Sidney Sheldon - Sidney Sheldon’s Angel of the Dark - A gripping thriller full of suspense

The newlyweds lived close to the city, in the Basta family palace at the foot of the Atlas Mountains, and Miriam was able to visit her uncle Sulaiman’s house often. On these visits, she would sometimes see the hollow-eyed Jibril staring at her from across a room, pain etched on his face like a mask. At these times she felt pity and great sorrow. But the emotions were for Jibril, not for herself. Mahmoud was a kind husband, loving, indulgent and decent. When Miriam gave him a son at the end of their first year of marriage, he wept for joy. Over the next five years, she gave him three more boys and a girl, Leila. Over time, Miriam’s children came to fill the void that had been left by her doomed love for Jibril. Watching them play while their doting father looked on, she sometimes felt guilty that she was so happy, while Jibril, she knew, remained broken and lost. She had heard through friends that he drank heavily, and spent his days in the hookah bars and whorehouses of the souk, squandering all the money her uncle had given him.

The last time Miriam saw Jibril was at her husband’s funeral. Mahmoud, who had never reined in his fondness for baklava and sweet Moroccan wine, died of a heart attack at the age of sixty-two. Miriam was forty, with a fan of fine lines around her eyes and a comfortable layer of fat around her hips, but she was still a beautiful woman. Jibril, on the other hand, had aged terribly. Shrunken and stooped, with the broken veins and yellow eyes of a heavy drinker, he looked twenty years older than he was, and was as sad and embittered as Mahmoud had been happy and generous-spirited.

He staggered over to Miriam, who was standing with her eldest son, Rafik. She realized immediately that he was drunk.

“So,” Jibril slurred, “the old bashtard’s gone at lasht, is he? When can I come to you, Miriam? Tell me. When?”

Miriam blushed scarlet. She had never felt such shame. How could he do this? To me, and to himself? Today of all days.

Rafik stepped forward. “My mother is grieving. We all are. You need to leave.”

Jibril snarled. “Get out of my way!”

“You’re drunk. Nobody wants you here.”

“Your mother wants me. Your mother loves me. She’s always loved me. Tell him, Miriam.”

Miriam turned to him and said sadly, “Today I have buried two of my loves. My husband. And the boy you once were. Good-bye, Jibril.”

THAT NIGHT, JIBRIL HANGED HIMSELF FROM a tree in the Menara Gardens. He left a one-word note:

Betrayed.

THE YOUNG GIRL PUT THE BOOK down, tears welling in her eyes. She had read the story hundreds of times before, but she never grew tired of it and it never failed to move her. Sure, she lived in 1983, not 1892; and she was reading the book in a grim, freezing-cold children’s home in New York City, not some Moroccan palace. But Miriam and Jibril’s tragic love still spoke to her across the ages.

The girl knew what it felt like to be powerless. To be abandoned by one’s mother. To be treated like an object by men, a prize to be won. To be shoved through life like a lamb to the slaughter, with no say whatsoever in her own destiny.

“Are you okay, Sofia?”

The boy put a protective, brotherly arm around her. He was the only one she’d told about the book, the only one who understood her. The other kids in the home didn’t understand. They mocked her and her old, dog-eared love story. But he didn’t.

“They’re jealous,” he told her. “Because you have a family history and they don’t. You have royal blood in your veins, Sofia. That’s what makes you different. Special. They hate you for that.”

It was true. Sofia identified with Miriam’s story on another level, too. A blood level. Miriam was Sofia’s great-grandmother. Somewhere inside of her, Miriam’s genes lived on. The book Sofia held in her hands, her most prized possession, was not some fairy tale. It was true. It was her history.

“I’m fine,” she told the boy, hugging him back as she pulled the thin rayon blanket up over both of them. Even here, pressed against the radiator in the recreation room, it was bitterly cold.

I am not nobody, she told herself, breathing in the warmth of her friend’s body. I am from a noble family with a romantic, tragic history. I am Sofia Basta.

One day, far away from here, I will fulfill my destiny.

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