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Aslan
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(Moon in Russian: Luna)
NERI DIDN’T MOVE.
She blinked but that was it.
“Wash, canim. Wash and I’ll talk.”
In a daze, her hands came up, sluicing seawater over her breasts.
Ignoring my pounding cock, I allowed all my secrets to claw me back into their midst.
“Why would I suffer a fate far worse than death?” I whispered, keeping my voice down so I didn’t wake Melike or summon my mother’s and Afet’s attention.
“Because...you aren’t one of us.” My father winced. “That came out wrong. You are one of us. You are my son. You are ours, Aslan. You always have been. You proved that the day you solved those math problems better than any student. You might not share our blood, but you share everything else.”
I froze. “I’m not...I’m not yours by blood? I wasn’t born to you?”
He shook his head.
I struggled to breathe. I wanted to leap to my feet and pace. To shout and scream. But the captain glowered at us, ensuring we obeyed his rules of staying quiet and calm, shoved into too small a boat, slipping through the night and into open seas.
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying we left behind our names, our homes, our very way of life because it was the only way to keep you safe. We forged your birth certificate to get you a passport. I used contacts to get us out. I’ve done everything I can to make you completely untraceable because...your true father is hunting for you. And he won’t stop.”
My voice blended past with present, spilling everything I’d learned on that fateful voyage. “My family has always been gifted with numbers. My father with his teaching and his brother with accounting. They earned a reputation for being so talented that Cem Kara approached them. My father and uncle declined his offer, but...over the course of two years, Kara managed to feed enough of his business—through nameless companies and shell outfits—through my uncle’s firm, that he didn’t have a clue he’d become his main accountant.
“Once Kara told him, that was it. My uncle knew too much. He was his for life and there was nothing he could do about it.
“Of course, Kara paid him well. My uncle bought a new house, new car...he got a little flashy. My father didn’t agree with any part of it and put distance between them. It hurt because he and his brother were close, but my father didn’t like what Cem Kara did, and he lost respect for his brother. At the time, my father and mother had been trying for kids but couldn’t get pregnant. They refused to take money from my uncle for medical help but then...one night, my uncle pitched up with a baby. He told my mother—my adoptive mother—that I’d been the product of a drug deal gone wrong and belonged to no one. No one alive, that is. He said he’d found me alone and screaming. He gave my parents the option of keeping me as theirs or...hand me into the police and let the system have me.
“They chose to make me an Avci. I was loved and adored for years, and when my mother fell pregnant with Melike, we all believed we were blessed. I never questioned that my cheekbones and nose were different to both my parents. Never thought to enquire why I was taller than my father even at thirteen. I believed wholeheartedly they were mine and I was theirs.”
Neri kept bathing, ducking into the ocean, covering her shoulders as her hands roamed down her body. “But you weren’t a drug deal gone wrong? You were the leader’s son...”
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.”
