Fahad turned and walked on. The mansion's library occupied the entire western wing of the ground floor —
A long, high-ceilinged hall lined with shelves that climbed nearly to the cornice.
He had spent hours of his childhood in this room, though not by choice. Mahim had insisted that all his sons learn to read widely before they learned to specialize.
Fahad reached the double doors at the end of the corridor. They stood open just as Anjali had said.
The library was quiet in a way that most rooms were not.
Late-morning light poured in through a row of arched windows along the far wall, falling in broad golden sheets across the long reading tables.
The air smelled of old paper and very faintly, fresh jasmine, drifting in from somewhere outside. And there, in the far corner of the room, sat Maya.
She had chosen the smallest reading nook in the entire hall — A armchair tucked into an alcove between two tall shelves, half-shaded by the shelf's overhang.
She was curled into it with her knees drawn up slightly, a book resting open against her lap, her head bent over the pages.
She wore the same simple dark clothing as the night before.
Her hair was still secured with the plain silver pin. A small stack of books sat on the floor beside her chair — five or six volumes, all apparently pulled from different sections.
A world history. A book on mathematical theory. A thin collection of poetry. A battered atlas.
Fahad stood at the threshold for a moment —longer than he intended. He had grown up in a house full of people. He knew what a person looked like when they were performing.
Faha on stage, Fahim at a conference, his father at a military review. He had learned long ago to read the difference between someone who was present and someone who was pretending to be present.
The girl in the alcove was neither.
She was simply there, entirely, completely there like she had nowhere else she could possibly be.
He crossed the room.
His footsteps made almost no sound on the thick carpet but she looked up before he was within ten feet of her. She had heard him or sensed him — the way an animal senses a shift in the wind.
Her dark eyes lifted from the page and settled on him. Fahad stopped beside the small side table next to her chair. He did not sit.
Maya closed her book gently, keeping her finger between the pages to hold her place. "Do you need something, Mr. Fahad ?"
Fahad considered how to begin, he had rehearsed nothing, which was unlike him.
He decided on directness. "Father wants you to go out with me today."
"Go out."
"Yes. Leave the estate. Spend the afternoon somewhere other than this house."
Inside her mind, something stirred.
"Oh, Oh. Oh, Oh, this is going to be fun." Yama's voice uncoiled through her thoughts. The voice of a cat that had just spotted a bird with a broken wing.
"He's the eldest, isn't he? The businessman, the one who looks like he was carved out of ice and then told not to smile.
Look at him. He's standing there like he's about to hand you a contract. 'Father wants you to go out with me today.'"
Yama mimicked his flat tone perfectly. "Not even a 'please.' Not even a 'how are you.' Just orders."
Maya's gaze flickered — barely perceptible but she did not allow it to reach her face.
"Look at him, Six feet tall, gray eyes, a jaw that looks like it was designed by someone with a grudge. Specifically Look at his throat.
Do you see how the light hits it? Right there — There's a vein there. A little one. You can see it pulse if you watch long enough."
Maya's finger, resting against the spine of her book, did not twitch.
"I've been watching it since he walked in," Yama continued, her tone almost dreamy.
"It's been beating the whole time. Steady.
It wouldn't take much, you know. A letter opener. A pen. The corner of that bookshelf behind you if you angled it just right.
It would be quick. Almost polite. Hmm ... I'd want to watch, though," Yama added thoughtfully.
"I'd want to see the moment he realizes .... That little flicker behind the eyes. That's the best part, always.
Or wait. Even better. You could use one of those heavy atlas volumes on his desk. There's a book on maritime law up on the third shelf that must weigh eight kilograms.
Dropped from a height, it would —"
Maya said nothing.
Yama puffed her face, "You're not even listening to me, That's rude."
"I'm listening."
"You're tolerating. There's a difference."
Fahad was still waiting. "Father wants you to go out with me today," he repeated as if he thought she might not have heard him the first time.
"He repeated himself, Nervous men repeat themselves. Or men who are used to being confident. Which do you think he is?"
"Both."
"Mmm...I like the first option better. It's more fun."
Maya's eyes did not leave Fahad's face.
"You could say no, He'd leave. And then tonight, when everyone's asleep, you and I could go for a walk."
"No."
"Just a walk. Just to see the gardens. The east wing has a rose garden, doesn't it? Roses are lovely. Roses are red. You know what else is red?"
"Yama."
"I'm just asking."
"You're not asking. You're suggesting."
"Same thing."
"It's not."
"Fine. I'm suggesting. Gently. Politely. In a way that respects your autonomy as a person."
Fahad spoke again. "Do I have to repeat myself a third time?"
Maya's eyes met his. "Do I have to go?"
"Yes, you do."
"He sounds like a judge," Yama murmured. "No wonder everyone in this family walks around him like he's made of glass. They're afraid of him."
"Yama, Stop."
"I'm just talking."
"Stop talking."
"You never let me have any fun."
Maya lowered her eyes briefly. Then she nodded. "All right."
"Oh, come on," Yama groaned. "You could have at least made him work for it. Made him beg. You're so boring."
Maya ignored her.
Fahad blinked. He had clearly expected resistance — an argument, a negotiation, something. Not this immediate compliance.
He opened his mouth, then closed it.
"He's surprised, you keep doing that to him. It's almost entertaining."
"I'm not doing it on purpose."
"That's what makes it funny."
Fahad collected himself. "Four o'clock."
Maya nodded once. "All right."
"Four o'clock," Yama repeated, drawing the words out. "That gives me what four hours to think of all the ways this afternoon could go wrong."
"It won't go wrong."
"It will absolutely go wrong. You're going to sit in that car. And by the time you get back, he'll have decided you're either dangerous or normal."
"I don't care what he decides."
"You should. He's your brother."
"He's a stranger."
"He's a stranger who shares your blood. That makes him worse than a stranger. That makes him a liability."
Maya's hand, resting on the closed book, tightened almost imperceptibly.
"There it is," Yama said playfully. "That's the first real reaction I've gotten out of you all day. I'll take it."
"Leave me alone."
"Okayyy , you are so boring. "
Maya returned her eyes to her book.
Fahad remained where he was for a moment longer. "Four o'clock, then."
She did not look up. "Okay. Mr. Fahad. "
Fahad turned and walked back toward the doors. He did not look over his shoulder.
But as he stepped out of the library and into the long corridor, he found himself breathing as if he had just stepped out of very cold water.
He looked down at his own hands. They were steady but something behind his ribs was not.
He stood there for a moment then he adjusted his cuff and resumed walking.
[FOUR O'CLOCK]
The light outside had softened into the amber gold of late afternoon, spilling across the marble corridors in long sheets.
The quiet hum of a household that functioned like a well-oiled machine.
Fahad stood before the tall mirror in his room, adjusting the cuffs of his shirt for the third time in as many minutes. He had changed out of the charcoal suit from this morning —
He had chosen something simpler. A dark navy shirt with the top button undone, sleeves rolled neatly to the forearm. Dark trousers. No tie. No jacket.
It was the closest thing to "casual" he owned, and even that felt like a costume. He looked at himself for a moment longer than necessary. Then he turned away.
Whatever she wants — she gets.
The words had been sitting in his chest all afternoon like a splinter he couldn't reach.
He had spent the hours since the reading room doing what he always did — burying himself in work. Spreadsheets. Quarterly projections.
A conference call with the Singapore branch that had run twenty minutes longer than scheduled. He had answered every question, made every decision.
And through all of it — his father's voice had hummed in the back of his mind like a second heartbeat.
She obeys.
Fahad didn't like that word. He didn't like it at all. He left his room and walked down the corridor. The hallway was quiet — the maids had finished their rounds and the family had scattered to their own corners of the estate.
He passed Fahim's room, the door firmly closed. Fahan's door stood ajar and from inside came the faint clink of metal against metal.
Faha's room was silent.
Fahish's was silent in a different way, the silence of someone who was awake but deep inside his own head. He stopped outside Maya's door.
For a moment — just a moment — he simply stood there.
His hand hovered near the polished wood, not quite touching it. This was, he realized, the first time he had ever stood outside this door. It was his sister's room. His sister.
The word still felt foreign in his mouth, like a language he had learned but never spoken.
KNOCK. KNOCK. KNOCK. "Ready?"
A pause. Then, from the other side of the door,
"Yes. I'm ready."
The door opened. Maya stood in the doorway in a simple, long-sleeved dress. Almost black, falling to her calves. It was modest.
Plain. The kind of thing a librarian might wear or a student who had no interest in being looked at. Her hair was pinned back with that silver clip, a few dark strands escaping to frame her face.
Her glasses sat perfectly on her nose. And her hands — both of them were covered. Thin and fitted gloves covering her hands entirely from wrist to fingertip.
She had worn them all day, he realized. He had noticed it last night, in the reception hall but had not thought to question it.
Now, standing close to her for the first time, the sight of them struck him as deeply, profoundly wrong. It was late spring.
The weather was warm. And this girl was wearing gloves as though they were a second skin. "Let's go," he said.
Maya nodded once. She stepped out of the room and closed the door softly behind her.
They walked through the mansion, the servants they passed, bowed and Maya acknowledged each one with the same small polite nod she gave to everyone.
Fahad noticed it.
She treated the servants exactly as she treated her own family — with the same careful, distant courtesy. It was almost admirable. It was almost unsettling.
The main doors opened before them.
The evening air rushed in — warm, scented with jasmine and cut grass and the faint sweetness of the rose garden somewhere behind the house.
The sky above the estate had turned the color of pale honey, the sun beginning its slow descent toward the treeline.
A black sedan waited at the bottom of the marble steps. Not the long luxury car from last night — something smaller, sleeker, more practical.
Fahad's own car, kept for the days he preferred to drive himself. A driver stood beside it but Fahad raised a hand as he approached. "I'll drive."
The driver bowed and stepped away.
Fahad opened the passenger door himself. He did wait, one hand resting lightly on the edge of the door, until she was settled inside. Then he closed it and walked around to the driver's side.
The car pulled away from the mansion, down the long white-stone driveway, between the rows of ancient trees and out through the wrought-iron gates that bore the words TEARS OF PEARL.
Maya sat with her hands folded neatly in her lap, her gaze turned toward the window. The estate rolled past her.
Fahad kept both hands on the wheel and both eyes on the road. After nearly ten minutes of silence — the car slowed.
Then, pulled smoothly into an empty space near the entrance of the mall and came to a quiet stop. The soft hum died.
Maya's gaze was fully turned toward the window, fixed on the glass-fronted building beyond —
The long sprawl of lights , the wide stone steps, the families and teenagers and couples moving in and out of the automatic doors.
Fahad did not look at her, he found himself hesitating — which was, for him an unusual sensation.
He cleared his throat quietly. "We're here."
Maya did not turn. She kept looking at the mall. Then in a voice as calm as still water, she spoke.
"Mrs. Sunayana said you were going to take me to the company."
The words hung in the air between them, precise and utterly without accusation - which somehow made them worse.
Fahad's hand still resting on the gearshift, went very still. For a fraction of a second, something crossed his face.
It was something rarer and more subtle,the flicker of a man who had been caught in a lie so simple, so transparent that he had not even bothered to disguise it properly.
He recovered almost instantly. Almost. "The company. Yes. Well. There was a change of plans."
Maya said nothing. She simply waited.
Fahad's fingers tightened once around the gearshift, then relaxed. He didn't look at her.
"Mother said to buy you some clothes."
The silence that followed was short but complete. Then —
Oh, oh this is beautiful.
Yama's voice uncoiled through Maya's thoughts like smoke curling slowly from a candle. Lazy. Delighted.
Look at him. Look at his face. He is actually lying. A man who runs an entire corporate empire, who makes grown men sweat in boardrooms —
And now he cannot tell a convincing lie to a fifteen-year-old girl.
He was going to take you to his office, that was the plan and then he looked at you in that plain black dress and he changed his mind. Why?
Maya. Maya. Do you understand how rare this is? A man like him, cold. And he cracked in ten minutes without you saying a single word.
What a tragedy. What a beautiful tragedy.
Maya did not even blink. She turned her head slowly and looked at her brother for the first time since they had left the estate.
Fahad was still staring straight ahead through the windshield. His profile was sharp and composed, his gray eyes fixed on the mall's glass doors.
His jaw set in that same unreadable way it had been set all day. He looked like a man who had just delivered a report he knew no one would believe.
"You're lying," Maya said.
Fahad's head turned. "I beg your pardon?"
"You're lying," she repeated, without heat.
The silence followed.
"...What makes you say that?"
"Because you hesitated when you said 'the company.'" Maya's voice was unhurried as though she were explaining something very simple,
"And because you've been gripping the wheel for the last ten minutes like you were afraid the car might turn around on its own."
Fahad blinked, once. "That's — that's a very strange thing to notice."
"Yes. Thank you."
"I didn't mean it as a compliment."
"I know. Mr. Fahad. "
Fahad stared at her. Then, unexpectedly the corner of his mouth twitched — just barely.
A flicker of something that might have been —irritation and might have been amusement and was most likely both. "You're very direct."
"People keep telling me that."
"It's not usually a quality people appreciate."
"I know."
"Then why do you do it?"
Maya considered the question. "Because I don't have time for anything else."
Fahad turned away, facing the windshield.
Somewhere in the back of Maya's mind, Yama let out a slow, satisfied laugh.
There it is. There it is. You see? He can't handle it. He can't handle you. He doesn't know what to do with a person who doesn't flatter him.
He's been surrounded his whole life by people who want things from him. And you're the first person in a long time who has wanted nothing
at all.
And it's driving him insane.
Maya simply turned her head back toward the window and looked out at the mall again. "Alright, we're here. We might as well go in."
Maya reached for the handle of her own door — but before she could pull it, the passenger door opened from the outside.
Fahad was standing there, one hand resting on the edge of the door, waiting. He had walked around the car without a word.
Maya looked up at him for a moment. Then, she stepped out. He closed the door behind her with a soft, deliberate click.
The evening air was warm and scented with jasmine and something faintly sweet from the mall's entrance. Popcorn maybe or cinnamon.
The last of the daylight had begun to fade and the mall's lights had come on fully, spilling across the pavement in warm golden rectangles.
"Come on," Fahad said.
They walked toward the mall together — Fahad a half-step ahead, his strides long and unhurried, his shoulders squared, his gaze fixed straight ahead.
Maya followed slightly behind and to his left, her footsteps soundless on the pavement, her dark eyes already moving across the entrance — the doors, the people.
The automatic doors slid open with a soft hiss.
Warm, air-conditioned air rushed out to meet them, carrying the layered scents of a hundred different stores.
Coffee and perfume and baked bread and something distant and floral.
The moment Fahad stepped through the doors —A group of teenagers near the fountain — all of them filming something on a phone — froze mid-laugh. The girl holding the phone lowered it slowly, her mouth still half-open.
One of the boys nudged another. The other turned. And then all five of them were staring.
A woman in a cream coat, walking past with two shopping bags, slowed to a halt near a jewelry store. She looked at Fahad. Then looked again.
Two teenage boys on the second-floor walkway leaned over the railing to get a better look. One of them whispered something to the other.
Even the security guard near the entrance — a middle-aged man with a bored expression and a radio clipped to his belt — straightened slightly.
It was, Maya realized, that Fahad was handsome. He was handsome — there was no denying that.
The gray eyes that seemed to see everything and reveal nothing, the coiled authority in the way he moved. But It was the presence of him.
The way he seemed, somehow, to occupy more space than his body should have allowed.
Maya walked beside him, a half-step behind.
Watching the way people moved aside without being asked, clearing a path through the crowd as though Fahad were a current and they were nothing more than water.
Look at them. Yama's voice was almost purring.
They can't help it. They see him and their brains stop working. Every single one of them.
And he doesn't even notice. That's the best part.
It means he's not just beautiful. He's powerful. And the two together —
That's the kind of thing that makes them forget who they are and what they were doing and where they were going.
Maya's expression did not change. She kept her eyes forward, her hands folded loosely at her sides, her footsteps soundless beside Fahad's.
Fahad stopped near the center of the atrium, beside the fountain. He turned to look at her.