ROYAL-TEA [ON HOLD]

15.

"Where did she go?"

The King was furious. How could the Royal Family disobey him? When he heard that Sofia had somehow escaped, he knew his daughter had a hand in it. She was pulling all the strings to stay hidden and it didn't please him.

"Habibi," his wife said quietly, "she will come when she is ready to. Until then, we just have to hope she is safe..."

"NO!" He roared, and slammed his palm against his table. "HOW STUPID COULD YOUR DAUGHTER BE?! DOES SHE KNOW WHAT SHE HAS EXPOSED HERSELF TO?!"

His wife was unaffected by his angry display. She patiently waited for it to dissipate before she convinced him to put someone on the case of Anthony. "He is a huge spender. I'm sure there's a money trail he has left behind."

Smiling, he embraced his wife and bestowed a kiss on her cheek. "Sometimes I forget how good you are at critical thinking. You see details I never can."

With that bit of encouragement, the Queen immediately gave the go ahead to have Anthony's financial records analysed.

*&*&*&*&

The Arabian King called up his contact in the Emirates Palace to know about his dear Sofia. He missed her so much, and anytime he thought of her, he remembered his mother, and the woman he had loved before Zamzam, his current wife.

"How is she?" He asked down the line.

"So far, she's been okay."

"Been?" His Highness asked. "She's not doing okay anymore?"

"Well, Your Highness... she... she... she ran away."

"WHAT?!"

"They found her, but she fell off the radar..."

"HAVE YOU DONE ANYTHING ABOUT IT?!" He screamed into the phone. "I WANT HER FOUND! DO YOU HEAR ME?! FIND HER! NOW!"

"Yes Your Highness," the person at the other end said. "We shall employ all the resources at our disposal for that."

"DO EVERYTHING YOU CAN! SOFIA HAS TO BE FOUND AT ALL COSTS! DO YOU HEAR ME?! FIND HER!"

With that, the King slammed the phone on his desk so hard, the glass on it almost cracked. He sighed before leaning back against his chair. His mind wandered to his precious daughter, and he sobbed involuntarily.

She had suffered too much, and she wasn't even an adult. She was only fifteen years old yet she had lived the life of a thirty year old. He wished his lovely Maryam had never died. He wished she was still alive. Though she wasn't royalty, she had been a well read Turkish woman. They met when she was studying for her doctorate degree and they had fallen in love almost immediately. She was twenty seven then, and was very bright. She had a bright future ahead of her, and when they married albeit hastily because they wanted to keep it halal, her prospects seemed to get even brighter.

His mother adored his wife, but not everyone shared these sentiments. After two years of a marriage plagued by his father's insistence that he marry a second wife who would be a nobleblood, he finally gave in.

Princess Zamzam did not like Maryam, and she planned how to get rid of her. It wasn't long before her plans went into motion. She managed to get The Sheikh so angry at Maryam that she left him. While in Ankara, she found out she was pregnant, and she wrote a letter to him, but he never got it.

Zamzam went ahead to have his children, and he was pleased to become a father. Unknown to him, Maryam brought their daughter into the world and moved to the Swiss Alps to her parents' house.

That was how they completely lost contact.

How, then, did Sofia end up begging on the streets of Istanbul?