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Cem laughed with a man he shook hands with. Soft ribbons of smoke curled from those indulging in nargile. Low timbres of conversation flowed around the room, swirling around the clustered men, singling out a few as they shot looks my way and wondered.
Wondered where I’d been for almost three decades.
Wondered if I was truly Cem’s son.
Not that there was any denying it.
I was my father’s heir. You only had to see us in the same room together to be sure of that. I could be his younger twin. A clone he’d commissioned and designed. A son that’d returned to him with so many flaws. Flaws that he’d spent years eradicating.
Scents of hash and tobacco made the air heavy and misty as the small congregation of my father’s most trusted generals all watched me warily. They’d heard about me no doubt. One or two I remembered from their part in breaking me into the man I was today.
The past five years had been...
I balled my hands and struggled to find a word.
An English word. A Turkish word.
What word could describe what I’d endured?
In the end, I gave up because there was no such description.
I’d survived, barely.
I was alive, mostly.
Yet I wasn’t me.
My soul had died, and in its place I was empty.
The tricks he’d played. The tests he’d given. The torture he’d wielded.
I’d endured as much as I could.
I’d endured until I broke.
Now, my empty mind was pliable.
I was exactly what he needed me to be.
A man with a bushy black moustache and equally bushy black eyebrows came to stand before me where Cem and I waited on a small dais in the southern alcove of the smoking room. Royal-blue velvet curtains draped on either side of us, muting the light coming in from the moody stained-glass window.
Bowing at my father, the man shifted closer to me. His shiny shoes nudged against the carpet-draped podium.
His dark, cruel eyes met mine.
His thin, malicious lips tipped up.
And with a suave bit of showmanship, he reached for my hand that wasn’t clutching my cane and brought my knuckles to his lips.
I was empty.
Hollow.
Forsaken and devoid of any emotions except the ones Cem had programmed into me.
“It is an honour, efendim, to finally kiss the hand of the pure-blooded son of my patron. My knife is yours, my death is yours, my loyalty is yours until the end.”
The familiar dialect of my native language swirled inside my head.
