Chapter One Hundred and Sixty- Seven
The na detonated behind Aht’s eyes without warning.
It was not loud. It did not need to be. It lodged itself there, ticking, spreading heat where there shouldn’t have been any. His gaze flicked back to her before he could stop it, just in ti to catch the corner of her mouth lift. Small. Automatic. The kind of smile people didn’t think about before wearing.
That was what did it.
It was not the na alone. It was not even the man behind it. It was the way her face softened, the way her shoulders loosened as if sothing safe had brushed past her ear.
Aht’s fingers curled slowly at his side.
He stayed where he was. Stayed silent. Stayed still. Even when every instinct scread otherwise.
Everything was wrong about this woman. Her shooting him, her not believing her dad was capable of all the atrocities, her thinking she only gave in because she was paying him to keep quiet, and then her having a stupid crush or whatever it was for Demir.
She was not his to save.
She ended the call and looked up at him like nothing had shifted in the room, like the air hadn’t thickened.
"He said we needed to discuss sothing," she said, folding her arms across her chest.
The movent was defensive. He noticed that too. Sothing sharp tore out of him before he could grind it down.
"How does that concern ?" His voice cracked against the walls. When he had asked her to call Markus to open the door, she didn’t listen but now that Demir wanted to see her, she was willing to go ho. "Call Markus to open the door so you can run back to your boyfriend."
The word boyfriend landed harder than he ant it to.
Her eyes widened, it was just a fraction. A flinch she tried to swallow.
"He’s not my boyfriend," she said quickly. She didn’t hesitate. That should have mattered.
Yet, it didn’t.
Aht laughed once, bitter and humorless. He had been shot before, even by her. He rembered the way the impact had blood hot and fast, how his body had accepted it without argunt. He rembered thinking and knowing he’d live.
That pain had been cleaner.
This one crawled silently.
He had stood with a gun aid at her once. Had weighed the distance. The angle. The certainty. Yet, he had lowered it and chosen to investigate instead of killing her. He had chosen patience. Chosen her. He even apologized for pointing a gun at her.
But, she’d had days. Ti. Space. And still, she had pulled the trigger.
She hadn’t apologized. Hadn’t even flinched afterward. He watched her turn her back at him and walk away before he went unconscious. If only Markus had not saved him. The thought tightened his jaw until it ached.
Her denying Demir as her boyfriend ant nothing. They didn’t erase the way her mouth had curved when she heard his voice on the phone. They didn’t undo the ease in her shoulders, the softness that appeared without permission. Anyone with eyes could see it. He didn’t need labels to understand where Demir stood with her.
Whereas he could get shot without blinking and thinking he’d forgive her just because she shot him strategically. The fck she even refused to apologize and had the audacity to tell him he owed her.
His jaw tightened.
People called her impulsive. Reckless. Too quick to act, too quick to decide. They said it like a flaw they admired from a distance. But they hadn’t been close enough to feel the fallout. He had. He had been close enough to believe that sharing a bed ant sothing more than convenience. Close enough to think it bought him at least a mont of trust.
Instead, it bought him a scar.
The anger kept rising, thick and restless, with nowhere to go. That was the part he despised most and it was not the hurt, not even the betrayal, but the helplessness of it. The inability to strike back. To punish her as he’d do to anyone else. To make the pressure ease.
For a mont, he tried to cling to the thought that she was her father’s accomplice. It would’ve been easier. Cleaner. Sothing solid to hate.
But the truth refused to cooperate. Asli just had to be a victim.... A clueless victim. A victim who didn’t even know the shape of the cage she stood in.
He exhaled slowly.
Killing her had stopped being an option the mont he understood that. Forgiving her, however, was just as impossible.
His gaze flicked to the door.
He was going to kill Markus for locking him in the sa room with her, to witness her stupid smile after hearing Demir’s voice.
"What is your problem?" she demanded.
The question scraped at what little restraint he had left.
He turned toward her slowly, the movent deliberate, controlled, as if he moved too fast sothing ugly would spill out.
"My problem," he said, voice low, "is getting entangled with you."
She let out a short laugh. It sounded sharp, and brittle.
"Finally," she said. "You admit it. I warned you not to blackmail , didn’t I?"
His control snapped.
"Who begged to touch her when she was drugged?" The words ripped out of him, raw and unfiltered.
Her breath hitched.
"And who asked to go to that stupid eting?" she fired back, stepping forward now. "Which I later found out you don’t even attend? You needed to take responsibility for whatever happened. Don’t act as I forced you. I could’ve called Demir and he would’ve gladly..."
Her words snagged sowhere between intention and sound. Aht’s stare froze her in place.
Aht’s gaze cut into her; cold, sharp, and unrestrained. It was not the controlled indifference he had been wearing like an armor, but sothing rawer. Sothing he didn’t bother to cage anymore.
Her lips pressed into a thin line.
Good.
He pushed away from the door slowly, and deliberately, each step toward her asured. The room felt smaller with every pace he closed, the air tightening, and thick with the things he refused to say. His jaw ached from how hard he had clenched it. He welcod the pain. It kept his hands where they were instead of doing sothing irreversible.
Demir.
The na echoed again, unwanted, and corrosive. He could still see her smile... that small, and instinctive, the kind she didn’t an to show. That was the part that burned. Not the man himself but the smile from her.
He stopped a breath away from her.
Close enough to notice the faint hitch in her breathing. Close enough to rember her skin under his hands, warm and pliant, nothing like the steel she wrapped herself in public. Close enough that the idea of another man standing where he stood felt... wrong.
His mouth curved and it was not a smile, not quite. It was sothing sharper and out of disgust.
"So that’s how it worked," he said quietly. Too quietly. "You call him when you are not in my bed. I can only imagine you two after you shot ."
He didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t need to. The words landed heavily between them.
His chest felt tight, unfamiliar. He hated that most of all, the way his body reacted before his mind could reason it away. He had survived betrayals cleaner than this. Bullets had hurt less than watching her soften for soone else and not him.
He straightened abruptly, stepping back as if proximity itself was a mistake.
"What are you waiting for? Call Markus to open the door. Go," he said, flat. "Don’t keep him waiting."
He turned away first.
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