And then, unbidden, his voice echoed in my head.
The trust fund. She can’t find out. Once I turned 18, Spencer was turning 18 in 3 months.
I didn’t know anything about a trust fund. My mother never talked about my father’s finances, just that we were comfortable and that she worked hard to keep us that way. But Spencer knew something. He’d been hiding something.
And now he’d left me stranded in Dubai 3 weeks before our father’s estate would be accessible to him. This wasn’t a prank. This wasn’t sibling rivalry gone wrong. This was something bigger. And I was starting to realize exactly how much danger I was in.
Eventually, security didn’t have more questions for me, so they released me back into the terminal with vague instructions to wait near the main concourse while they contacted the embassy.
I wandered dazed until I found a corner near a cafe and slid down to sit on the cold marble floor. The tears came then, hot and fast. I tried to muffle them with my hands, tried not to make a scene, but I couldn’t stop.
I watch families walk by. Kids holding their parents’ hands, laughing, safe. A little girl about 5 years old dropped her stuffed bear and her father immediately scooped it up and handed it back to her, kissing the top of her head. Such a small gesture, such a normal gesture. I couldn’t remember the last time my mother had touched me with that kind of tenderness.
Maybe Spencer was right. Maybe I was unlovable. Maybe I was just a burden, a mistake, someone the family would be better off without.
My stomach growled loudly, cutting through my self-pity. I hadn’t eaten in at least 8 hours. The last thing I’d had was a stale airplane croissant somewhere over Europe, and that felt like a lifetime ago.
I looked around at the gleaming stores, Gucci, Prada, Chanel. The airport was dripping with luxury and I was sitting on the floor with exactly 0 and0. The irony was so sharp it almost made me laugh. Almost.
I thought about what I would do if this were a movie. In a movie, the scrappy heroine would find a clever way out. She’d make friends with a security guard or discover a secret talent or at least have some basic survival skills to fall back on.
My survival skills consisted of making microwave ramen and occasionally remembering to do my laundry.
I was doomed.
The minutes ticked by. I pressed my back against the cold wall and tried to disappear. I’d spent my whole life trying to be invisible in my own family. Now I wished I could be visible just once to someone who actually cared.
And then just when I thought I’d hit absolute rock bottom, a shadow fell over me.
I looked up.
A tall man stood there. maybe mid-50s, dressed in an elegant, traditional white thatly trimmed gray beard and kind dark eyes. He looked like someone important, someone who probably owned several of those fancy stores I couldn’t afford to look at, but he wasn’t looking at me with judgment or pity. He was looking at me with genuine concern.
Young lady, he said, his English accented but clear. You look like someone who needs help, and I believe I know exactly how to give it.
Every instinct in my body screamed danger. Stranger, foreign country, alone. This was exactly the situation my mother had warned me about my entire life. Don’t talk to strangers. Don’t trust anyone you don’t know. The world is full of people who want to hurt you.
But the thing is, my mother had just left me in an airport, so her advice didn’t feel particularly reliable at the moment.
The man didn’t approach too close. He sat down on a bench nearby, leaving a respectful distance between us. Not too far, not too close. Like he understood that I was scared and wanted to give me space.
My name is Khaled Al-Rashid, he said calmly. I work here at the airport. I am the director of guest relations.
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