Chapter 15 · Chapter 15

I did not rise. The heavy timber of the door to the private wing stood a handbreadth ajar, admitting the cold, gray breath of a Riyadh dawn, but my feet remained anchored to the wool rug beside the low divan. Outside, beyond the corridor, the courtyard would soon stir with the clatter of brass pots and the heavy footsteps of the elders assembling for the morning council, yet inside this room, the silence was absolute.

On the low brass-topped table between us lay the morocco-bound ledger he had pulled from the steel safe before midnight—the accounts and dated minutes of the Al-Qahtani family council from the season I turned twenty-five.

My fingers, cold and deliberately steady, turned the heavy vellum pages. Nawaf remained standing where he was, his shoulder resting lightly against the carved doorpost, motionless, his gaze fixed on the stone beyond rather than on me. He offered no commentary, no defense, leaving the dead ink to speak for itself.

I had spent five years convinced that his silence on the night of the failed alliance had been an act of calculated ambition, an acquiescence to my uncle’s maneuver that stripped my branch of the inheritance and sent me