Chapter 5: A Call Across the Ocean

Chapter 5: A Call Across the Ocean

The confession, “I only tried once, sir,” hung in the sterile air of the penthouse, a toxic vapor that corroded Fahad’s entire existence. The silence that followed was not empty; it was a vacuum, sucking away all his hope, all his bluster, all his self-righteous delusion. The color drained from his face, replaced by a pasty, sweat-slicked grey. His knees, no longer able to support the weight of his catastrophic mistake, gave way. He crumpled to the priceless rug, his hands clasped in a gesture of pathetic, desperate prayer.

"Sir, please! Mr. Thorne, mercy!" he begged, his voice a grotesque whine. "It was a misunderstanding! A moment of madness! I have a family, a wife! A beautiful, young wife! You’ve seen her picture! What will become of them?"

Alex Thorne looked down at the groveling man, his expression as impassive as a marble statue. He felt nothing. Not pity, not disgust, not even satisfaction. There was only the cold, clean finality of a problem reaching its solution. The man's hypocrisy was breathtaking; using the family he was willing to betray as a shield.

Ignoring the pleas, Alex walked with deliberate, unhurried steps back to his desk. He sat down in his leather chair, the seat of his power, and pressed a single button on his intercom. The calm in his voice was more terrifying than any shout.

"Laila, get me Human Resources. Then get me Amir."

Fahad scrambled forward on his knees, his hands reaching out as if to grab Alex's trouser leg, but he stopped short, held back by the invisible wall of absolute authority. "Sir, please, I have served you for fifteen years! Fifteen years of loyalty!"

"Your loyalty was to yourself," Alex stated, his eyes fixed on a point in the distance beyond Fahad’s head. The intercom chimed.

"HR is on the line, sir," Laila's voice announced.

Alex switched the call to his private line. "Fahad Al-Jamil. Terminate his employment, effective immediately. Cause for termination: gross misconduct, violation of moral and ethical codes."

On the floor, Fahad made a choked, strangled sound.

"Cancel his sponsorship visa," Alex continued, his voice a monotone of command. "File the necessary paperwork with the Ministry. I want it expedited. He is a security risk."

The next chime was Amir. "Sir?"

"Amir, Mr. Al-Jamil's employment has been terminated. I need you to personally escort him from my office. He will be taken to his accommodation, where he will be given ten minutes to collect his passport and one small bag. He is not to speak to anyone. From there, you will take him directly to the airport."

Fahad began to sob openly, fat, greasy tears running into his patchy beard. "The airport? No, sir! My things! My money!"

Alex looked at the flight schedule on a secondary monitor. "Laila, book Fahad Al-Jamil on Emirates flight 546 to his home country. It departs in three hours and forty-one minutes. It is a one-way ticket. The cost will be deducted from his final settlement, which will be wired to his home account upon confirmation of his departure." He paused. "There will be no negotiation. There is no appeal."

The finality of the sentence was absolute. This was not a corporate firing; this was an exile. He was being erased from Al-Masdar, stripped of his job, his visa, his home, his entire life in the city, all within the space of a few hours.

The private elevator chimed, and Amir stepped in, his face a grim, professional mask. He took in the scene—the powerful man behind the desk, the weeping wreck on the floor—without a flicker of surprise. He had seen his boss dispense justice before.

"Come on, Fahad," Amir said, his voice firm but devoid of malice. "It's time to go."

Two other security guards stood behind him. They moved forward and hauled Fahad to his feet. His brief resistance crumbled into limp despair.

"Mr. Thorne!" he wailed, his head lolling as they dragged him towards the elevator. "May God have mercy on your soul!"

"God has nothing to do with this," Alex replied without looking at him. "This is between you and me."

The elevator doors slid shut, cutting off the pathetic sobs. The silence returned, clean and pure. The stain had been removed from his office. But the task was not yet complete. The physical punishment was temporary; Fahad might find another life, build another lie elsewhere. True justice, Alex believed, had to be absolute. It had to destroy the rot at its root. It had to shatter the false image the hypocrite had built for himself.

Alex opened his secure server and navigated to the company's oldest digital archives. He pulled up Fahad's original application file from fifteen years ago. It was a scanned, grainy document from a time of less stringent data protection. There, amongst the details of his work history and qualifications, was a small box labeled "Emergency Contact Information." In it was a landline number for a small village thousands of miles away.

He didn't dial it. Not yet.

He brought the flight tracker for EK546 up on his main screen. He watched the icon representing the plane sit at the gate. He worked, signing documents, replying to emails, his focus absolute. He watched the status change to "Taxiing." Then, "Taking Off."

He waited. He waited until the icon was a tiny speck over the dark expanse of the Arabian Gulf, until the plane had reached its cruising altitude of 35,000 feet. He pictured Fahad strapped into an economy seat, suspended between the life he had just lost and the ruin that awaited him, utterly powerless, a man in a metal tube in the sky with nowhere to run.

Only then did Alex Thorne pick up his phone. He dialed the international number with precise, deliberate taps.

It rang four times before a woman answered, her voice soft and tired, speaking in her native tongue.

"Hello?"

Alex switched to English, his voice calm, level, and impeccably polite. "Good evening. Am I speaking with the wife of Fahad Al-Jamil?"

There was a hesitant pause. "...Yes. Who is this?"

"My name is Alex Thorne," he said, the sound of his own name a weight, a credential. "I was your husband's sponsor here in Al-Masdar."

The use of the past tense—was—hung in the air between them.

"Is everything alright? Is he okay?" she asked, a note of anxiety entering her voice.

"He is on a flight home to you now. He should be arriving tomorrow morning," Alex said. "I felt it was my duty to call you personally and explain the circumstances of his sudden return. Your husband's employment was terminated today."

He heard a sharp intake of breath on the other end of the line.

"He was fired," Alex continued, his voice a scalpel, cutting away every lie Fahad had ever told this woman, "because he sexually assaulted a young woman who works for me. When she bravely rejected his advances, he spent weeks stalking and terrorizing her. Finally, as an act of revenge, he orchestrated a plan to have her arrested and deported on false charges of indecency, an act that would have destroyed her life and shamed her family."

The silence on the other end of the line was no longer just silence. It was a chasm of shock and horror.

"Before I sent him home," Alex concluded, his voice dropping to a near whisper, ensuring she heard every single, devastating word, "I had him in my office. He tried to lie, of course. But in the end, he confessed. He swore to me, with your name on his lips, that... 'I only tried once, sir'."

He let the damning quote settle in the stillness, a poison arrow shot across the ocean, striking its target in the heart of a distant home. He had taken Fahad's most private, self-incriminating words and delivered them to the one person from whom he could never hide.

He heard a faint, broken sound, a sob or a gasp. It didn't matter which. The mask had been ripped away. The illusion of the pious, God-fearing family man was annihilated.

"Your husband is on his way home," Alex repeated softly, and then he disconnected the call, placing the receiver down with a quiet, final click. Justice was done.