By the time she stirred, I had an entire meze spread assembled—olives and cheese and sliced vegetables, feta crumbled into a small bowl, fresh bread warming in the oven. The domestic normalcy of it was almost absurd given what I'd just done.
"Hakan?"
I glanced over my shoulder, carefully arranging my expression into innocence. "Good morning."
Ada sat up slowly, the sheet pooling around her waist. Her hair was a disaster—tangled from sleep and sex—and her cheeks were still flushed with the afterglow of an orgasm she didn't remember having. She looked down at herself with obvious confusion, her brow furrowing.
"Why am I...?" She pressed her thighs together, and her eyes widened. "Why am I so wet?"
I raised an eyebrow, turning back to the vegetables. "How would I know? You've been asleep for the past hour."
"But I feel like I just..." She trailed off, her fingers drifting between her legs. When she pulled them back, they were glistening. "Hakan, did you?—"
"I've been making breakfast." I gestured at the spread with my knife. "Perhaps you had a pleasant dream."
Silence stretched between us. I could feel her eyes boring into my back, that sharp intelligence working through the possibilities.
"A dream," she repeated flatly.
"An exceptionally vivid one, apparently." I couldn't keep the smugness from my voice entirely. "You seemed to enjoy it."
She threw a pillow at my head.
I caught it with a shadow, tossing it back to the bed without turning around. "Careful. You'll disrupt my artful arrangement."
"You're impossible." But she was laughing now—that bright, surprised laugh that I'd do anything to hear. "Absolutely impossible."
She climbed out of bed, not bothering to cover herself as she padded to the bathroom. I watched the sway of her hips, the marks I'd left on her skin, and felt something dangerously close to contentment settle in my chest.
This. This was what I'd fought for. What I'd risked everything to protect.
The knock at the door shattered the moment.
"Hakan." Sarp's voice carried through the wood. "Milan's here. Wants to talk to you."
I tensed, setting down the knife. "Where is he?"
"Lower study."
Ada emerged from the bathroom, a robe wrapped around her body. "Is everything alright?"
"Fine." I crossed to her, kissed her forehead. "Just need to handle something. Stay here, eat breakfast. I'll be back soon."
I found Milan in the lower study, standing by the window. He turned when I entered, and something in his expression told me this wasn't a social call.
"You said you'd explain later," he said without preamble. "It's later."
I closed the door behind me. Of course he'd come for the explanation I'd promised—the one I'd been dreading since the moment I'd returned from Kara Cehennem with half-truths on my tongue.
* * *
"How's my mother?"
"Confused." Milan moved to the small cabinet, poured two glasses of wine, handed one to me. "She doesn't remember being in Kara Cehennem at all. Keeps asking how she got home, why she feels so tired, why she has bruises she can't explain." His gray eyes searched my face. "What did he do to her, Hakan?"
I took a long drink. Stared at the table.
I tried to find a way to describe it that didn't require me to go back inside it. There wasn't one.
