Chapter 20 · Chapter 20

Majed did not turn to face the door again once those footsteps dissolved into the vast emptiness of the northern estate. He remained still, listening with the innate precision of a man who measured every perimeter by the silence it kept. The deadbolt remained thrown, heavy and uncompromising, dividing the sanctuary of this locked wing from the calculating whispers of the outer majlis.

He walked toward the recessed alcove behind the cedar desk, where the carved plasterwork concealed a flush steel panel embedded directly into the load-bearing stone of the chamber wall.

The safe was not a modern digital box bought from an importer; it was built during the founding era of the estate, updated only with a mechanized rotary lock and a brass cipher ring that had held the Al-Rashid titles, deeds, and deeds of sale long before the glass towers rose along King Fahd Road.

"They imagine that the trace belongs to whatever ledger is read aloud before the elders," Majed said, his voice dropping into that quiet, gravel-edged register that demanded no elevation to command obedience.