Chapter 38 · Chapter 38

The quiet that followed my words did not last. It cracked beneath the weight of three dozen men who had spent weeks dividing an estate that was not theirs to carve.

Whispers surged along the perimeter of the diwan, rising into sharp, overlapping murmurs that frayed the room’s rigid composure. A younger cousin from the secondary branch muttered something dismissive about the foolishness of accepting an Al-Khathlan woman’s appraisal over formal banking closures.

Across the carpets, an elder from the treasury council leaned hard into his armrest, shaking his head until his ghutra shifted, his voice rising in cold contention against Abu Fahad. They argued over ledgers, over signatures presumed dead, over the sheer impossibility that the northern wing had yielded anything other than a broken recluse.

I did not retreat further. I stood where the light from the tall arched windows fell across the black crepe of my abaya, my tarha pinned securely, my hands resting motionless over the fold of my sleeves. Let them dispute.