

She was cautious when moving, choosing to take the spot farthest away on the very edge. There was nothing to use for a weapon and any defense would come from her fists if needed but Mac was fairly certain she could immobilize Farid if necessary.

"We were intimate once. In love, yes?"

Intimate. He said the word with such adoration that it may have had an effect if her mind wasn't so concerned about Harm. "That wasn't me."

"But it was. Deny it all you like. Nazanin was in love with me and still is. She's a part of you, not just some creation but a part of you."

He was right, she knew. It was an undeniable fact that Nazanin Ahmadi still lived beneath the surface despite her best efforts to keep her away. And yet, the mystery of her other persona needed to be unshrouded. The blank slate in her memory needed to be filled and understood. "How did I become her?"

"Sadik Fahd. You know of him, yes?"

"Yes."

"He's been advising my family for some time, and has become very close to my uncle." He paused for a moment as if wondering how to phrase why the terrorist was so important to them. Farid's face burned red from embarrassment as he leaned forward. "My uncle has eccentric appetites for young women from America...The unwilling kind."

"Human trafficking?"

"Yes, exactly." He nodded. "Sadik sold you to him - an American Marine Colonel, an infidel. The opportunity was much too good for him to pass up."

Mac closed her eyes and bit back the rising nausea. She could only imagine what unspeakable atrocities would have happened to her. Pain. Torture. Christ, even with Farid's faults, the man had treated her relatively well. "That's why there was a limousine waiting for me at the docks that night and why I split from the other girls."

"Yes. The rest was a happy accident...Your rescuer would become your lover."

"My rescuer?"

"You really don't remember." As Farid sat back, his eyes locked onto hers. He stared at her with such adoration despite feeling so betrayed. "Me."

Three and a Half Years Earlier

Egypt.

The police turned a blind eye at the nightclubs whose activities went well past midnight. As elicit as it came, the secret club moved nightly never leaving a trace that it was once chocked full of patrons sipping drink after drink while dancing to European trance.

This wasn't the place for the son of a high ranking politician to enter but he'd given the guards the slip save for one that was mostly considered a friend. Farid wasn't drunk, those times of his life had passed a little over ten years ago when his college days were over and done with. He rarely imbibed in spirits save for the occasional romps out in town like tonight.

He hadn't danced. In fact, Farid hated this kind of music, the thumping ebb and flow of electronic music that merely repeated the same tune over and over with no lyrics. He much preferred rock but those clubs were never popular in his corner of the World; his current location would have to suffice when hunting for female companionship which was in short supply that evening. There were plenty of women, the attractive ones being the foreigners that ventured for something locally exotic. But, none of them whet his appetite, not for the things he had in mind.

Farid sighed heavily. He enjoyed when they struggled, the women who wanted it but not quite. The ones that wouldn't allow the rougher kind of desires that could only make him aroused. Everything else was infinitely boring - vanilla - as the American's would call it. "Let's go. Nothing worthwhile tonight."

The guard motioned to the woman at the bar, the one who had been eyeing his boss for most of the night. "She shows interest."

"She is also inebriated. It's not enjoyable if they just lay there, for that I can choose most Iranian women, they do not struggle much." They shared a laugh as Farid motioned for the waitress to enter the VIP area so he could settle his bill. "I have to enjoy myself as much as I can. Eventually nights as these will be a distant memory."

He would eventually take his father's position in government and with it came responsibilities that left little time for such activities. With a sigh he stood and followed his guard through a doorway that led to the back entrance.

The weather was odd, the air unusually thick and heavy with some sort of electricity that left him unsettled. The sound of screeching tires and revving engines echoed in the distance. It was a kind of action that felt so out of place and yet, it piqued his curiosity when a van tore down the street with another car giving chase. "Follow them. Hurry."

His guard cut through side streets in effort to catch the speeding vehicles, a move that brought them ahead of the action when the lead vehicle popped up in front of them. "There! Go!"

Farid didn't expect what would happen next, how the van would lose control and flip over several times until it crunched into a building. Moments later it would catch fire and its occupant had yet to emerge.

He wouldn't help. He had no business playing hero but something made him hop out of his car despite his guard yelling at him not to. The closer he got, the faster his heart beat and it nearly stopped when he looked through the passenger window to find a woman. A beautiful woman that was struggling to get out of a vehicle.

Two men were running towards him yelling for him to step away and be gone. He yelled back, told them there was a woman that direly needed his help. Farid was surprised to find that one of the men was familiar to him because he'd guarded the Ahmadi family for at least two decades. "Kasra?""Why are you here, Farid?"

Rather than answer, he hurried to the drivers side as flames began to lick the hood. Despite himself, Farid dove into the overturned vehicle, the smell of petroleum, burnt skin and blood mixing to create a noxious perfume that nearly made him retch.

The woman's body was in an awkward angle, a bent leg caught under the passenger seat that had somehow dislodged itself and trapped her. She was conscious when he began to extract her amidst his uncle's guards telling him to leave her be and run...run before the car exploded with him inside.

He was not a brave man, not one bit but felt compelled to help the woman, to send a silent prayer to Allah who finally answered. The passenger seat fell away as if an unseen force had tipped it off. Amber eyes met his but for a second as she passed out in his arms.

Farid took off running, his burden making it impossible to get more than five car lengths away when the van she'd driven suddenly exploded. It sent him to the ground and he shielded her body with his own while taking cover behind a truck parked on the side of the road.

The melee had stopped although a fire roared where the van had once been. His uncle's guards had slipped away like theives in the night and would likely pay for blundering such precious cargo. As he stared at the woman she reminded him of someone in his past - a woman just as brave. "Nazanin."

"You were unconscious, it seemed imperative that I take you to the hospital and stay with you." An act that would cause a massive argument with Kasra who reported the accident to Farid's uncle. "I practically kidnapped you out of the hospital in Cairo, flew you in my private plane to Tehran where my guards would protect us."

It was the hospital in Tehran that would eventually place her in a psychiatric unit where it was discovered the woman was lost in her own mind. A neurologist suggested it was irreversible. A psychiatrist was unable to extract Mac's true self through hypnosis. And each time Farid visited, he began to fall for her so much he knew he had to make her his. "I visited you daily for hours and hours. I expected one day you would remember who you were and when you didn't…"

"You created Nazanin."

Farid nodded slowly. "And I told the staff you were my wife. I wasn't challenged and was allowed to bring you home. The rest you should remember."

She did remember. The good. The bad. Farid's betrayal with not one but two other women. She remembered how he changed after she terminated her pregnancy, how he used her as an advisor more than a wife. "I might have never remembered if he hadn't taken me."

"That's a day I wish to forget. I should have fought and not shielded myself like a coward."

Mac finally felt a little at ease, at least enough for her to drop into the sofa with a heavy sigh. She thought about Harm and how he so hard tried to break her from a seemingly unbreakable mental prison. Nazanin was shaken, the feelings were much too strong to contain and ignore because Sarah would eventually awaken. "Nazanin was resilient for a time if not a little confused."

"How did you remember?"

"Nazanin was running, running hard over uneven terrain. Her hand hurt from where she cut it." And Mac opened her palm to find the jagged scar that had finally healed. "He chased her. He called out and eventually she lost her footing and fell. Her head struck something...then there was blackness."

Blackness and light because at the other end of that dark mental tunnel was the beacon that brought her to the present: Harm.

He was her rock, the strong force that stood by though he was falling apart. The memories eventually came until all of the gaps were filled but one. She raised her head and stared at Farid, her eyes narrowing as Mac studied his profile. As attractive as he was, the man was simply not her type or the kind she would marry. "Why me? Why do this to me?"

"My uncle wouldn't have been as kind. Without me, you'd be dead by now, my love."

"Don't call me that...I am not your anything!" Mac stood, his constant attempt to claim her as his had finally hit a nerve. She rounded the sofa, an effort to keep space between them that was utterly pointless - there was nowhere to go. "I have a husband and he isn't you."

"For a time I had what he didn't." Farid said casually expecting another outburst that never came. He glanced up at Mac with an expression of both pain and love; like the times when Harm had stared at her the same way - the quiet admiration for the woman he wanted, the pain of losing her to another. "Like it or not, Nazanin, a part of you belongs to me and it always will."

"When you look at me that way you see someone...someone that was real. Who was Nazanin?"

Farid smiled sadly and his eyes glowed with even more adoration for the woman standing in front of him. Of all the lies, all of the mystery, this was the one he hid deep inside. "Nazanin was a girl I loved once. She was killed protesting against our government...I found her again. She is you."

He had to have her, had to try to put those pieces of his life back together. It was the woman's eyes that did him in, the amber flecks, the elegance. Allah put her in his path that night when he was drawn to pull an unknown woman out of a burning vehicle. "When the doctor said that you would no longer regain your memory, I helped ease you into your life...You were my wife as Nazanin should have been...My wife and it pained me to hurt you. The other women were for play, for my sick carnal pleasures...but you were special. Willful but special."

Mac gripped the back of the sofa, her fingernails biting into the fabric until she felt the pain. "I'm not your wife. I'm not special to you. I'm his and his alone."

"You are still my wife."

Part of her wanted to cross over to the armchair and shake the man until he understood. If she was willful, he was absolutely stubborn or manic, maybe a bit of both to believe she would ever be with him again. "I love him. Him not you, him. Please understand...You have to understand!"

"Why do you love him? What is so special about that infidel?"

She asked herself the same question so many times since they met. There were easier men to love, the kind that would have noticed the playful flirting was more than friendly. The kind that was willing to risk it all just to start a relationship. Or maybe the kind that would have stopped her each time she ran away. For a time Mac believed loving Harm wasn't meant to be and then, in the span of one night, he became everything she ever wanted.

Whatever snapped in him was like a floodgate that broke free and washed right over her. She longed to drown in it, to have it take her to places she only dreamt of. All the walls she used to hide her heart broke as well and she willingly gave herself to Harm, forever.

Forever.

Carefully she rounded the sofa and sat. Farid was patiently waiting for a response and all Mac could do was watch her hands as she wrung them together. Her thumb slid over her ring finger, missing the feel and weight of the wedding band that he had custom made for her - the one with roses.

"We haven't had the easiest time. For a while I believed he didn't feel the same...And then he did." She began quietly in a voice so soft he might have missed her words. "I love him because he's the other half of me. I love him because he's the moon to my stars. I love him because when we argue, he'll do anything to make it up. I love him becausehe's passionate but not overbearing. I love Harm because he knows every single one of my darkest flaws and still loves me. In his eyes, we are equals...He's the love of my life. That's why I love him and I always will."

Mac hadn't intended to cry and yet the tears washed down her cheeks making the amber in her eyes almost glow. The sadness in Farid's own eyes grew exponentially and in one swift movement he came to kneel before her. His hand took hers, gently squeezing while his thumb brushed away the tears. "Don't cry my love. I should be the one in tears. I was warned this day would come, I just did not want to believe.

He pressed a kiss to the corner of her mouth before Mac could move away and then stood. "I will speak to this man you call your husband."

"Farid, please." Mac hurried to his side, her hands taking his as she came to her knees before him. "I beg you...Don't hurt him. If you love me, if you enjoyed me even a little bit, please don't hurt him."

With a heavy sigh Farid nodded and then helped Mac stand. "I promise." And then he was gone.