FLUENT IN FORBIDDEN — CHAPTER EIGHT

"The clock has struck three, the coffee is cold, and the shadows are beginning to speak. Welcome back to the desk of The Night Writer, where the stories are brewed in the dark."

The upper corridor was a vacuum of silence, a sharp contrast to the muffled bass of the music vibrating through the floorboards downstairs. "The safe is behind the Caravaggio," Julian whispered. He was sweating, his breath coming in short, jagged hitches. He looked less like a thief and more like a man walking toward his own execution.

"Inflection, Julian," I murmured, my voice a calm anchor in the dark. "If your pulse is racing this hard, your hands will shake. If your hands shake, we fail. You are not a thief tonight. You are just a son taking back what was stolen from him." He nodded, swallowing hard. We reached the Boss’s study. I stepped to the door, my ears tuned to the frequency of the house. I knew the rhythm of the guards’ footsteps; I knew the delay in the security camera’s rotation. I was the one who cleaned the lenses, after all. "Three minutes," I said. "Go." Julian swung the heavy painting aside. The safe was a biometrically locked beast, but Julian had been watching his brother’s patterns for weeks. He pressed a thumb—a silicone mold we’d spent three hours perfecting in the laundry room—to the scanner. Click. The door swung heavy and silent. Inside weren't just gold bars or jewels. It was a graveyard of paper.

"Get the ledgers," I commanded, keeping my eyes on the hallway. "And the blue folder. That’s the Mansour agreement." Julian scrambled, his fingers flying through the files.

"I found it. And...Mikael." He pulled out a weathered, dark red book. My heart did a slow, painful roll in my chest. "Your passport." He handed it to me. For a moment, the weight of it—the sheer physical proof of my existence—nearly broke my composure. I tucked it into my vest, the edge of the leather pressing against my ribs like a promise.

"We have to go," I whispered. "Now." We were halfway to the door when the light in the hallway shifted. A shadow stretched across the threshold—long, wide, and familiar. "You always did have a fascination with things that didn't belong to you, Julian." The Boss stood in the doorway. He wasn't holding a gun. He was holding something much worse: a remote detonator for the house’s silent alarm and a look of profound, cold disappointment.

"And you," the Boss said, his gaze turning to me. "The polyglot. I should have known that a man who understands every language would eventually learn the language of treason."

Julian stepped in front of me, the ledgers clutched to his chest. "It isn't treason if the King is a murderer, Elias. I know about the brakes. I know about Layla." Elias stepped into the room, the door clicking shut behind him.

"Knowledge is a heavy burden, little brother. It’s a shame you won’t have to carry it for very long." He looked at me, a cruel smile touching his lips. "Mr. International, was he worth it? Was a few nights of playing hero worth the price of never leaving this city alive?"

I didn't blink. I reached into my pocket, but I didn't pull out a weapon. I pulled out my phone. "I didn't just take the ledgers, sir," I said, my voice dropping into that cold, precise 'Professor' tone. "While Julian was opening the safe, I was uploading the contents of your private server to an offshore cloud. If my heart rate stops, or if I don't check in every sixty minutes, the Ministry, Interpol, and Mansour’s rivals get a very interesting reading list." The Boss’s smile faltered. The zero-sum game had just changed.

"Daylight is coming to claim the quiet, but these words stay with you. If you enjoyed this journey into the midnight hours, leave a heart or a tip to keep the candles burning. Sleep well—if you can. — The Night Writer."