Emerald's Pride

CHAPTER 5

PRESENT TIME...

Khalil Al-Farsi's POV

I looked at the woman in front of me with a grim smile on my face. I didn't know if I should feel happy that I had reminded her of how much she hated me in the first place.

Her words shouldn't have had any effect on me by now. For goodness' sake, it's been eight years since everything between us went straight to hell.

My mouth twisted with distaste. Looking at her now, I have realized that I may not have come as far as I thought. Her words still affect me.

I crossed my arms in the middle of my chest and looked at her straight in her expressive green eyes. "Why don't we have it out in the open, once and for all, Emerald?" I invited her to speak freely. "What went wrong with us?"

She scoffed rudely in my direction. "You have the nerve to ask me that, Al-Farsi? Seriously? You know damn well what went wrong. Don't play dumb."

I gritted my teeth together when years-old anger started to resurface from my strongbox. "Care to enlighten me, then? Because I only remember the anger I felt when you introduced me to your boyfriend two days after you stood me up for our second date, the following day after our trip to Coney Island."

She shrugged nonchalantly, silently telling me that it was not a big deal. Damn her for making me feel the same pain I had felt that day as if it only happened yesterday. "I don't have to explain anything to you. Dustin was my long-time suitor at that time, and I finally agreed to be his girlfriend. What's wrong with that?"

"What's wrong?" I asked in a dangerously soft voice. I could feel the fury inside me like a beast that was trapped inside my body, remembering that fateful day I waited for her outside her prep school to demand an explanation as to why she didn't show up for our date, when she came out of the school gate with her hand wrapped around some guy's arm. "How can you do that to me?"

"What did I do to you?" she snorted, rolling her pretty green eyes to me. A normal person in this country would never do that to me if he or she was afraid to be thrown inside a prison cell for being disrespectful to the king of this land.

But this woman is different.

She had so much effect on me that I would always overlook her whenever she insulted me on any occasion.

"You led me to believe that there was something special going on between us," I spat at her angrily. "How could you introduce that weakling to me as your boyfriend?"

She glared at me vehemently, her eyes snapping with fire. "I will throw your words back in your face, Your Highness. How could you let me believe there was something special between us when you didn't feel the same?"

"What are you talking about?"

"I was there," she answered, her eyes filled with hatred and anger. "I went to the Waldorf Astoria that Sunday morning to surprise you with breakfast..." Her face held a forbidding smile, probably remembering that day. "...but it was me who had the surprised of a lifetime when I saw you kissing a girl outside the hotel."

A frown marked my eyebrow as I tried to remember that day. I bit back a filthy curse when I suddenly recalled that scene. "Did you see that?"

"Yes," she smiled coldly in my direction, the kind of smile that gave her the reputation of the 'wintry maiden' in the fashion industry. The untouchable heiress of the St. Clair family.

"Let me explain that—"

She threw a wintry look at me. "Do you think that I need an explanation about it? Well, I don't. So, save your breath. I don't want to hear it."