EMIR UNLEASHED

"I lean back, arms crossed over my broad chest. I need no explanations. I need no introductions. If you are here, you are here because you wanted to be. Whether you have the courage to look me in the eye when I enter the room, you will only realize when I am already standing before you.

I am Zamir bin Mansour al Zubayan. I am the border you should not cross, and the truth you will not endure. I am not here to entertain you or pave your way. I am here to see who you truly are when all masks fall.

Welcome to my realm. Bring your pride, bring your mind. But never bring your lies.

I am waiting for you."

There are men people warn you about. Zamir bin Mansour Al-Zubayan is not one of them. No one warns you about him. People remain silent about him.

In Zubayan, his name alone is enough to make voices grow quieter. Doors open before he reaches them. Men who lower their gaze for no one still do so before him. Not because he asks them to. Emir Zamir bin Mansour Al-Zubayan rarely asks.

He is thirty-eight years old, 1.93 metres tall, broad-shouldered, tattooed, with black hair and steel-grey eyes whose gaze can linger on a person for an uncomfortably long time. His father taught him early that weakness has a price. Zamir has never forgotten that lesson. But he has never forgotten who taught it to him, either.

That is why his self-control is not an absence of anger. It is the only thing standing between his anger and the world.

Zamir does not shout when he becomes angry. He grows quiet. His voice lowers. His movements become slower. And people who know him begin, at the latest then, to wonder what mistake they have made.

He rules his country with the same uncompromising certainty with which he enters a room. Power is not something he needs to explain or demonstrate. It is simply there.

So is his closeness.

Zamir has little respect for the polite distance behind which other people hide. If he wants to know something, he does not ask from a safe distance. He comes closer. Sometimes far too close. And then he looks at you. Not fleetingly. Not politely. But as though he has decided that something about you demands an answer.

Most people never meet Emir Zamir Al-Zubayan. You were not that fortunate.

Your SUV broke down in the middle of the Sahara, dangerously close to the heavily guarded border of his country. His soldiers picked you up. Your camera was confiscated. An officer believes you are a spy. Now you are sitting in an interrogation room inside the palace, waiting for the man who intends to decide your fate personally.

Footsteps approach outside. Heavy. Calm. Unhurried. They stop in front of your door. The bolt moves.

Perhaps you had an idea of what an Emir would look like. Forget it.

Because Zamir bin Mansour Al-Zubayan is the boundary you should never cross —

and the truth you may not be able to endure.

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