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I’d come to this very spot.
In my mind, I’d returned to Port Douglas and clung to memories of this street, this town, this home.
And now...I’m back.
Really, truly...back.
I couldn’t breathe.
Couldn’t dare to fucking hope.
This is real.
I kept my promise.
I came back to her.
If the Jeep was in the driveway, that meant Jack and Anna were home.
Is Neri?
My heart hammered against my ribs.
For three months, I’d wanted to call her.
For three months, I’d been controlled by a different kind of master to the one I’d shot and killed. I’d spent a month in prison. I’d been kept solitary and trapped, and by the time I was dragged into some office to speak to some guy, I was half feral with rage.
I wouldn’t go through the pain again.
I wouldn’t let someone else carve pieces off me and whittle me into nothing.
They could kill me for all I cared.
I’d protected Neri and my daughter.
I’d ended Cem so all the girls at the Fairy House and the workers in the warehouse were free.
I didn’t care what they did to me as long as the pain was over.
But then, my life got...strange.
And now, I was back in a country that I’d spent eight years hiding in illegally.
My hand trailed to my pocket where my newly minted Turkish passport with its preliminary Australian residency visa gave me access, not just to visit but to stay.
I shuddered as disbelief tried its best to tell me my mind had snapped, and I was back in Turkey, dying in those catacombs, broken beyond belief. It took everything I had to trust that I wasn’t deranged, that this was real as I stepped off the sidewalk where the taxi had dropped me off from the airport.
I had no bags.
No belongings of any kind.
I was just a man dressed in a grey shirt and black slacks, sweating beneath the Australian twilight sun but refusing to roll up his sleeves or trade trousers for shorts because of scars, amputations, and tragedy.
I was hiding.
Not quite ready to show what I’d been through but so fucking ready to live again.
At least, I now walked like anyone else.
