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I sighed and looked away. “It was Afet who told. She went to a party. Got drunk. She was so close to being raped that night, all because she kept laughing that she had a secret. Taunting dangerous men about a secret of the stolen baby of Cem Kara.”
“Oh no...”
“She was only fourteen. She probably overheard her father confessing to his wife one night about my true origins. She fell in with the wrong crowd at an early age and used family secrets to stupidly win friends. Unfortunately, everyone knows the Kara family. And tongues started wagging.
“It only took a single night. One night for Cem himself to pay a visit to his favourite accountant. He asked where his son was. My uncle lied that he didn’t know. He didn’t admit that the night he’d gone to help with an overseas transaction, laundering money into different accounts, he’d seen four young girls being dragged into Cem’s mansion. Girls of similar age to Afet. You have to understand, my uncle was a good man. A family man who merely had smarts for numbers. He didn’t want to be in a world of murder, child trafficking, drugs, and violence.
“He hated that he was in too deep and, as he left that night when Kara was called away to deal with something urgent, he didn’t go to his car like normal. He snuck into the estate and tried to find those smuggled girls. He didn’t find them, but he found me. Sleeping in a crib, innocent as can be. He had no idea I was the biological son of one of the most dangerous men in all of Turkey. He just saw another child about to disappear into a world of monsters. So...he took me.”
“What a brave but terribly stupid idea,” Neri breathed.
I nodded and drew patterns through the water. “No one found out. No one suspected my uncle for my disappearance. Apparently, Cem tortured most of his men, trying to find out who stole me. They put it down to a rival gang and obliterated them.
“So much blood was spilled in my name, yet Cem never stopped looking for me. Never lost hope that I was alive. His reach doesn’t just end in the underbelly of society but has infiltrated politics too. He has politicians on his payroll. He’s personally done things for high-ranking leaders, placing them in his debt. He has spies everywhere, so no wonder my parents put as much distance between us as possible. No wonder my father burned our passports—even though mine wasn’t entirely legal—before we headed to the dock in Indonesia. Cem Kara has the power to find me anywhere, so I had to end up nowhere with nothing.”
Wiping my mouth with a slightly shaking hand, I continued, “According to my father, I was wearing a jumpsuit covered in lions when I was first given to them. They didn’t think anything of it. It was just a silly baby print. They used it for inspiration and called me Aslan. They named me after a brave beast, not realising that the very reason I wore a jumpsuit covered in lions was because that was my real name.”
“Oh my God,” Neri gasped.
“Unfortunately for my uncle, Afet shared this with her drunk friends. Who shared it around town. Who brought the devil knocking on our door. They killed my uncle and aunt. They tried to kill Afet, but she was too quick. She ran to our house. She arrived just before Cem’s men did. I hid with Melike, not knowing then that it was me they were after. If I’d known...I would’ve walked right up to them and given myself up. I would’ve done anything to keep my family safe. I might not have been born to them, but I loved them. So damn much. They were good. They were kind. They weren’t murderers like Cem Kara. They weren’t rapists or child traffickers. They were decent, hard-working people who donated time and money to the less fortunate.
“And because of me—because they kept me and gave me a good life—they had no choice but to abandon their world and run.”
“So that’s why they left Turkey?”
“It’s my fault. If I’d just gone to Cem myself, they might’ve been spared. But my father never told me why we ran. He never told me who I was or how I could protect them. He only told me when it was too late to do anything...on a boat bobbing out to sea.”
“He was protecting you.”
“And by doing so, he earned the wrath of a monster.” My heart fisted at the thought of Melike falling into his grasp.
“A monster who is still looking for you,” Neri murmured, her hands bathing, washing.
I flinched. “That’s why I can’t ever go back. Everyone knows my face. Every police. Every criminal. Every politician. Cem made sure that the entirety of Turkey knows what I look like.” I laughed coldly. “Doesn’t help that I look exactly like him.”
