“What does that one say?”

Rayan hesitated.

“Al-Qasira.”

Silence.

Chloe almost laughed.

“That makes no sense.”

Al-Qasira was Rayan’s homeland.

Thousands of miles away.

“My mother has never even been there.”

Rayan did not answer.

Because thirty years earlier, a young American medical volunteer named Margaret Bennett had been in Al-Qasira.

He knew that name.

He had known it since he was nine years old.

And until that moment, he had believed she was dead.

The aircraft landed twenty-six minutes later.

Rayan’s motorcade waited on the runway.

Chloe intended to take a taxi.

Rayan refused.

“I can get there myself.”

“You have ninety-four minutes before they reassign the donor organ.”

“You’re very controlling.”

“I’ve heard that.”

“I don’t like being ordered around.”

“I’ve heard that less.”

Despite everything, she almost smiled.

They entered the same armored car.

Faris sat in front.

Chloe looked at Rayan.

“You recognized my mother’s name.”

It wasn’t a question.

Rayan watched the city lights moving across the tinted windows.

“Yes.”

“How?”

He remained silent.

“Rayan.”

It was the first time she had called him that.

No title.

No Sheikh.

Just his name.

He looked at her.

“When I was nine, my family traveled through the northern province of Al-Qasira.”

He paused.

“There was an explosion.”

Chloe listened.

“My mother was killed.”

“I’m sorry.”

“My father was severely injured. I was trapped inside the vehicle.”

His jaw tightened.

“A foreign nurse pulled me out.”

Chloe’s breathing slowed.

“She stayed with me for two days while armed fighting blocked the road. I had internal bleeding. Fever. She kept me alive until soldiers reached us.”

“My mother?”

“Her name was Margaret Bennett.”

Chloe stared at him.

“No.”

“She wore a silver necklace shaped like a small crescent moon.”

Chloe’s hand rose unconsciously toward her own throat.

She wore the same necklace.

Rayan saw it.

Neither spoke.

“My mother gave this to me when I turned eighteen,” Chloe whispered.

Rayan’s face changed.

“For thirty years, I thought Margaret Bennett died in the province three weeks later.”

“She never told me.”

“Perhaps she had reasons.”

The car stopped outside Saint Catherine’s.

The transplant director was waiting.

So were lawyers.

Hospital executives.

Security personnel.

And a gray-haired man Rayan had not expected to see.

His uncle.

Sheikh Omar Al-Zahir.

Omar smiled.

“Rayan.”

Rayan stopped walking.

“What are you doing here?”

“I heard there was trouble involving one of our hospitals.”

Chloe looked between them.

Rayan’s voice became ice.

“I didn’t call you.”

“No.”

Omar smiled.

“Someone else did.”

For the first time all evening, Rayan looked genuinely disturbed.

They rushed upstairs.

Margaret Bennett lay behind glass in intensive care.

She was sixty-three.

Her skin was pale.

Oxygen ran beneath her nose.