The verdict was already written. They just needed the right man to deliver it.
Called back from the Gulf Arab state of Al Aseeliya to post-socialist Brezovia, Adel Safadi is appointed by the Minister of Justice to prosecute a high-profile corruption case. Half Slav, half Arab, with a spotless record and a foreign name the public can trust, Adel seems like the perfect face of reform.
But as evidence disappears, files are withheld, and the trial begins to move with suspicious precision, Adel realizes he was not chosen to expose the truth. He was chosen to make the lie look like justice.
Caught between loyalty, exile, family legacy, and a system built to protect itself, Adel must decide whether to preserve his reputation or risk everything to uncover who is really behind the crime.
Tipping the Scale is a political legal thriller about justice, identity, corruption, and the dangerous moment when the man chosen to deliver the verdict refuses to follow the script.
“Please, it’s all I have,” the old woman begged, clutching her tray of toy trinkets.
The officer snatched it from her hands. The cheap plastic rattled in protest as he dumped them into a bag. “No license,” he said flatly, the corners of his mouth twitching with quiet satisfaction.
The boy’s throat tightened. He had seen this before. Too many times.
He pleaded with logic and reason, even tears, begging them to leave the poor lady alone — to no avail. Nothing worked until he reached for his wallet.
His hand trembled as he pulled out the bills.
“Here,” Adel muttered, his voice tight with shame. “Take it… just leave her alone.”
The officer glanced over his shoulder, then plucked the money from Adel’s hand and slipped it into his pocket.
“We’ll let it slide this time, old lady. But don’t let us catch you again. You won’t be so lucky next time.”
The smirk on the officer’s face turned the boy’s stomach. The officer made it seem like he had done them a favor, some sort of godly act that should be rewarded for its virtue and high moral standing.
Only when the bribe passed from his hand to theirs did the law finally bend. In that moment, the rules and social order no longer mattered, nor did the grand talk of order the officers always hid behind whenever he asked why they did what they did.
He sighed in relief, but the anger stayed lodged in him like a stone.
“It’s okay, my dear boy. They are gone now,” the old lady whispered, trying to calm him. “Don’t worry about them. I’m used to it.”
“I’m trying my best, Grandma,” he sighed, his voice heavy. “But this keeps on happening. I really wish I could do more to help you.”
He just didn’t know how. Not yet.
But he knew this much.
The grandmother on the street was no thief — far from it.
Yet here she was in the dead of winter, living in a cardboard box across from Brezovia’s parliament, shivering with hunger, her fingers raw with frostbite, treated as one for the crime of selling trinkets without a license.
It didn’t seem to matter that she was starving and cold, or that she could have easily been the age of any of the police officer’s mothers. In the eyes of the State, she was breaking the law — and that made her a criminal.
And yet, even at the tender age of 13, he understood:
In Brezovia, rules and order weren’t fixed.
For the right amount of money, rules and order could be stuffed to taste — like a burevia pie, the greasy Brezovian pastry sold on every corner, its paper-thin layers packed with whatever filling the buyer craved: cheese, meat, cabbage, apple, even pumpkin. Brezovians lined up for them every morning, folded and sliced to suit whoever paid.
Everything was possible - for the right amount of money.
That was why her story never left him.
He had befriended her over the years, trying his best to bring her some food and warm clothing whenever he could with the little bit of pocket money his parents gave him.
She had done everything “right” and been a “good citizen” - the type that the Brezovian education system brainwashed its youth to be. She finished school and university at the top of her class, worked her whole life at a bank, paid every cent of her taxes.
She had even bought a small apartment once — nothing fancy — and believed, like so many others, that steady work and obedience would be enough.
And then, when the bank suddenly collapsed, so did her life. Her savings were frozen overnight, her pension recalculated under an emergency reform she didn’t understand, her apartment seized as “collateral” for debts she never knew she carried.
She had not only given the bank her labor and youth, but her trust and all her life savings, which were now gone.
Lengthy court cases were launched against the bank and its board who had fled the country with their Caribbean passports, untouchable by virtue of unsigned Interpol agreements.
The lawsuits would take years. She had nothing in the meantime.
Her pension was barely enough to piece together a meal each day and the little toy trinkets that she sold on the street to eke out an existence were barely enough to buy a loaf of bread.
Respect for dignity was a foreign concept to bureaucrats.
Their power lay in petty humiliations, and they savored each one.
At the pension office, the clerk didn’t bother looking up as he pushed the form back across the desk.
“You need to provide proof,” he said flatly.
“Proof of what?” she asked, clutching the papers in her thin hands.
“That you still need your pension.”
Her hands trembled, all while he sat back in his chair, eyes drifting past her as though she didn’t exist. What greater proof could there be than the frostbite on her fingers, or the hunger hollowing her frame?
“Incomplete,” he muttered, though he hadn’t bothered to explain why.
For him, the dismissal was routine. For her, it was another reminder that in Brezovia even paperwork was a weapon.
And this was not an isolated cruelty. The immorality of it all was grotesque, even more so when such scenes took place right across from the Parliament — the very building filled with politicians who, before every election, serenaded voters with their epic songs of justice, equality, and a better life. Promises that vanished as soon as the ballots were counted.
His eyes lifted toward it — the Parliament of the Republic of Brezovia — the hulking monument of Brezovia’s decay, its marble steps stained, its columns towering like the hollow teeth of an old giant. Behind those walls sat the men who claimed to rule, wrapped in luxury while their people starved.
Something hot and unfamiliar rose in his chest — not a thought yet, just a feeling.
Anger without words.
Those hypocritical bastards, he thought.
If each of you set aside a single dollar from the bloated salaries you don’t deserve, how many like her could you keep off the street?
How many could you feed with the money you waste on a single salad during your lavish lunches, or on your weekend trips to Monte Carlo?
What have you ever done for this country?
Nothing.
You plunder it, and you steal its space and oxygen like parasites.
He then looked toward the Ministry of Justice. In front of it stood a towering statue of the scales of justice, bronze arms stretched wide in perfect balance. The symbol was meant to inspire reverence, but to Adel it looked like a hollow ornament — heavy, cold, and blind to the suffering just across the street.
His face flushed red with rage.
He lowered his gaze, the weight of helplessness settling over him, sadness etched into his face.
* * *
He saw everything around him. It was a heavy burden to carry.
The lies. The hypocrisy. The artificiality and fakeness of it all.
It bothered him.
Always had, ever since he was a child.
Maybe that was why he kept going through life unhappy, constantly misunderstood and disappointed in everything and everyone.
The world never seemed like a fair place and he never understood why.
At age 11 in school, he wondered why the older kids bullied the smaller ones, including him. Why some felt the need to belittle others, especially the weak.
He treated everyone kindly.
That was how he’d been raised: “Treat others the way you want to be treated.” At least, that’s what teachers and his parents always said.
“I want to be treated nicely, so I’ll treat others the same way. But then why do they bully and insult me?”
Whenever he complained to the teachers, it only got worse.
The torment stopped only when he took matters into his own hands - literally.
One afternoon proved it.
He sat at his desk, notebook open, waiting for the teacher to arrive. A crumpled ball of paper struck the back of his head.
Laughter erupted behind him.
Adel picked it up, uncurled it, and found nothing inside - just a blank sheet, meant only to humiliate.
Heat rushed through him.
He stood, turned, and flung the paper back at the boy. Before the laughter could swell again, his hand cracked across the bully’s face.
The room froze.
The sound still echoed in the air, louder than the laughter that had filled it moments before. The bully clutched his cheek, eyes wide, but said nothing.
No one else did either.
Adel sat back down, his chest tight, his hand tingling. From that day on, the taunts came less easily. Everyone thought twice before testing him again.
At 13, he fell in love for the first time. When he finally confessed, she only smiled and shook her head.
“You’re sweet, Adel… but you’re just too nice. I don’t feel that way.”
The words cut deeper than he could admit. Heartbroken, confused, and overly logical, he tried his best to understand what she had meant, but he never could.
Should I have treated her badly instead? Maybe then she would have liked me. He shook his head. No… that can’t be it. Doesn’t everyone want kindness and respect?
At 17 in college, his curiosity turned toward history, philosophy, religion, and politics. Only then did the questions he’d carried since childhood finally find names.
That’s where it all began: the gradual realization that life was not black or white. His restless mind — fueled by hormones and endless questions — spun off into debates, monologues, and questions. Lots and lots of questions. He began to question things even more fiercely.
Why did one life seem to matter more than another?
Why was it that a grandmother had to live in a cardboard box across from the Parliament - hungry, cold, and homeless through the winter - while those elected to serve the people dined on “working lunches” that cost more than her monthly pension?
They kept warm by the fireplaces of their countryside mansions, often paid for with laundered state funds, bribes, and the very taxes of the people they abandoned. Convoys of black cars rolled out of their gated compounds each weekend, bound for Monte Carlo, while their citizens shivered in the streets.
Their salaries could never explain the houses. Their wealth grew exponentially — yet the tax authorities never seemed concerned when it came to the politicians.
For ordinary people it was different though. Of course it was.
“You bought a nice Japanese car for ten dollars above your declared income? You must have lied. We’ll freeze your accounts, audit you, fine you, maybe even jail you.”
For some reason, politicians were never subject to tax audits - unless ordered by their rivals. Yet in truth, they were all part of the same game, bound by the same rules… or the absence of them.
And when they pointed fingers at one another, the irony was unmistakable: one thief accused another thief of being a thief.
Why did the ordinary person have to obey laws, pay taxes, and scrape by — while others bent the law to their will and thrived?
Yes. Seeing everything was his greatest burden. It was also what defined him.
His very name carried that weight: Adel, from the Arabic ‘adl.
Justice.
A name that was a gift as much as it was a curse.
It meant every wrong cut deeper, fairness mattered even more when others chose to look away, and above all, it meant that he carried a constant need to correct all the wrong in the world.
Every injustice, every story in the news, every history lesson lit the same fire inside him - as if it were a divine calling - a calling to tip the scale in the right direction.