Chapter Two Hundred and One
"Sir?"
Her father’s voice was sharp enough that they could hear parts of it.
"Why aren’t you back at the Villa yet?" he demanded. "I need a full report. How is Demir selling my lands behind my back? I want an explanation."
Asli closed her eyes briefly.
"Noted, sir. I’m on my way," she replied. Then she hung up.
When she looked up again, the exhaustion in her eyes was impossible to miss. Aht stepped closer, worry written all over his face.
"You’re not going to the Villa today," he said firmly.
She opened her mouth to protest.
"You heard the doctor," he continued. "You need rest."
"Duty calls. I’m only giving reports and submitting the docunts you gave . Don’t add to the list of people I need to fight. Right now, I need to save myself from those who will try to harm the baby." she said, wiping the last traces of tears from her face.
"Don’t you think it’s your father?" Aht asked genuinely, evidently that he hated the man.
"My father would never harm . What if it were yours?" she fired back, despite Aht’s calm tone.
"My father would never harm you," he defended imdiately. "How is my father going to exhaust you with work?"
"Then don’t accuse mine!" she snapped before turning to Cole. "I want you to check sothing. Wait you said you watched the footage. That ans you saw the man who gave the water. Who is he?"
That question alard all three of them. Especially Aht and Markus. They had assud the man was her spy inside their Villa.
"You don’t know him?" Aht asked, the words coming out more as a question than a statent as he placed his hands on her shoulders.
"No, I don’t," she answered.
Aht blinked.
"Wait... don’t tell we almost lost our baby because of that bottled water," he said, disbelief creeping into his voice. "How could you drink sothing from soone you didn’t know? You know sothing like this already happened before."
He didn’t realize it, but his tone had turned accusatory. He wasn’t trying to bla her. He was simply shaken by the thought that soone had actually tried to harm his child.
"What do you an?" Asli frowned. "I know it was a lie but he said you asked him to bring water and your handkerchief to clean the blood stains on my clothes."
"What?" Both Markus and Aht shouted at the sa ti.
"No," Aht said imdiately. "That’s not true. I never told anyone to bring you water."
"I know that."
"Then why did you drink it?"
"I believed him at first until the doctor said the water was what almost caused a miscarriage."
A heavy silence followed. If that really happened... then it was an inside job.
They had seen the footage. The car belonged to their Villa. The man avoided the caras like soone who knew exactly where every hidden one was placed. And most importantly, he was driving their car.
"Who knows Asli is pregnant?" Cole finally asked, trying to lighten the mood. His entire deanor had shifted.
They all knew he had originally believed the fight and stress caused her condition. But now that it was clear soone had intentionally tried to harm the baby, the situation had beco far more dangerous.
"Nobody threatening," Aht answered slowly while thinking.
He glanced at Markus. They were thinking the sa thing.
Aht had told his parents.
What if his father...
No. He didn’t want to believe that.
Still... the anger his father had shown earlier lingered in his mind.
"That’s not an answer to my question," Cole said coldly. "We need to get to the bottom of this."
"Yeah. But for now, I need to report to my father," Asli said. "I’ll et you after. In fact, the four of us should et after I et with my father. If you two don’t know the man, then this is sothing big."
She took another step forward.
"And nobody is stopping from going to my Villa now."
She continued walking. Cole had brought her new clothes to change into. He just didn’t pick the right one she wanted and it was causing her more discomfort.
The day had already drained every ounce of energy she had. She desperately needed the rest the doctor had insisted on. But not before she found out who had tried to harm her baby.
’Who could that be?’ she asked herself.
**********
Daniel
He refused to believe it.
Because if he did... if even a fraction of what Cole said was true, then their parents had died for nothing.
Daniel leaned back against the cold wall of the room, staring at nothing. His mind dragged him sowhere else, sowhere softer, yet crueler.
It was their father’s voice he rembered.
"Cole will be a footballer," he used to say, laughing proudly whenever Cole ran too fast, jumped too high, or ca ho bruised but smiling. "And you," he’d always turn to Daniel, tapping his forehead, "you’ll be an engineer. You think too much. You build things in your head."
Their mother would smile at that. Always smiling. Always insisting they stay just a little longer. And having both her sons moving away from her was unbearable to her. So she always asked for one more year. She only wanted to spend one more birthday together. She’d always say University would co soon enough.
They were supposed to leave the country. That had always been the plan. Start a clean life. A normal one. Far away from n like Marco.
If only she hadn’t wanted more ti.
If only Marco hadn’t noticed Cole.
Daniel clenched his jaw.
No.
No, that couldn’t be it.
Because if it was... then their parents hadn’t been careless. They hadn’t been weak. They had died trying to save them. Died so their sons wouldn’t end up like this.
And yet, here he was.
Here they were.
Both of them were serving the very man who had destroyed their family.
The thought made his chest tighten painfully. He pushed it down, hard, like he’d done a thousand tis before. He couldn’t afford that truth. Couldn’t carry it.
Because if he accepted it, then he was surely agreeing that their parents’ deaths weren’t just tragic.
They were wasted.
And he couldn’t live with the idea that everything they had suffered, everything they had lost, had been for nothing because he went right into what their parents died protecting.
He didn’t want to believe that.
What if Cole was just lying to cover the sha of folding to luxury and abandoning him?
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