Love's Slave (manxman)

Chapter 4

Chapter 4

(The hidden file)

Kamal...

"Well, that was interesting." Farooq said as he closed grandfather's office door behind the departing solicitors and walked back across the polished marble floor and took a seat opposite the old man's ornate mahogany desk.

I swung myself from side to side in the plush chair I was sitting in behind the desk as I looked over the multiple files spread across its surface. The records contained of everything from the receipts for all his household possessions to the financial reports of all his business holdings. The man even had records for each and every employee in his household and his company.

Everything I needed was right there within reach and for that I was eternally grateful. It's just a matter now of cataloging everything before putting them up for sale, and sorting out the employees to have them placed in another household or retire them with a modest lump sum of money. It was going to be Hamid's job to sort out the employees on the business side of things.

There was a discreet knock on the outer office door and Farooq raised a questioning brow at me before calling out to whoever it was to enter. Our grandfather's house man bowed himself into the room and a frown marred my features. The man had been acting weird all day. He was jumpy and kept fidgeting every time we discussed going through the house room by room within the next few days. Farooq kept his penetrating gaze on the bowed head waiting for the man to state his business.

The servant asked with false meekness how much longer we intended to stay in the house and should he prepare the evening meal for us? Farooq got up and stood up to his full height and towered over the sniveling little fucker. I couldn't help the smile that creased my lips because although the trifling simpering man covered his audacity with offering us a meal. He still had the nerve to question us like we weren't now the sole owners of this mausoleum and everything and everyone in it. I watched the crown prince of our family prepare to put the man in his place.

"How dare you question us, if you need to know something we will tell you. If we need food we will tell you that as well. Neither I or my brother will tolerate any disrespect from the staff in this house. We are fully aware of our grandfather's feelings towards us, and I find it ironic that the one brother he abhorred the most is the only one who can tolerate salvaging this God forsaken estate and all of you in it. Now get out and don't return unless we call you and no, we don't need anything to eat." He snapped and the man literally backed out of the room still bowed at the waist.

Farooq flopped back into his seat and flung one long leg over the armrest. "Even his servants feel like are somehow superior to us, and what's with the man. I swear something fishy is going on here?" My brother stated as he sat back only to spring forward again and stared at me with excited wide eyes. "Do you think the old tyrant has some kind of hidden stash of money or dead bodies around here somewhere?"

"You are supposed to be the future leader of our tribe you ass, come on, really?" I deadpanned as I stared at my oldest sibling.

"I'm just sayin, look at how the man's main servant acts around us. It's like if he could physically bar us from the house he would, and you didn't catch the way he was looking at you when you were pulling the files out of the drawers over there. Every time your hand passed over the bottom left drawer it was like he was holding his damn breath." Farooq enlightened me with an air of intrigue in his tone.

I pursed my lips and stared at him for another minute or two. I hated when the both he and Hamid used to gang up on me and manipulated me by appealing to my natural born curiosity in order to get me to do things that they were also curious about but didn't want to get in trouble for. You think that after all these years and becoming an adulthood that I would have gotten better at restraining myself from brothers and sisters goading me into doing things against my better judgement.

Rolling back in the chair my gaze traveled from my bastard brother triumphant face to the drawer in question. He quickly got to his feet and scurried around the massive piece of furniture and knelt at my side as I pulled out the now empty drawer. I looked up at my brother and he had his bottom lip in between his teeth all but vibrating with anticipation. I think he had expected a genie or something to pop out the drawer.

"Well do you see any secret file that's going to lead us to King Tut's riches or what?" I asked him. I was getting ready to close the empty drawer when a shiny piece of metal poking up out of the back bottom corner of the drawer caught my eye. Leaning my head to the side, I tapped the the bottom of the thing and realized that the bottom of the drawer sounded a little too hollow to supposedly to be made out of solid heavy wood. For once Farooq shut the hell up at the look of concentration on my face.

I quickly scanned the surface of the desk looking for something I could use to maybe pry the wood away from the framework. They landed on a heavy silver letter opener and I quickly reached out and grabbed it. I used the blunt tip of the instrument and worked it under the corner of the wood and pushed underneath it. The thin panel popped up and Farooq reached in and pulled it out of the way.

We both sat there for a quiet minute blinking in confusion at the aged manila envelope at the bottom of the hidden enclosure. "What do you suppose it contains?" Farooq whispered next to my ear like he wa afraid someone was going to hear us.

I turned my head and looked at him like he lost a few screws along the way. "Why the Hell are you whispering agent obvious? Do you think the servants are listening in on what we are doing?

"Don't let me tell you where to go and how to get there. Now let's see what inside this thing." He stuck out his bottom lip as he carefully lifted the yellowed file from it's resting place.

I cleared a space for him to put it down on top of the desk and rolled to the side to give him some space to open the aged crackling envelope. I must say my heart rate spiked a little bit and I was more than curious than I let on to see the contents as well.

Farooq pulled out several pieces of papers and laid them on top of the envelope, they were just as aged and yellowed as the file they were pulled from. I picked up the first page and my eyes went wide as I made out the beautiful calligraphy of Arabic script. I was looking at a birth certificate, I looked up at my brother and he was just as confused as I was, he pulled one of the chairs around and sat beside me as we took a few minutes to go through the documents.

The more we read was the more the mystery increased, who in the world was Jameel Ali Awad? According to these documents, grandfather was the legal guardian for this kid after the death of his mother, a loyal servant in his house who died and left her six year old son behind. Where was this boy, and why wasn't he mentioned by the old man's attorney's.

"This is some weird shit, everything about this is here on paper, his birth certificate, medical records, but nothing on where this person is, no school records or expense reports, nothing?" Farooq observed and I could only scratch my head in confusion. Then the thought hit me like a ton of bricks and I tapped my brother on his shoulder to get his attention.

"I have an idea who can shed some light on this whole thing. He may even know where this young man is seeing he seemed so anxious earlier." I watched as the knowledge of exactly who I was talking about dawn on my brother's handsome face. A devious smile curved his lips as he got up and reached for the house intercom and promptly called for our grandfather's ever loyal house man.