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Don’t be fucking stupid.
This man is a murderer.
A drug dealer and a trafficker.
Cem wiped his mouth with his hand and finally said, “The doctor removed a fair bit of flesh that had died. Your leg will require rehab, and you must be smart about continuing the course of antibiotics. If you don’t...” His shoulders stiffened. “Well, we won’t get ahead of ourselves. For now, you are here.” His watery eyes met mine, and he sighed with a horrifying kind of contentment. “You’re here. My son is here. Finally.”
He reached for my hand, squeezing me hard.
My skin didn’t just crawl, it rotted.
I despised him touching me.
I hated that he genuinely cared.
I hated that my world was upside down, back to front, and the smog in my head prevented me from figuring out how the hell to get the fuck away from him.
He’s the reason Melike and my family are dead.
He’s the reason—
“You have no idea how much I’ve longed for this moment,” Cem murmured. “How many years I’ve spent searching for you. How many governments I’ve bribed, and airport alerts I’ve put out. When Emre Avci returned to Istanbul to fly away with you, I was so, so close to claiming you then. I was only fifteen minutes behind. I flew to Asia after you. I flew to Indonesia, always just a little too late. And then...you vanished.”
A tear rolled down his weathered cheek as I forcibly extracted my hand from his and wiped it on the sheet as if his touch contaminated me.
He nodded sadly but continued, “You vanished into thin air, but I never stopped trying. Never stopped reminding the police of who you were and hounding international law enforcement to tell me if you appeared. I was beginning to lose hope, but then I received a phone call at four in the morning that an Aslan Avci was in a hospital in Northern Queensland.” His lips twisted. “I hated that you were going by that name. That you took that traitorous name, but...” He sighed with a beaming grin. “You were alive. You were alive, and I got on my knees and prayed in gratitude. To know you were still breathing. Still mine.” He sighed heavily and kissed his fingers before raising them to the sky. “And now...you’re here.”
I bared my teeth. “You’re the reason I was deported.”
“Well, not entirely.” He scowled. “You were an illegal overstayer, Aslan. Your fate was already written. I merely...rushed the process along, cut through the criminal charges, and got you here as safely and as quickly as I could.”
“And what of the Taylors? Why are you helping them? Do you plan on hurting them through me?”
“Hurting them?” His eyebrows shot up. “I would never dream of it. Unlike Emre and Jale, the Taylors kept you alive for me to find. You exist because of them. I would never hurt them.” His eyes flickered with evil before he looked away.
“Say it,” I growled. “Say what you’re hiding.”
“How do you know I’m—”
“You’re using them to keep me in line. You won’t hurt them unless I give you a reason to.”
He reared back, his face full of offended surprise. “How could you think such things?”
“I know who you are.”
“No, you know what that baby-stealing bastard told you.”
“I’ve read the fake news on you. I see you hiding behind your lies.”
“The news is all bullshit, good or bad. You know this.”
“There is truth—”
“Fine.” He stood up, his temper appearing in a flash. “You want truth between us? You want to talk of boundaries and expectations when all I want to do is love you? Fine.” His arms crossed; Turkish words flowed thick and fast. “The Taylors are safe. That girl who loves you is safe. You have my absolute vow that I won’t touch them. They will never pay for harbouring you. They will never be punished for keeping my only child alive. But you are right...if you think you can return to them, then...we will have a serious problem. You are here to take your rightful place as my heir. She was your first love, I get that. I loved a slave girl before I met your mother—”
“M-My mother?”
He smiled slyly. “You know so much about me, yet you know nothing about your mother, am I right?”
“Is she here? Is she alive?”
“She died two weeks after giving birth to you. You were the last gift she gave me. It made you even more special.”
I didn’t know why my heart panged for a woman I’d never met. “How?”
“Sepsis.” His face fell, and he dropped back into the chair beside me. “That’s why I’m so sorry for sedating you, Aslan. The doctor said you run the risk of dying the way she did...if we don’t get your system stabilised.”
My ears rang.
My mind tripped with words, threading Turkish with English. It’d been so long since I’d held a fluent conversation that I found it far too easy to be swept up in it, dragged along with the beauty of a tongue I was born to, all while it carried me further away from the language I shared with Neri.
