Chapter One Hundred and Ninety
"Demir?" she asked.
"Yes. Him." Aht’s voice was steady, too steady. "Tell your father I’m ready to negotiate." Pride edged his tone and it only made her angrier.
"Do you think I care about...." Asli stopped herself and drew in a breath she didn’t want to need. "I’m here because this is my battle. My father couldn’t care less if your father dies. After all, he murdered his best friend. He slaughtered my family." Her eyes hardened. "It’s my duty to end this today."
Aht’s jaw tightened.
"Do you think your father cares about you?" He said, his tone rising a bit.
That only made her angrier. Asli adjusted her grip on the gun in one sharp movent, the barrel lifting instinctively.
Aht didn’t flinch.
"Trust on this," he said. "I’ll keep him here."
He signaled without looking away. One of his n stepped forward, phone already in hand. Monts later, the door opened again, and a brown envelope was passed to Aht.
He handed it to her.
"You should know," he added, disgust threading his words, "your father is sick. But Demir?" A pause. "He’s worse."
"I won’t allow you to insult my family," she snapped. "You think yours is holy?" She shoved the envelope back at him. "I don’t need this."
Aht caught it easily.
"Call your father," he said calmly. "But before that, let’s strike a deal. If he still insists after this, I’ll gladly hand him over."
Her gaze sharpened. "Your father? Or Demir?"
"Both." He answered. His eyes drifted, just briefly, downward.
To her.
To her stomach. She felt it then. A faint, traitorous flutter low in her belly. But she wasn’t going to show him that it affected her.
Asli slid the contents of the envelope out with impatience.
She checked the photographs first.
It looked like it was taken from a distance. Demir was standing with n she didn’t recognize. They didn’t look like enemies. They looked... established.
Her brow creased slightly.
"Who are these?" she asked, tone flat. She was not suspicious. Not yet. These didn’t prove anything alarming.
Aht didn’t answer imdiately.
She flipped to the next photo. It had a different location but the sa n. She knew it was a different day.
"I don’t know them," she said. "So?"
"They aren’t supposed to be known," Aht replied calmly. "At least not by you. Or your father."
She clicked her tongue, already bored. "Demir handles external dealings sotis. I’ve represented my father in worse rooms than this."
She pushed the photos aside, unimpressed. "I don’t need..."
"Keep going," Aht cut in. He sounded certain.
Her fingers paused. Just for a second. Then she reached back into the envelope.
She saw a paper this ti.
Were they contracts?
Her eyes skimd them quickly at first, then her eyes fell on the numbers, clauses, and the legal language she had grown up around. It looked clean.
"This is business," she said. "He probably..."
"Read it," Aht said again. "Slowly."
That annoyed her.
Still, she did.
Line by line.
Her focus narrowed.
She stopped breathing sowhere between paragraphs.
The Villa.
Her spine straightened as her jaw tightened.
Demir was listed as the acting authority. Granted power to negotiate internal partitions under the guise of developnt and security restructuring.
Her fingers curled around the paper.
"There’s no way," she said, but the certainty she wanted wasn’t there. "My father would never..."
"He didn’t," Aht said.
That landed.
She went back to the page, eyes burning now. Reading what she had skipped before. The footnotes. The phrasing.
’In the event of instability...’
’Should the current leadership be compromised...’
’Upon successful removal of opposing forces...’
Her stomach dropped. This wasn’t protection. What was Demir preparing for? He wasn’t safeguarding the Villa.
He was carving it up. Selling pieces of her father’s legacy to n who had never earned the right to walk its halls.
Her grip tightened until the paper crumpled slightly.
"Why would he do this?" she whispered, more to herself than to Aht.
Because trust was a currency, and Demir was about spending all of it.
Aht watched her carefully now. He didn’t speak, nor did he interrupt. He just waited for it to sink.
She lifted her eyes slowly.
"He knew," she said. "He knew my father would never agree."
"Yes."
"And he did it anyway."
"Yes. One thing about your father, he’ll never give what belongs to him, to anyone."
Her lips parted, and a sharp breath escaped. Why should he give anything to anyone who didn’t deserve it?
Sothing inside her shifted, clean, brutal, and irreversible.
If this were true, how was it supposed to change the fact that she led a battle and didn’t execute its mission?
"Call your father," Aht urged.
"And tell him what?" she asked, her gaze sweeping the wreckage around them.
"Tell him Demir was selling his land. Tell him the operation pauses until he hands over to him."
Sothing shifted in her chest. It was brief yet dangerous.
They both knew the truth. Everyone did, including Demir. Her father would never hand the Villa over to her. Not to anyone.
She buried the feeling before it could take shape.
"And ?" she asked quietly. "How do I comfort myself?"
"Markus and I are investigating," Aht said. "Trust . Give ti. I will expose everything. If..." He hesitated, choosing his words carefully. "If he deserves to die..."
"If he deserves to die?" she echoed when he was keeping long.
"I will take the punishnt."
She hated the look in his eyes when he said it. He ant it. He was too honest and willing.
Why was life this cruel? Why did it twist things until the man she was ant to hate beca the one she couldn’t destroy?
How was she supposed to punish him for a cri his father committed, when he was innocent, and now tied to her in a way she hadn’t prepared to tell everyone?
Her hand drifted, instinctively, to her stomach before she stopped herself.
No. She wouldn’t elope. She wouldn’t run. Not like a thief in the night.
She was born a warrior. And whatever this child ant, whatever he ant, it would not strip her of that.
She dug into her pocket for her phone, fingers unsteady. She found her father’s number and called.
He picked up imdiately.
"Are they all dead?" His voice was sharp and urgent.
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