FLUENT IN FORBIDDEN — CHAPTER ONE

"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."

PROLOGUE

Mikael is a ghost in a gilded cage. To the wealthy Al-Faye family in Beirut, he is just the uneducated domestic worker who scrubs their floors. They don’t know he’s a self-taught polyglot who understands their business secrets in six different languages. They don't know he's saving every cent to buy his way to a new life at the UN.

Then there is Julian—the family’s "black sheep" brother. Half-Lebanese, half-Australian, and entirely unwanted. He’s the loud, arrogant mess who was never supposed to notice the help.

Everything changes when Mikael catches Julian protecting the boss’s daughter from a scandal that could destroy them all. Now, the worker and the brother share a secret that puts a target on both their backs.

In a country where their love is a crime and in a house where every wall has ears, they develop a secret language of their own—one spoken in hidden touches and whispers behind closed doors. But as the heat rises, so does the risk. Can Mikael translate his way to freedom, or will the weight of their forbidden words bury them both?

THE POLYGLOT IN THE DUST

The Al-Faye penthouse smelled of expensive lilies and the sterile, cold scent of air conditioning that never turned off. It was a palace of glass overlooking the Mediterranean, but to me, it was just four hundred square meters of surfaces that needed to be polished until they screamed.

I was on my knees in the grand foyer, a microfiber cloth in one hand and a bottle of pH-balanced marble cleaner in the other. My earbuds were tucked under my hair, the wires snaking down my back beneath my cheap, starch-stiffened uniform.

In my ears, a professor from the Sorbonne was lecturing on the nuances of Portuguese subjunctive verbs.

“Caso eu pudesse...” I whispered under my breath, my voice lost in the rhythmic shush-shush of the cloth. If I were able...I wasn't supposed to be able. According to the papers my agent had forged, I was a junior high dropout from a village that didn't exist on most maps. To the Al-Faye family, I was a tool—a biological vacuum cleaner that occasionally made coffee.

I heard the heavy thud of the elevator doors at the end of the hall. I didn't look up. Looking up was an invitation for an order, and I had three more rooms to finish before the Boss returned from the docks.

But the footsteps that entered the foyer weren't the Boss’s polished Italian oxfords. These were heavy, stumbling, and followed by the metallic jangle of keys hitting the floor.

"Bloody hell," a voice groaned. It was deep, rough with sleep or drink, and the accent was a jarring mix of Sydney suburbs and Beirut’s elite.

I kept my head down, focusing on a streak of wax. This was Julian. The brother. The one they spoke about in low, annoyed tones during dinner. The mistake, his brother called him in Arabic. The parasite, his sister-in-law called him in French.

I understood them both. Julian, apparently, did not.

He stumbled past me, nearly tripping over my bucket. He stopped, his shadow falling over the patch of floor I was cleaning. I could smell him—expensive gin, tobacco, and the salt of the sea.

"Hey," he said. It wasn't a greeting; it was a demand for attention.

I paused my hand but kept my eyes on his leather boots.

"Yes, Mr. Julian?"

"Where’s my brother?"

"Mr. Al-Faye is at the port until seven, sir," I replied in the flat, accented English I used as a mask.

"Seven. Right. Great." He let out a dry, jagged laugh. He stayed there, hovering in my space. I could feel his gaze on the back of my neck. "You’re the new one, yeah? What’s your name?"

"Mikael, sir."

"Mikael," he repeated. He said it slowly, as if trying to find the rhythm of it. "You ever get tired of looking at the floor, Mikael? There’s a whole world out there. Most of it’s shite, but at least the view changes."

I finally looked up, just a fraction. Julian Al-Faye was a mess of dark, sleep-mussled curls and eyes that looked like they hadn't seen a peaceful night in years. He looked like a man who was rotting in a gilded cage, and for a split second, I felt a dangerous surge of recognition.

“Estamos na mesma cela, Julian,” I thought in Portuguese. We are in the same cell.

"The floor is clean, sir," I said instead, my voice a dull monotone. "That is enough for me."

He snorted, a bitter sound, and turned toward the kitchen. "Right. Suit yourself. If you find my dignity under one of those sofas, let me know. I think I dropped it somewhere near the Casino."

I watched him go, his shoulders slumped beneath a linen shirt that cost more than my year’s salary. I reached up, tapped my earbud, and let the French professor fill my head again.

I had three more languages to perfect and one year of salary to save. I was going to get out of this house, out of this city, and out of this skin.

I just had to keep my mouth shut.

But as Julian slammed a cupboard door in the kitchen and cursed in a language he barely understood, I realized that the hardest part of being a genius in a house of fools wasn't the work.

It was the urge to answer back.

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